Leadhills Mines and Miners
THE MINERS
Men came from all over Britain to mine at Leadhills. In the seventeenth century they worked in the summer only and lived in huts and tents. By the time the Scots Mines Company took a lease the village had its first houses, and there was a chapel that the miners were obliged to attend
The miners were a rough lot as befitted a harsh life in tiny damp cottages, and hard work in what were often appalling conditions in the mines. Work that was so strenuous the underground shift was no more than six hours.
Many of the miners could scarcely write their names, but some could be described as cultured men for in 1737 six of them were among the subscribers to the publication of a religious book, "Prima Media and Ultima". It was such men who founded the Leadhills Library in 1741, the oldest subscription library in Britain and the first in the world founded by ‘working men’. The books and building still exists and is open during the summer on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon. (www.leadhillslibrary.co.uk )
Unlike his fellows in the coal pits, no lead miner took his wife and children underground. In the eighteenth century some women helped to wash the ore, and later women and girls spun yarn. Embroidery, "flowering", then provided work and by 1841 girls as young as eight spent twelve hours a day sewing in the dark cottages for Glasgow's merchants.
The women also helped on the smallholdings the miners reclaimed from the heather, and which still makes Leadhills a green place among the moors. The village once had over 100 cows and their milk added to a diet based on oatmeal and potatoes. Like leadminers all over Britain, the Leadhills men made bargains with the mining company to drive through the rocks and raise the valuable ore. In the eighteenth century they were only paid once a year, being given meal, and occasionally meat, on credit for their subsistence. Working bargains provided an independence not enjoyed by the weavers in the textile mills. But by the mid nineteenth century the bargains were being set to limit earnings and men had not only to buy candles and explosives; but also meet half the cost of the timber they needed for their own safety.
The skilled men might earn a £1 a week, and one of them, William Gibson, sent a son to Glasgow University in 1834. But others had to get by on no more than 4/6d (22p), and were penalised if they refused a bargain rate. In 1839 a miner complained, "those that does not sign on Monday gets no meal on Tuesday".
The miners were men of great moral as well as physical courage. In 1686 a young Leadhills man was hanged for his part in rescuing some Covenanters in the Enterkin Pass, and on the eve of his execution he wrote to his family that he would, "lay down his life with cheerfulness". In1836 the miners went on strike against Borron's "tyrannical power", but even though threatened by the presence of armed soldiers, ten refused to sign a document of submission, and lost not only their work but their homes as well.
When the Free Church seceded in 1843, William Gibson formed an Association at Leadhills but it was refused a place to meet, so he and 60 others walked each Sunday to Wanlockhead to join in a congregation who worshiped on the open hillside. By the late nineteenth century the smallholdings became of economic value to the miners. But the ground belonged to the landowner, and this led to an interest in land reform and radical politics.
The Leadhills miners have been described as "docile" but in fact time and time again they took a stand for justice, and there were many disputes before they secured better wages and the recognition of their union. But by then lead mining was a dying industry. With better conditions in sight, the works closed and three centuries of mining at Leadhills came to an end.