Lawhead Shale Mine Adit Entrance
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Lawhead Shale Mine Adit Entrance by Ian Dodds as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Lawhead Shale Mine Adit Entrance
Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 9 Jan 2021
An adit is a horizontal, or near-horizontal - in this case it is reported that the initial gradient was 20% - access passage into a mine, either for people and transport, e.g. wagons bringing out coal etc., drainage, or ventilation. They are often there in addition to more major vertical shafts, but in this mine it seems, apart from a couple of vertical air shafts, everything happened through the adit. Despite the area round the nearby village of Tarbrax having a very prominent bing, and some of the best surviving ruins of the shale mining industry around West Lothian, it was largely a very speculative and unsuccessful industry round here. (West Lothian was where most of the shale mining took place in Scotland's shale oil boom of 1850-1950, and Tarbrax lies just two or three miles from the border, in South Lanarkshire). Lawhead Mine No 1 was no exception. It is thought to have opened in 1904 but was abandoned just two years later.
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Image Location
Latitude
55.782171
Longitude
-3.546599