Flowers salute the lost miners
The beautiful daffodils which bloom at the old Quarrelton coal-mining village are among the earliest to appear in Scotland.
Every year, they flower in early January and dapple the roadside verge with scintillating splashes of yellow.
Even when snow whitens the grass and winter storms howl through the nearby Rannoch and Linn Park Woods, they turn up.
Some geologists attribute the daffodils’ mid-winter presence to still-smouldering underground fires linked to the 19th century Quarrelton coal-mining industry.
Sometimes, the blazes were caused by burning waste or dynamite exploding.
On other occasions, they were instigated by self-igniting methane gas.
Whatever their origin, these subterranean fires melt snow lying on the ground above and help flowers like the Quarrelton daffodils grow at unseasonal times on the heated soil.
Mine of informa
Derek Parker knew many of Paisley’s secrets — the grimy and the good.
He wandered every corner in search of the clues that would unlock Renfrewshire’s rich history.
These tales were shared with readers in his hugely popular Parker’s Way column.
We’ve opened our vault to handpick our favourites for you.
But the golden garlands which owe their existence to the coal-mines are metaphysically more than botanical beauties on the winter wasteland.
They are floral monuments to the miners who perished in the Quarrelton coal pits.
They are a reminder of the hardships which they and their families endured in an era when wages were low and working hours were long.
Impoverished families working there had to live in cramped conditions in colliers’ rows along the Beith Road and neighbouring villages like Johnstone, Elderslie, Thorn and Corseford.
Sometimes, women and children, who gathered logs in the woods to heat their homes, suffered agonising deaths when they fell down open ventilation shafts into the dark depths of the earth.
Five miners were killed when the Quarrelton mine flooded in 1818 and three boys perished in an explosion in 1860.
A woman who lost all her family in the mine was herself a victim when she was struck by a colliery machine and hurled down a shaft.
A farm-worker driving a horse and cart fell into a water-filled hole and was drowned.
There is documentary evidence of cattle, horses and dogs falling down deep holes and never being seen again.
Sometimes the howling of entombed dogs echoed from the cavernous chasms like the wailing of long-dead phantom miners.
Strikes, booze-inspired brawls, family feuds, cholera and smallpox brought social unrest, fear and uncertainty to the close-knit mining community.
All are commemorated by the earlyflowering daffodils with their roots in the Quarrelton coal-mining industry.