‘I See the Site of the Old Colliery Every Day’: Scotland’s Landscape Legacies of Coal

ABSTRACT

This article examines how landscapes of abandoned collieries in central Scotland are used, understood and experienced within the context of de-industrialisation and its lingering effects. A mixed research methodology was adopted that consisted of an on-line questionnaire, face to face interviews and on site observations, together with two case studies focusing on the Polmaise colliery site at Fallin (Stirlingshire) and the Devon colliery at Fishcross (Clackmannanshire). Analysis of the data revealed ambivalent and more complex relationships with the sites than the current literature suggests, and the strength and nature of these associations are dependent on the local topography, the socio-economic history of the site, and time.

KEYWORDS:

• Coal mining
• de-industrialisation
• post-industrial landscapes
• social haunting
• ambivalent landscapes
• half life

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the residents of Fishcross and Sauchie, Clackmannanshire and Fallin, in Stirlingshire, and our interviewees for sharing their thoughts, their ongoing support, and their contributions to the project. We would also like acknowledge the anonymous respondents who took the time to complete the online questionnaire, and the Macrobert Arts Centre, at the University of Stirling, for funding the Landscape Legacies of Coal mobile phone app which prompted this research and the comments of the two reviewers who help us improve the paper.

Our oral interviews were conducted in accordance with the guidelines set by Scottish Oral History Centre, University of Strathclyde, where the recordings will be archived. https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofhumanities/history/scottishoralhistorycentre/. Full ethical and GDPR approval was granted by the University of Stirling General University Ethics Panel (GUEP) https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/research-ethics-and-integrity/general-university-ethics-panel/. Application reference 168.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catherine Mills

Catherine Mills is a lecturer in modern British environmental history in Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling. She has a research background in the historical management of ‘unhealthy environments’ with an emphasis on both the urban atmosphere and the underground workplace in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain More recently, her interests have expanded to include post-industrial landscapes and understanding the historic processes that create these often marginal and ambivalent places.

Ian McIntosh

Ian McIntosh is a senior lecturer in sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling. He has conducted research into a range of theoretical and substantive issues including national identities, understandings of welfare, the symbolic nature of food within a range of contexts and considerations of the concept of ‘lived experience’, particularly for social policy. Email: [email protected]