Massney Braes has long been known as a beauty spot. Its location between the former Lundin Links train station and Largo Harbour saw an influx of beach-going day trippers and summer visitors after the railway opened in 1857. Beach huts sprung up along this stretch of coast and in the 1930s the site was the focus of a series of improvements to enhance the experience of the many visitors that continued to flock there. In more recent decades, Massney Braes has also been known as the site of Pictish burials. In 1965 a Pictish cemetery was uncovered following winter storms. These days Fife Council describes the area as follows:
"A semi-natural stretch of greenspace located along the coast. A woodland strip occupies the elevated north side, while coastal grassland and scrub slope down to the shore. A main pathway leads east and west through the site from the main entrance on Drummochy Road, and more informal paths run through the grassland, forming part of the Fife Coastal Path".
However, there is another important aspect to the history of Massney Braes. During the 18th and 19th centuries this small location was an intensely industrialised site, featuring coal pits, a saltworks and a coastal quarry. A map has recently been made publicly available dated 1853 and labelled Mineral Plan for Lundin and Aithernie, which can be viewed in full here. This plan produced by mining engineer David Landale highlights coal workings labelled Aithernie, Pilmuir, Lundin and Drummochy, as well as locations of additional bores and trial pits.
Note that this plan was produced the year after the Standard Life Assurance Company purchased the Lundin and Aithernie estates). An extract of the map, showing the Massney Braes area, is shown below, next to a present day aerial view. At the top of the map lies Fir Park and the villages of Lundin Mill and Emsdorf. To the far right there is Largo Harbour and Pier along with the buildings of Drummochy. To the left of those buildings, the coastline runs west past the former salt works panhouse (the rectangle located below the letter P.) towards what is now Lundin Golf Links.
The eight black lines running from the coast represent seams of the Drummochy coalfield, while the letters in black (R, P and Q) represent bores and the letters in purple (A, B, C, D and E) represent trial pits. Just above those annotations are a series of small circles marked as 'Old Pits'. The latter likely date back to the days of the saltworks when the coal required to fire the salt pans had to be situated very close by in order to make such a venture viable.
Marked on the aerial view above are:
1. Area of Whinstone rock
2. Vicinity of the coal seams
3. Site of old pits
4. Former salt panhouse site
Back in 1898, evidence of these old pits was unearthed following a storm. As the Fife News of 22 October 1898 reported below "along the coast line in many places coal seams cropped out on the shore. Old residenters recall the existence of an "in-going eye" used before the days of pit shafts - still working in suitable circumstances - for winning the coal to the west of Mr Horne's workshop" (the workshop being in the former salt panhouse). The entrance to this old mine had fallen in some years before and now another similar one had opened up.
An "ingoing eye" (often spelled "ingaun ee") is a Scottish mining term for the mouth of a drift mine or an adit. It refers to the horizontal entrance driven directly into a hillside or coal seam outcropping at the surface, which contrasts with a traditional vertical mine shaft. These were typically in places such as valleys or coastlines where erosion had exposed the coal veins. The diagram below from Coal Mining in Scotland by E.D. Hyde illustrates this system. Coal or shale type material can still be picked up along the shore at Massney Braes today (see samples below).
RSS Feed
