Highhouse Colliery

Highhouse Colliery comprises a winding engine house and headframe, dating from around 1896 and 1968 respectively.

The engine house is a single-storey brick structure, originally two by three bays with a flat roof. The lower part of the walls features pilasters separating the bays, with a frieze above two courses of diagonally laid bricks. A large opening has been inserted into the north wall. The upper part of the walls is constructed of a redder brick. The flat steel roof, likely a replacement for a previous pitched roof, contains guides for winding ropes and twin bell-mouthed exhaust pipes from the engines. A pipe from the removed boilers and a steam trap are located on the south wall.

The engine itself, by Grant, Ritchie and Co Ltd of Kilmarnock, is a two-cylinder horizontal type. It has cylinders measuring 0.5 by 1.22mm, a later drum of 3.03m by 2.01m, and Stephenson’s link motion.

The headframe, built to replace an earlier wooden structure, is a riveted steel construction featuring dog-leg raking struts designed to span the engine house. It has two pulleys side by side and sits over a capped shaft.

This complex is notable as containing the only surviving in-situ steam winding engine in Scotland, apart from the Lady Victoria Colliery in Newtongrange. The headframe is thought to be the last example of a 'traditional' design built in Scotland. The site, which incorporates several adapted colliery buildings, is now a preserved feature of an industrial estate, marking the location of the former colliery (closed in 1983).