“Old pit sites were revealed from careful searches

in early maps and coal seam

abandonment plans.”

Chris Sparling

FIFE’S ‘pit hunter’, Chris Sparling, is often asked about the many sketch maps which feature in Michael Martin’s Fife Pits and Memorial Book Website, where he is a ‘webmaster’, and which reveal the locations of so many former coal pits, mines and collieries. (See sketch map on the right of page).

They are, in fact, drawn by Chris, from information gathered from his searches within published maps and abandonment plans.

On some early maps, the locations are not very accurate, and their depiction is symbolic.

A 17th C map section shows Cardon Coals as a cluster of three circles between Hyndloup and Carden Barns.

A few followers of the Fife Pits website have even visited some of the old locations marked on Chris’s sketch maps and have sent him photographs of where depressions in the ground still mark the positions of a filled shaft, or a sunken bell-pit, or a mine mouth.

Chris’s sketch map on the right features Dundonald Colliery’s:

? No. 1 Engine Pit which was sunk ~1840 to a depth of 348 ft.

? Smithy Pit was 288 ft. deep.

? West Pit (No. 2) was sunk ~1845 to Glassee Coal at 55 fms.

??No. 5 North Pit was sunk ~ 1880s to Fourteen Feet Coal at 240 ft., and Lochgelly Parrot at 390 ft.

In 1890, No. 5 North Pit manager, Mr George Blair, was in charge of 31 underground workers and 7 surface workers. The pit shaft dimensions were 12 ft. by 5 ft.

? Den Pit was sunk to 210 ft.

? Den Burn Pit worked Cluny Coal (Rough Coal), probably in the 1850 -1890 period.

? The Dean Pits were mid-Den pits - the southerly Dean Pit, sunk to 102 ft. was disused by 1890.

The northerly Dean Pit worked the Dunfermline Splint at 15 fms and ceased coaling around 1880.

A newspaper advert from 1839 intimated that at Dundonald Colliery:

“they ship in quantity, at the well-frequented Port of Kirkcaldy, their superior SPLINT COAL, which is free from Sulphur and Ashes, and produces a fine Black Cinder.

"For Steam-Boats, Distilleries, Breweries, Bakers' Ovens, and all Furnace purposes, it will be found an unexceptionable and a powerful and durable Coal, and in House use to make a clean, cheerful, and economical fire.”