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Oakley [Overview]

Oakley, W of Dunfermline, Fife.

Generic.

The contiguous villages of Oakley and Comrie (not to be confused with the Perthshire village near Crieff) are surrounded by a large number of ironstone and coal pits. Whilst some can be dated back to the 18th Century, the majority were probably sunk during the late 19th Century around the time that the village of Oakley was built to house workers of the Forth Ironworks (1846).

The 'Oakley Ironstone Field' was the principal iron source in Fife due to the presence of the Inzievar or Blairhall Blackband Ironstone horizon that lay above the Blairhall Main Coal. Both of these deposits were of high quality, and as such were both mined via a number of vertical shafts, several described as hybrid "coal and ironstone pits".

Coal from the Blairhall seam and subordinate 'parrot' coals of the Limestone Coal Formation were mined at three local collieries; Inzievar (or Torry), Kinneddar & Blair (or Oakley), and Comrie which were located immediately SW, N and NW of Oakley, respectively. Comrie Colliery that had an average workforce of 1,245 eventually closed in 1986, ending decades of deep coal mining in the area.

Local coal mining ceased entirely when the nearby Blair House opencast coal mine, which excavated the site of Kinneddar & Blair Colliery, closed in Nov 2013. There are plans to repurpose the site as a nature reserve for rare amphibians, some of which have already colonised the site.

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: No mine at given coordinates which lie on the site of the former Forth Ironworks yard (now grounds of Inzievar Primary School).