Fresh insights into one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken in Scotland will be shared in a public talk on Thursday (21 March).
Archaeologist Donald Adamson and former mining consultant Robert Yates will reveal new findings about an audacious 16th-century plan to sink the first underwater pit shaft.
Their talk at Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries (DCLG) will give fresh details on how and why the Moat Pit and adjacent Culross Colliery complex was built.
The extensive new findings are based on cartographic and documentary discoveries made in the past year.
Fife merchant, ship owner and engineer Sir George Bruce built a stone tower out in the Firth of Forth, south of Culross, in 1590.
Within the tower he sank a shaft 40ft to the coal seam below. A sister shaft on shore was built to drain the undersea workings using a horse powered ‘Egyptian Wheel’.
Bruce had read of the Egyptians raising water from deep wells by chains of buckets, and he resolved to try the experiment at Culross.
It was said the workings extended a mile under the sea and the drainage shaft to a depth of 240 ft.
The wheel was driven by three horses and consisted of an endless chain of 36 buckets – as 18 full buckets ascended, 18 empty buckets descended.
Bruce’s bold experiment proved successful although was eventually abandoned in 1625, having been severely damaged by flooding.
The remains of the Moat Pit are situated just below the high-water mark on the foreshore at Culross.
The Coal Mine in the Sea: new findings on the remarkable history of the Moat Pit and Culross Colliery 1575 – 1676 will be held in the Canmore Room at DCLG on Thursday, 21 March at 11am. Tickets can be brought online onfife.com, in the DCLG Reading Room and at the door on the day.
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