The partners of the Donibristle Company were James Armstrong Nasmyth and his son Alexander Hogg Nasmyth both of who held Mines Managers Certificates and had experience of managing mines. A third pit was started and an old boiler with the ends removed was brought in to act as tubbing. Cowdenbeath is built on the rise and fall of the coal industry - but there was industry in the town prior to 1890. The Mynheer Seam was 5 feet 10 inches thick near the burst and was directly overlaid by a blaes or shale roof. [9] The Central Works, Cowdenbeath, (commonly referred to as "The Workshops") were built in 1924 by the Fife Coal Company Limited in order to centralise its supervisory staff and to cope with the greater amount of manufacturing and maintenance work caused by the intensive mechanisation programme which was being introduced in its mines. We are a registered Scottish charity founded in 1995 when the Frances Colliery in Dysart closed down. 12 and 15 Pits, which included the district in which the accident occurred, held am undermanger’s certificate. [2] One of the urns found contained fragments of processed Arran pitchstone, indicating the presence of some economic activity & commerce. The older workings to the east were worked many years before from a higher level and had been worked by the stoop and room system. The colliery was in the Parish of Aberdour near the Borough of Cowdenbeath. The school had humble origins, operating out of two rooms in Broad Street School, until it was transferred to the basement of Beath High School on Stenhouse Street. As a preliminary step, two pieces of wire rope parallel to each other, and about 6 feet apart, were stretched across the hole and made fast at the ends. The miners and the drawers worked the cut chain brae and a wheeler named William Forsythe took the hutches from the bottom of the upper heading along the short upper level to David Rattray who ran them singly down the second heading where a bottomer, James Bowman McDonald was stationed. The inclination of the innermost heading was 49 degrees at which rate the outcrop was soon reached. Comparatively little sand and gravel had entered the mine, the inflow was almost entirely soft moss with the consistency of cow dung. “Cowdenbeath” was originally the name of a farm in the parish. The new Fife Mining School was erected at a cost of £22,500, and was opened on 22 March by Mr Ernest Brown, MP, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Mines Department. A rough square about a mile each way, which was known as Moss Morran and consisted of flat moorland which was the home of a few grouse. He coupled the hutches in rakes of six and they were led to the shaft in three stages by horses. The plans of the workings were not in the office at the time of the accident but were in the offices of Messrs. Landale, Frew and Gemmell, mining engineers of Glasgow who surveyed the workings and were adding the results of the last survey which had been completed during the last week. [5], Before 1850, Cowdenbeath was just a collection of farms within the Parish of Beath. The headquarters offices of the Fife Miners’ Association were opened in Victoria Street on 8 October 1910, the first Mine rescue station opened at Cowdenbeath on 4 November 1910 on Stenhouse Street, opposite Beath High School.