A Walk Round Wilsontown

(What's left of) Wilsontown Inn as seen from approach

So, after a pretty heavy week and having to replace a smashed laptop screen (thanks Spelectronics, I'm lost without a laptop)I finally managed to do something productive.

How it once looked...

...Versus how it looks now...

I have been out to Wilsontown (Forestry Commission)before out of curiosity. It is an old Iron mining village nearby where I live in central Scotland that has been preserved to a certain extent. Really it's a nature reserve now, home to some lovely animals which I will attempt to spot for you in the summer and the property of the Forestry Commission. As it was I was walking the dog at another local beauty spot (Braidwood Pond, Carluke Gazette) and met a man who was born and raised in Wilsontown. He was able to tell me that it was a true iron mine and they pulled the ore out of the ground and processed it in the same place...so I had to go back for another look.

looking over the car park where they added a picnic area

It was cold, it was dreary, it was a typical Scottish January out on the moors that make up most of the surrounds to Wilsontown nowadays. The theory I am working with is that where you find Iron deep down in the Earth's crust, is the same area that you find gold. Now people have published all sorts of theories (Science Daily) on this and I find it interesting. It happens that when iron miners do find deposits of placer gold they tend to be so small that they are not worth commercial mining, So...I put two and two together and arrived at the idea that where there are iron mines there might well be gold in the water... even though Geology Scotland says there are no gold faults between the lower highlands and the southern uplands...

Ya never know unless ya try, right?

kai at the start of the pathway.

Unfortunately since this area is a nature reserve there is no way in all the hells I would attempt to pan it. Upstream or downstream perhaps, but having checked it out the water is still pretty polluted. There is a lot of rust, iron waste, smelt, rubbish and all sorts of bits of yuck in there that you don't want to put your hands anywhere near. Certain places are not safe to pan because Tetanus.

What I did find, however, was an astonishing little site where you can walk around and get a real feel for what a working mine might have operated like. You can still see the piles of tailings from where discarded rock was dumped on site. Some of the buildings are still standing, although they are unanimously in a state of disrepair. The best preserved of these is the Wilsontown inn, probably the last building to fall silent when the site closed down in 1955. Scotland suffered a huge industrial setback around that time that saw many of our industries suffer... It was a long, bleak period for us that culminated in the emergence of Thatcher. But the less said about that the better. This is not a political blog!

a commemoration of the achievements of the workers

There is some interesting artwork cast into metal on the gates that makes for nice photography...probably...if you don't have shaking hands and no eye for it...Kai had a good sniff around though. As you walk around you come across conveniently placed noticeboards that tell you a little about the history (3D CAD). A total of three inventions were created here, one of which was the warm air introduced into the furnace made better iron than cold air, which all ironworks previously believed. The forestry commission did well to commemorate this little piece of history in plaque form when they planted the trees back in the early 90's.

Definitely of interest to my rock loving brain was the format of the land. Even as you turn the first corner you can see the dips and furrows where things used to be. At times there are circular dips in the ground that you cannot explain and there are signs warning you to stick to the path. This whole area is subject to pitfalls (there was one in Glasgow very recently) where the ground simply caves in due to the tunnelling underneath. At any rate when you look over the land you can see the shape of how things used to be.

There is a lot of history in this place, from the wounded burn that runs red in places to the other side of the car park, where people still live and where nature has thoroughly reclaimed the site. It seems so strange that one side of the site should be desolate moor and the other should be beautiful natural habitat for birds, butterflies and wildflowers.

Also of interest are the bits an pieces of buildings that are all that remain of this once proud community. People grew up here. Children made friends and played among the tailings. Families were raised on the bread and butter this mine provided. Yet losing it to time is beautiful in its own right. We are moving on from what we once were maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's just another used up natural resource. In any case the Wilsontown inn still stands proudly, its own little placard declaring it was thirsty work in Wilsontown. I'll bet it was. I'll bet we'll never know exactly how thirsty, either.

The Wilsontown Inn, location for that horror film I'll script one day.