In all probability it was considerably before the reign of the Modern Solomon who indited this sapient epistle that the coal pits of Duddingston were opened near to Joppa, as we find a charter of Kelso Abbey, dated 1538, by which the lands of Easter and Wester Duddingston were granted to Robert Barton, where mention is made of his right to the coal and coal-heughs on the Barony.[1]
From a very early period at all events, down to the year 1790, coal had continued to be extracted, and that in considerable quantity from the three or four pits wrought in that neighbourhood, At the end of the century thirteen seams of coal had been dis- covered and partly wrought ; several being of first-rate quality, ‘*The inclinations and dips of the minerals were to the west, and nearly all at an angle of forty-five degrees from the horizon to the east, which always rendered the working of the coal an extremely difficult and dangerous process, and which in the end was the cause of the mines being given up, as they could not be kept clear of water.”[2]
In 1788 the coal ‘‘on the west of the Great Seam ” was leased by Mr John Thomson of Priorlatham for twenty-one years at a rent of £200 per annum for the coal, or a tenth of the gross produce at the option of the Earl of Abercorn, and £87 3s 6d for the colliers’ houses ; and he was to have got a lease of the rest of the coal at Brunstane as soon as if was put into a proper working condition. But the death of the Earl in 1789, and a dispute with his successor, prevented this being carried out.[3]
Hugh Miller, who knew well the geological configuration of the neighbourhood of these mines, has given an excellent description of their coal measures in his Geological Features of Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood. The pits had been closed long before his day, but from a careful examination of the strata laid bare in the quarry between Joppa and Easter Duddingston and other places further inland, he formulated his theory of the Midlothian coal basin. He says :—
“The coal measures fill a great basin, which occupies the comparatively level space between the western slopes of the Garelton Hills, near Haddington, and the eastern slopes of Arthur Seat and the Pentlands. The surface is comparatively level, because the basin is full ;
