Walk through Newtongrange and you’ll find First Street, Second Street and so on, all the way up to Tenth Street. The numbers are a clue to how the village was made. The whole place was planned around a coal mine, the Lady Victoria Colliery.
Locals know the village as Nitten by the Bing. A bing is the Scots word for a spoil heap, the mound of waste rock that builds up beside a mine.
In 1890 the Lothian Coal Company began sinking the Lady Victoria Colliery. It became known as Scotland’s first super-pit, with a shaft more than 1,600 feet deep, and by the 1890s Newtongrange was the largest mining village in Scotland.
The village pub was part of the same story. The Dean Tavern sent most of its profits back into the community.
The pit closed in 1981. Instead of being knocked down, its buildings became the National Mining Museum Scotland. The railway came back in 2015, when Newtongrange station reopened on the Borders Railway, so you can get there by train from Edinburgh.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Newtongrange: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtongrange
- Wikipedia, Spoil tip: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoil_tip
- Geograph, Third Street photo notes: geograph.org.uk/photo/6041318
- National Mining Museum Scotland, Lady Victoria Colliery: nationalminingmuseum.com/lady-victoria-colliery
- Wikipedia, National Mining Museum Scotland: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mining_Museum_Scotland
- Wikipedia, Newtongrange railway station: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtongrange_railway_station
Photo credits
Photos in the video and on this page, all licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 via Geograph: Third Street, Newtongrange (Jim Barton); Second Street, Newtongrange (Jim Barton); Lady Victoria Colliery (kim traynor); Lady Victoria Colliery (kim traynor); Scottish Mining Museum (kim traynor); Newtongrange from near Dalhousie Bridge (Alan Murray-Rust); Newtongrange (Kevin Rae); The Dean Tavern (Jim Barton); The Dean Tavern (John Darcy); Coal cutting head, Scottish Mining Museum (Jim Barton); Newtongrange station (Jim Barton).