Kevin Nosferatu: Lead Mining

On a chilly, damp and dreich day, I took to the winding roads up to the highest village in Scotland. Not a wee place in the Highlands as you might suspect, but rather in the rolling hills and glens of Dumfries and Galloway. The village of Wanlockhead, as well as laying claim to being the highest in Scotland, is a place with a past deeply entrenched in the old industry of mining. The mining of lead. And on any walk around or out of the village you will come across the remains of buildings or machines connected to mining.

Beam Engine and Miners Cottages, Wanlockhead

After popping into the Museum of Lead Mining for a stroll around and a coffee, I took a walk out of the village to one of the old mines. As I walked, the mist rolled in from the hills around me giving the landscape an eerie quality. It made me feel like I was walking through a scene in an old black and white thriller and also reminded me of a tale I’d just come across in the museum about the Wanlockhead ghost. And I do like a good ghost story. The tale goes that in the winter of 1877 a teenage girl called Jenny Miller set out from a farm a few miles away to attend her sister’s wedding at Wanlockhead. On her back Jenny carried a wicker basket in which was a teapot she had bought with her hard earned savings as a wedding present for her sister. As she walked over the hills a blizzard came in. Determined to get to the wedding, Jenny battled her way through the snow and freezing winter wind, but unable to see where she was going, lost her way and stumbled and fell into an old mine working. Trapped there, she succumbed to her injuries from the fall and the cold of the brutal winter weather. For several days her family and friends searched for her, eventually finding her poor, frozen corpse where she had fallen. A cairn was then built nearby in her memory, and on top of the cairn was placed a stone with Jenny’s name on it.

Mannequin of Jenny Miller in the Museum of Lead Mining

Around a hundred years later a visitor to the area was taking a summer stroll through the hills when the swirling mists suddenly descended. He then saw a young woman walking towards him with a wicker basket on her back. As she approached him, he could see that she was wearing very old fashioned clothes and appeared to be quite distressed. He walked towards her to ask if she was okay and heard her say - look in the stones. She then disappeared into the mist. Baffled by this the visitor, on his return to the village of Wanlockhead, recounted his tale to some locals who told him about Jenny Miller and the cairn built for her. They then took him out to the cairn, though could not see the stone with Jenny’s name carved on it. Remembering that Jenny had said to look in the stones, the visitor did, and he found the stone with Jenny’s name on it in there, broken in two.

The stone now sits in the Museum of Lead Mining next to a mannequin of poor Jenny Miller, whose forlorn and lonely ghost wanders forever lost in the mists of the hills.

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A couple of kilometres out of the village I came to the ruined buildings and slag heaps of the New Glencrieff Mine. As I walked around it the silence and grey light of the mist gave it an almost dreamscape quality. You could imagine it being the sort of place you might just bump into a ghost or two.

A photograph of a small warning sign with the ruined buildings and slag heap of the long abandoned New Glencrieff Mine in the distance. Photograph by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.

New Glencrieff Mine – almost lost in the mist

Remains of a demolished building

Ruined building and slag heap

Picture of the grey, rubble path leading up to the grey slag heap at New Glencrieff Mine. Photograph by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.

Path leading up to the slag heap

A picture of the remains of a building by the slag heap at New Glencrieff Mine. The building had rubble in it that has poured down from a chute. Photograph by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.

Remains of building by the slag heap

The slag heap at New Glencrieff Mine

Ruined buildings at New Glencrieff Mine

A picture of the rubble path up to the ruined building that was once the winding engine house. Photograph by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.

Path up to the Winding Engine House

Ruins of the Winding Engine House

Workings at the New Glencrieff Mine began in 1718 and various companies then utilised it throughout the years to extract huge amounts of lead. One of the shafts of the mine extends down 240 fathoms (around 1440 feet or 440 metres), which is pretty bloody deep. The mine closed in 1931 and then re-opened again for a brief period in the 1950s. It was the last mine to close in Wanlockhead, and over its lifetime it was reckoned that over 105,000 tonnes of lead had been extracted and smelted from it.