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Milnquarter No.1 Mine

High Bonnybridge, Bonnyside, Stirlingshire.

Mine (Fireclay), 1887 - c.1971.

Mine mouth and adjacent older air pit (shown as 'shaft' on 1898 OS map) was located at the N end of a highly extensive pillar and stall complex that extended 1.6 km S to Cadgersloan at approx. [NS 8263 7743], where an additional air shaft is located (see below). By the end of the 1940s the clay at the Milnquarter Mine was almost worked out and a new mine was started at Tippetcraig (the two mines being connected by a long N-S trending tunnel running below the main road by Cadgersloan). The total length of Milnquarter passages will easily exceed 10 km, and was near contiguous with workings of the Dykehead and Drum mines to the W and E, respectively.

Treated shaft (surrounded by brick wall) on site of the former Greenhill Fireclay Works (or Clayknowes Brickworks) is marked as 'Old Shaft' (beside disused brickworks) on the 1897 OS map, but absent from 1860 ed. The site is now overgrown wasteland.

"The clay here was mostly very close to the surface, but there were some deposits that needed to be worked underground - hence the shaft. The mine was worked from the 1860s until about 1883, when the company sold off their assets to recover costs after the City of Glasgow Bank went bankrupt, losing its holdings. The brickworks were in ruins by 1895. The warning signs on the surrounding fence are from the Coal Authority." [Geograph caption]

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: "Greenhill Fireclay Works, Clayknowes, Bonnybridge - Alexander and John Scott owned the farm and brickworks at Clayknowes and Cadgersgate according to the valuation roll of 1865, Slater's Directory of 1867, refers to the Greenhill Fireclay works being worked by Scott & Walker. The brickworks is not shown on the maps of 1854, so it probably started about 1860. The Greenhill Fireclay Company had passed into the hands of the partners, William Brown and Thomas Brownlee of Glasgow and George Caddell Bruce of Edinburgh by 1875. Brownlee and Bruce still owned it in 1880, but by 1895 when it was owned by James and William Wood, the brickworks was in ruins. The site was used by several explosive manufacturers before and during the First World War and suffered several accidental explosions. No more bricks were made on this site, although a Greenhill Fireclay Company was incorporated in October 1920... This company was liquidated in 1922" [SBH]