The Udston Pit Disaster Hamilton 28th May 1887

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Situated at the very top of Hillhouse, behind where Townhill Road is now situated was the Udston Colliery owned by the Udston Coal Company and opened in 1875.

It was a small pit. Employing approximately 200 men and boys working in three seams at depths of up to 1000 feet.

The workings of the colliery extend for 150 acres and bordered on three sides with Blantyre, Earnock and Greenfield Collieries.

Today, the site of the colliery is now a housing estate and part of Hamilton’s western expansion programme, the last remaining colliery buildings and the pit waste bing were removed in 2002 and nothing was left to bear witness to the fact that this is the site of Scotland’s second worst coal mining disaster.

The disaster happened on the morning of Saturday 28th May 1887 and the morning had dawned with the promise of a beautiful sunny day, however for the 184 men and boys working underground there was no time to enjoy the sunshine. There was coal to be hewed and a living to be earned.

At 9am, having been hard at work for almost three hours, many of the dayshift downed tools for their breakfast. It was during this break at approximately 9.07am, an explosion ripped through the Splint seam destroying everything in its path.

The explosion manifested itself in a volume of flame and dust at the number two or downcast shaft.

Followed seconds later by a volume of flame from the upcast or number one shaft which set fire to the wooden sheds or headings above it.

The sound of the explosion was heard in Greenfield Colliery through a 135 foot barrier of solid coal. In the Blantyre Colliery (where an estimated 216 men had lost their lives 10 years earlier) miners working that morning were temporarily blinded with the dust thrown up by the vibration of the explosion............

............Lanarkshire people are proud of their mining heritage, rightly so, Scottish miners were a fiercely proud, independent and hard working breed. Their working conditions were appalling, however their indominitable spirit shone through. Each miner knew that he was responsible for not only his own safety but for that of those who worked alongside him. Indeed this was the case with the Udston disaster, as many of those who survived, only did so due to others risking their own lives to save them.

The pits are all gone now and for that we should be thankful. No longer do men and boys risk their lives going down into the bowels of the earth to earn a pittance. The 73 men who died at the Udston disaster were paid on average 3/3d (16p) per day or 17/6 (86p) per week.

Social conditions have improved beyond the wildest imagination of any 19th century miner; however, we should never forget the sacrifice made by these men and boys to achieve this progress.

More than a century has passed since the explosion and in the relentless march of progress, all trace of Udston colliery has vanished into the mists of time to make way for new housing.

== Acknowledgment by council ==

In December 2001, at the suggestion of Wilma Bolton, South Lanarkshire Council finally acknowledged the disaster that had taken place on that May morning and a plaque in memory of the 73 men and boys and also all others who died in the coal mines of South Lanarkshire, was placed on the miner’s statue standing outside Brandon Gate council offices in Hamilton’s Brandon Street.

Accepting the plaque on behalf of the victims was Hamilton’s oldest surviving retired coal miner, 96 years old Jimmy Glen. In 1917 at the age of 13 years, Jimmy started work at the screening tables in the Bent Colliery.

On Armistice Day, 1918, his 14th birthday, he went underground to work as a collier and spent his working life at the coal face.

Present at the ceremony were Mrs Netta Stewart and her daughter Allison, direct descendants of James Crichton and his wife Elizabeth Boyce. James Spiers another of the dead miners was represented by his great grand niece Wilma Bolton with her daughter Lesley Farnan and grandchildren Alishia and Dylan Farnan, direct descendants of James’s brother, John Spiers. The following year, a memorial plaque dedicated to the six East Kilbride miners who died in the disaster, was unveiled in the memorial garden at Priestknowe roundabout East Kilbride.

== More details can be found in the acclaimed book by local Historian Wilma Bolton The book is entitled Black Faces and Tackety Boots' ==