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Colvend Mine

SE of Dalbeattie, S of Colvend, Kirkcudbrightshire.

Small adit in sea-cliff.

In a coastal location on the south side of the Criffel pluton, the Colvend Mine (NX 868 528) was active around 1770. It worked a breccia vein about 1 m wide that cut Ross Formation sandstone and intrusive microdiorite sheets; chalcopyrite, malachite and azurite are reported to have been present in a quartz-calcite gangue.

"A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical", published c. 1883 talks about a mine at Colvend. "... a copper mine, said to have yielded a rich ore from a tolerably thick seam, was at one time worked". But which mine at Colvend? W R M'Diarmid, writing later, in 1895, is more specific: "A copper mine was opened on the rocky shore of Colvend in 1770, the ore being taken to a smelting furnace, but the work was stopped for lack of profit." [CAT]

The old mine is situated at the head of a small, rocky inlet near Bells Isle, on the farm of Uppertown of Glenstocking, and about five-sixths of a mile E.S.E. of Colvend Church. Access is obtained either from the sea or by a rough pathway from the farmhouse. The mine appears to have been known for a considerable time, and was working about 1770, when a considerable quantity of ore was raised ; sufficient to have paid the expenses of extraction. Williams mentions the occurrence of as many as twenty veins containing ores of copper in the parish of Colvend, and appears to have been of the opinion that the company who worked them spent too much time and money on superficial trials instead of concentrating on the most promising vein. He also considered the district to be a rich mining-field, and states that ribs of mixed copper ore up to 4 or 5 in. in thickness were to be seen at some of the trials.

The vein occurs on a north-east line of fissure which has been weathered out into a narrow gorge by the action of the sea. It is of a pockety nature, varies from 2-4 ft. in thickness, and contains numerous riders of country- rock (crushed porphyritic felsite). The hade is to the east at from 70-80°, and the infilling consists mainly of highly crushed rock containing strings of calcite and quartz, carrying a little chalcopyrite, malachite and azurite. A few yards to the east a thin vein of pyrites can be seen running parallel to the main vein. It can only be traced a few yards, and is then cut off by another vein consisting of calcite and dolomite, which is about 9 in. thick, trends W.N.W. to E. and W.. and is seen to cut across the chilled edge of the felsite, and to throw it against Silurian slates (also much smashed). The relations of the main vein to this W.N.W. vein are not seen, but presumably they are the same as for the pyrites vein.

A level has been driven 3 fathoms along the vein, and just above high-water mark. Practically no stoping has been done, and the walls are now encrusted with soft oxides of iron, together with azurite and malachite. At the top of the cliff the site of an old shaft, now filled up, can also be made out, together with the mouth of another level, now almost closed up. [Memoirs of the Geological Survey]

Alternative Names: None recorded.