Prestongrange Museum

The colliery winding gear

The Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum is an industrial heritage museum at Prestongrange between Musselburgh and Prestonpans on the B1348 on the East Lothian coast, Scotland UK.

Founded as the original site of the Scottish Mining Museum, its operation reverted to East Lothian Council Museum Service (the current operators) in 1992. Prestongrange Colliery had closed in 1962 and the site began to be cleared. However, work stopped when a new plan was adopted. The Museum was the idea of David Spence, a retired mining engineer. A steering committee was formed in 1968, volunteers worked to clear the site and assemble exhibits, and the Scottish Mining Museum was formally launched at Prestongrange on 28 September 1984.

Development

By the early 1960s the strategy of the National Coal Board meant that all of East Lothian’s and most of Midlothian’s collieries were earmarked for closure. At the same time within the coalfield community there was an awareness that technology and culture was also changing and much that was of significance was in danger of being lost forever.

Prestongrange had three key merits as a museum site. The estate features in the earliest written account of collieries in Scotland, often dated to 1180-1210. The existing colliery included the first deep (420 foot) shaft in Scotland, sunk in 1830 to the Great Seam by Matthias Dunn of Newcastle. The colliery housed the last Cornish beam engine remaining in situ in Scotland.

Artefacts were collected from around the coalfield and stored at Prestongrange. The interior of the beam engine house and the colliery power station became galleries. With the closure of Lady Victoria Colliery at Newtongrange in 1981 the ambitions of the steering group expanded to include that site. After operating together from 1984 to 1992 Prestongrange was withdrawn from the Scottish Mining Museum by East Lothian District Council and recast as Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum to encompass the area’s other once significant but vanished industries – salt boiling, chemical synthesis (particularly sulphuric acid), soap making, glass making, potteries, industrial ceramics and bricks.

Main features

• the Hoffmann Kiln (or, more precisely, the Hoffmann Continuous Kiln)
• the Cornish engine (a type of beam engine) the only one in Scotland
• the winding engine
• the Power House
• the 17th century glass works
• the 18th century pottery site
• the 19th century coal mine and brick works
• Morrison's Haven, the 16th century harbour
• the railway (remains) and rolling stock
• the Visitor Centre with its exhibition

Beam engine

The beam engine is a Cornish engine, an early type of steam engine, used to pump water from the coal mine to prevent the workings from becoming flooded. It was made by Harvey and Company and used in four different mines in Cornwall before being purchased by the Prestongrange Coal and Iron Company in 1874 and shipped north. The 30-ton engine was installed in a new engine house, whose front wall is nearly 7 feet (2.1 m) thick in order to support the main pivot bearing of the huge cast iron beam.

The engine continued operating until 1954, when it was superseded by electric pumps, only eight years before the colliery closed. The engine is the only example in Scotland.

Facilities

The Museum site is open all day every day. The Museum buildings are open between April and October, 11am to 4pm. A self-guided tour by mobile phone is available, and it is narrated by the painter John Bellany who was born in Port Seton.

The Museum is also the gateway to the annual Three Harbours Festival, jointly organised by the communities of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton.

Photo gallery

• 
  The beam engine house, showing the 'outer' (pump) end of the beam.
• 
  The 'inner' (cylinder) end of the beam engine.
• 
  A brick, made on site, marked "Prestongrange"
• 
  The powerhouse
• 
  7-plank wooden coal wagons (with wooden chassis)
• 
  Brake van
• 
  The Visitor Centre
• 
  Beam engine & Audio Tour

See also

• Manual labour
• Wage labour
• Industrial archaeology
• List of industrial archaeology topics
• European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH)
• List of places in East Lothian

External links

• The Museum's website
• Prestongrange Community Archaeological Project
• Self-guided tour leaflet
• BBC page on beam engines, including an animation
• National Trust website on Levant Beam Engine
• East Lothian Museums 'Behind the Scenes' – photos taken at Prestongrange