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Skelpie Mine

Cults, Cupar, Fife.

Mine, Quarry (Limestone), 20th Century.

Extensive room and pillar mine system, essentially a standalone eastern extension of the Cults Mine that extends >600 m to the SE of the mine mouth . Worked by Cults Lime Co Ltd until 1987 (abandoned 1988). See abandonment plan for detailed mine layout.

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"Although the two mines, Cults and Skelpie, appear contiguous, good safety practice meant that the old Cults drives were stopped up, to create a 45-yard barrier between the old and new workings. Both mines comprised a working vein 9 to 12 ft high, with a 3 ft limestone roof above, itself overlain with blaes, and a 4 ft-deep fireclay pavement below the workable limestone... the development of Skelpie took several years, and over a dozen bores were made during 1967 and 1968 - with a new mine mouth formed to the SE of Cults crossroads.

Half a mile further on, the mining engineers discovered a dyke of intrusive igneous rock to the east, which formed a barrier which is roughly in line with Skelpie Farm on the surface, so the mine was driven southwards, following the dip, until it began to hit poor rock towards the end of the Seventies, after which exploration continued southwestwards. Groundwater pumping at Skelpie was more systematic than in the older parts of Cults...

Skelpie was operated using the "Room and Blast" system of mining: as before, blasting was carried out using gelignite charges, and 100lb of gelignite was set each day, in four or five places around the working face. Each of the blasts brought down 40-60 tons of limestone. As in Cults to the west, the limestone band is around 12 ft thick, underlain by fireclay; occasionally the miners came across small pockets of coal. The main haulage was 22 ft wide, at least 8 ft high, and had regular lateral galleries which had already been exhausted.

After the Skelpie mine closed in 1987, Cults Lime concentrated on opencast working for the limestone, although traces of the quarrying activity are also gradually disappearing, thanks to remediation work and rampant vegetation. The Limeworks was still producing crushed lime for agricultural purposes in the 1980s. Operations wound down at Cults in the early 1990s, and while the mine mouths were blocked many years ago, now a good deal of the surface workings have gone too." [Chalmers, M]

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: Given 8 fig. coordinates are for the mine entrance, S of Cults Smithy.