Fife Pits – Murdo Eason – From Hill to Sea

” ‘Nature’ is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand …”

Martin Heidegger

It is difficult to convey a sense of scale.

Perched on the edge of a collapsed harbour wall, the vestiges break from the blue expanse ahead like a stone-flippered sea serpent, emerging from the depths.

At this height, the field of vision is a wash of blues and greens, daubs of cloud. Dark emerald maps trace imaginary continents on the sea floor; an atlas of time and tide. Drowned oceans, swirls of bottle green bleeding through ultramarine. Hints of International Klein Blue. As a couple of herring gulls swoop close by and aim for the water, there is a fleeting urge to emulate Yves Klein’s leap …

A whisper of wind, pulls the gaze back to the horizon and acts as a useful reminder that to leap from this vantage point would be unlikely to end well. I press my back firmly against the narrow, elevated ledge and watch the clouds scudding east.

Whilst we could be gazing out across the Mediterranean, we are looking out over the Firth of Forth at Seafield, just west of Kirkcaldy. The collapsed harbour arm in front of us is an industrial folly dating from 1899. The harbour was never completed and looking towards the banks of serrated rock teeth, just to the west, it is perhaps not surprising why. It is difficult to envisage safe passage for any vessel across this bay.

We are also aware that underneath these coastal waters, subterranean entrails of hollowed out ‘black diamonds’ reach far out below the Forth. Behind us is a landscape of absence with no visible trace of the Seafield pit which once dominated this coastline. Seafield was the last of the Fife coalfield ‘superpits’ and was one of the largest undersea mines in Europe. It linked up underground, beneath the Forth estuary, with its sister pit, ‘The Frances’, situated to the North of Kirkcaldy.

Preparatory work on sinking a mine shaft at Seafield began in 1954 with production starting in 1965. The pit was one of Egon Riss’s (1901 – 1964) modernist designs for The National Coalboard Scottish Division, which also included: Bilston Glen, Killoch, and Rothes, with Seafield and Monktonhall being completed after his death. Riss was an Austrian of Jewish descent who had studied at The Bauhaus and was acquainted with Oskar Kokoschka and Paul Klee.

Seafield just managed to survive the fallout from the Miner’s Strike, but closed four years later in 1988 with all of the above-ground infrastructure erased from the landscape in 1989. A relatively short industrial life of 45 years from conception to dust. Walking the landscape today there is no trace of the pit having ever existed. A new housing development sits up on the hill where Riss’s modernist landmark towers once stood. As we consider the marvellous views that these houses must command, we alight on a tomb-like structure on the side of the hill, complete with what could be a memorial stone. All is blank.

At the time of writing, (December 2015), the COP21 Paris climate deal has just been agreed, which at least outlines an intent and ambition to secure a low-carbon future for Planet Earth. We can’t help thinking that, like the oft cited butterfly of chaos theory that flaps it’s wings and causes a hurricane in another part of the globe, the burning of the first lump of carbon produced its own unforeseen effects over a longer time scale.

“It was my first acquaintance (1859) with the geology of Fife, and furnished me with many fresh and striking manifestations of volcanic phenomena – a foretaste of the rich harvest which the county was afterwards to yield in the same field”.

Sir Archibald Geikie (1859)

Our sense of human time, industrial time and earth-time is given a further jolt as we start to walk along the rock strewn beach towards Kinghorn. This part of the Fife coastline offers some dramatic examples of rock formations and lava flows dating back to early Carboniferous times of between 360 – 320 million years ago. The Binn (hill) which overlooks nearby Burntisland is believed to be the source of these lava flows.

Any rock is an index of deep time. Liquid lava movement arrested by abrupt cooling. Intense heat solidifying, fracturing, frozen in time.

Inevitably, our stroll along the beach throws up some interesting items:

We wonder if we have come across the staff of the Spear of Neptune:

Unfortunately a search for the trident is unfruitful.

On any beach, these days, there is always at least one tyre:

A sea-smoothed anteater:

and a rock pool submerged sea skull:

We leave the beach and pick up the footpath that leads to Kinghorn. Up ahead we can see the outline of Seafield Tower with the outer wall remaining largely intact.

For how long the tower will remain standing is another matter given the clearly visible fracture running down the middle like a poorly executed appendix scar. It feels as if a really strong wind could cleave the structure in two.

The tower is believed to date from the early 16th century and was the stronghold of the Moultrays of Seafield until 1631 when the estates were sold to the Archbishop of Glasgow. More intriguingly, a 1774 plan shows the enclosing courtyard walls and a circular tower at the NE angle described as the ‘Devil’s Tower’ although the derivation of this is unclear. The local coastline was known to be the haunt of smugglers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Perhaps it would do no harm to circulate rumours about a devil’s tower to keep people well away.

Built of red sandstone, the tower has not weathered well and now resembles a crumbling, hollowed out old tooth:

On a day as radiant as this one, the tower doesn’t feel too devilish and the red sandstone softens the sun which is high overhead and beating down. This should favour one of the key reasons for our trip and we head further along the coast to see if we are in luck.

It is fairly common to see seals bobbing around the Fife coast, but we rarely see them congregate together. Today they are revelling in the sunshine, lounging on a series of rocks not too far from the shore. Occasionally, one will slide into the water and bob around closer to shore, clearly curious but feeling well protected by the aforementioned waves of rock teeth to discourage anyone trying to get too close. This is also a very quiet part of the coast. The railway hugs the coastline between Kirkcaldy and Kinghorn which prevents any access to the path other than by foot from either end. Even on a day such as this, with glorious weather, we encounter less than a handful of people on the path. There are the usual dog walkers who populate the entrance and exit areas but otherwise it is a remarkably quiet stretch.

Not surprisingly, the area is also rich in bird life. Oystercatchers puddle around the shore, whilst common gulls and herring gulls criss-cross the air in constant movement. Further out cormorants dry their wings, as if juggling a pair of half extended umbrellas. Our identification skills are insufficient to precisely identify many other species but the area is known as a rich haven for guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars.

Above our heads, a bunch of swifts engage in frantic aerobatics, explosions of kinetic energy and zig-zag movement. In stark contrast, a grey heron appears to slow the world to a standstill as it descends from the sky. The silent movement of its wings dissolving time in a held breath as it gracefully glides to a halt.

A more puzzling conundrum is the discovery of a still feathered wing caught up in some thick bramble thorns. Had the bird just inadvertently flown in to the thicket and become trapped or been attacked by a bird of prey? Or was it some totemic symbol carrying a message for the initiated or marking some form of threshold?

As the path ascends to higher ground, it looks over some fairly steep cliffs and runs parallel with the railway line for a stretch with expansive views over the Forth and onwards towards Kinghorn itself.

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The presence of so many seals, earlier, conjures up visions of their close relatives in folklore whose stories pepper this coastline. As we look out to Inchkeith island we think of Kelpies and mermaids:

We eventually reach Kinghorn as the railway arches soar over our heads.

Kinghorn will have its own post at some future time, but as we walk down to the harbour we are reminded that Pettycur Bay nestles under a prominent crag known as ‘Witches Hill’:

≈≈≈

When the time comes to make the return walk back to Kirkcaldy, the sun has sunk low and we encounter no-one on the path. The landscape becomes more auditory than visual: the repetitive lip lip lip of a rock pool; the fizz of the receding tide. But it’s a low groaning drone that begins to fill the air. A deep and doleful lament rising to a eerie howl.

The seals are singing.

Is it a warning? a wake? Or do we hear the call of shape-shifting selkies, shedding their sealskins to assume human form …

We walk on quickly …

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Coda:

Tired of dreaming

the sun slipped

from the sky

in the dying light

a fizzle of water

a settling of sand.

Now playing: Kevin Drumm – The Sea Wins

The walk was undertaken in late May 2015. Written up in December 2015.

The stories are still told

of a time before the water.

When the earth lay heaped,

black and smouldering.

It is said that they tunnelled

g r o u n d

for black diamonds

to burn for warmth.

A structure survived

the darkest of

the dark days –

although, now, no one

is quite sure

what it was used for

Now.

now to simply be

amongst our co-dwellers

in this healing place.

If you remain still

for long enough

they become curious

and congregate,

silently swaying

with the wind.

A few season-cycles ago

the visitors started to return.

We listen for their arrival

always the calling first.

despite

bluebell

all that happened

stitchwort

the woods and the words

wild hyacinth

at least

oak

some of the words

hazel

and some of the woods

dog mercury

survive

And the thin

bleached light

of a pale sun

continues to shine

on the white tree

of Harran Hill Wood.

♦

♦ ♦

♦

This little field trip, possibly sent from another point in time (?), was inspired by frequent visits to a favorite place in Central Fife: Lochore Meadows or The Meedies as it is known locally.

The Meedies opened as a Country Park in 1976 following one of the largest and most ambitious industrial landscape renovation projects in Europe. This included the reclamation of 600ha of heavily contaminated land comprising six redundant coal mine sites, colliery buildings, mineral railways, refuse tipping, areas of subsidence and the towering pit bings (most of them burning) which rose to 60m over the surrounding countryside and settlements.

The Meedies is now a major centre for outdoor and environmental education with Loch Ore the largest area of standing water in Fife. It is an important habitat for wildfowl with significant numbers both over-wintering and breeding. Otters, bats, water voles and even ospreys have been recorded within the park boundary. The acid grasslands of Clune Craig are botanically rich and also bear traces of hut-circles and enclosures from a Bronze age settlement.

The ‘structure’ in the photographs above is the reinforced concrete headframe of the ‘Big Mary’ No. 2 pit shaft, sunk in 1923. It is one of only two such surviving structures in Fife and a monument to the Kingdom’s mining heritage. (The other is The Frances in Dysart). You can gain some impression of how the area looked when mining was in operation from this photograph:

The pit head is in the distance and the smouldering pit bings in the foreground. This photograph is from the fabulous web resource on the Fife Pits by Michael Martin which can be accessed here.

The original Loch Ore was drained in the 1790s when the landowner, Captain Parks, attempted to reclaim the land for cattle grazing. The project was a commercial failure and the land formerly occupied by the loch remained boggy. Parks was declared bankrupt in 1798. The loch gradually returned in the mid 20th century, when coal mining flourished and the mineral railway serving the pithead became an embankment surrounded by water. The return of the loch was mainly due to subsidence caused by mining, and the ‘new’ loch now occupies a different footprint to the original. The loch is now stabilised but its depth still fluctuates. The islands in the loch are the remains of the former railway embankment.

To the north west lies Harran Hill Wood which sits on a rocky ledge between Loch Ore and Benarty Hill. Botanical studies indicate a strong possibility that this site may have been wooded since shortly after the last Ice Age c. 10,000 years ago.

Whilst writing this, I’m listening to a composed piece called After The Rain by Barry Guy, perhaps better known as a free improviser. I don’t think I had ever read the sleeve notes before but was intrigued to learn that it was partly inspired by the Max Ernst painting Europe After the Rain. As Guy says in the sleeve notes:

“The canvas portrays four large masses of tortuous baroque-like remains as if left after some unfathomable catastrophe…these images invite the viewer to speculate on the nature of the events. Here in Europe After the Rain could be the apotheosis of anxiety and destruction or the emergence of new life from the ruins. I am drawn to the latter…”

Now Playing: Barry Guy and City of London Sinfonia – After the Rain

Reference:

Fife Council Lochore Meadows Country Park Development Plan, November 2008.

Michael Martin, Fife Pits and Memorial Book, http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mmartin/fifepits/

Miles K Oglethorpe, (2006), Scottish Collieries: An Inventory of the Scottish Coal Industry in the Nationalised Era (Edinburgh, The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland).

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