A HOME FOR Bid to create museuminold mining village
IT is 1978 and my grandmother proudly holds me in her arms, squinting into the sun on a scorching summer afternoon.
There are other images too, a sea of faces smiling towards the camera. People lounge on the newly-planted grass, chatting and sharing stories.
The joy is evident as old friends and long lost kin embrace. It is the first annual “Pailis” reunion.
I have no memories of that particular June day – I was only six months old – but I grew up hearing stories about Bothwellhaugh, the former mining village in Lanarkshire affectionately known as the Pailis, a fond colloquialism for the Hamilton Palace Colliery.
In my mind’s eye it has since achieved an almost mythical status akin to Atlantis, not least because much of the site where this beloved tight-knit community once resided now lies beneath the waters of the loch in Strathclyde Country Park.
After the pit closed in 1959 – the last of the tenement rows demolished in 1965 – those who worked and lived here were scattered to the four winds.
While some were rehoused nearby in Bellshill, Motherwell and Hamilton, others put down roots around the world emigrating to Australia, Canada and the US.
Yet, each year on the first Saturday in June – always the traditional date for the Miner’s Gala Day – they would faithfully return to congregate around the stone memorial cairn erected where the heart of the village once stood, the decades melting away as former i nhabitants were reunited.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Bothwellhaugh Ex-Residents Committee being formed. My late gran, Mary Currie, was among its enthusiastic founders back in 1977. Their goal was to keep the memories and camaraderie of the village alive.
Today, though, those who remember first-hand life in the Pailis are dwindling fast. It is a real fear that large parts of this rich oral history could be lost forever. One idea mooted by the current committee is to create a museum with a potential site earmarked within Strathclyde Country Park.
While still in the early stages of drawing up plans to secure funding, it is hoped that a facility – proposed to be housed in a former farm cottage – could open as early as next summer.
The village of Bothwellhaugh stood on the banks of the Clyde and was purpose built in 1884 for miners employed by the Bent Colliery Company and their families.
The coal produced here was high quality and sought after for industrial use, particularly as fuel for steam trains with much of it exported to Argentinian railway companies. The Flying Scot’s record run to London is reputed to have used Pailis coal.
By 1911, the colliery’s initial crew of 14 miners had swelled to a thriving community of 2,500 people. There was a church, two schools, a miner’s welfare club and 450 homes.
Life was hard and the work dangerous. Families lived cheek by jowl. But while people had little money, they made up for it in generosity of spirit.
Strathclyde Country Park was officially opened in 1978. The Clyde had been re-routed and the former Calder Pond incorporated into the new Strathclyde Loch, while the bing had disappeared to build the M74 motorway.
Only a short walk from the cairn is the former farm cottage, currently lying empty and in a state of neglect, that it is hoped could be renovated museum. It is the only man-made structure that remains of Bothwellhaugh.
EX-Pailis resident Pat Ryan, 69, who comes from a family of coal miners – his grandfather, father and four uncles worked at the Hamilton Palace Colliery – is among those backing the project.
“It has always felt unfortunate that there was nothing left of the Pailis,” he says. “They had pulled everything down. This is the last standing solid building that remains. I think it is important to keep that.”
The cottage holds special significance for Alistair Griffiths whose mother Isabel lived there as a child