Hilderston Silver Mines also known as King Jamie’s Silver Mines

Between The Knock and Cairnpapple area, the Hilderston Silvermine area was successfully mined for silver in 1606 (albeit not for long time, see story below!).

It is believed that silver from this mine was used in the manufacture of the Scottish Crown Jewels in the beginning of 1600s.

There was mining in the same spot in the 18th century for lead and zinc but this was abandoned in 1722. And an attempt in the 1870s to find nickel ore that was also abandoned.

In 18th and early 19th centuries, a series of quarries were developed, following the outcrop of the Petershill limestone along the southern face of the Bathgate hills. Kilns were built in which the quarried limestone was mixed with local coal then burned to produce lime; an important fertilizer in an age of agricultural improvements.

Silvermine & Lime works are marked on the map below:

Harry Cartmill shares the story of the Silver Mines

Statement of National Importance

This monument is of national importance as a rare example of an early 17th-century silver mine which has strong links to the Scottish Royal Family and has the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of early mining of precious metals in Scotland.

The story of King Jamie’s Silvermine at Hilderston, Bathgate Hills

The following wording is lifted from Konect

When a local collier found some unusual stones at Hilderston, near Cairnpapple in the Bathgate Hills, in 1606, he couldn’t have imagined the stir in London his discovery would cause – and the personal embarrassment of King James VI himself. The find was attributed to a collier called Sandy Maund, by another prospector Stephen Atkinson.

He took a sample of what he suspected to be silver ore to a well-known metallurgist and mining engineer in Leadhills, Sir Bevis Bulmer. Bulmer was very excited; the silver potential was so promising that the landowner, Sir Thomas Hamilton, went ahead in early 1607 and took a mining lease for Hilderston from King James VI. In fact he took a lease for all mineral rights in the area, including Ballencrieff, Bathgate, Drumcross, Tartraven and Torphichen, and the king, with whom he was on friendly terms, made him “Master of the Metals and Minerals whatsoever within His Highness’s Kingdom of Scotland.”

Hamilton and Bulmer started exploiting the silver at Hilderston straight away. They were presumably smelting on site; we have no details of the process, except that an old map of area shows a smelter house and furnace at the mines.

The Bathgate discovery caused a lot of excitement in London. Four years previously, shortly after his coronation in 1603 uniting the crowns of England and Scotland, James VI had expressed concern about the depletion of England’s silver mines, and had already discussed new prospecting projects with Sir Bulmer. Scotland had previously relied on English mines for silver; perhaps James was keen to prove what his native kingdom could contribute. Robert Cecil (Lord Salisbury) described the silver as “the best token that ever I received out of that kingdom, or any other kingdom of that quality.”

The Crown automatically had rights to a tenth of all metal output and by the end of 1607 the Hilderston mine was reported to the Privy Council as making £500 profit per month. King James sent a commission to investigate and bring back ten tonnes of ore for testing at the Tower of London. Hilderston was described as being “apparently inexhaustible.”

The first large samples of ore on their way to London were lost at sea in December 1607, but by February 1608 ten tonnes had been procured, with Thomas Hamilton’s co-operation, barrelled and taken to the Tower for testing. Initial results were promising and by May 1608 Hilderston was taken over by the Crown and put under the management of Bulmer. (The legality of the takeover was questionable and Hamilton was later paid £60,000 Scots in compensation – a rather good deal for him).

At the time of the Crown takeover, fifty nine men were employed at the mine producing ore from a single shaft which Bulmer had named “God’s Blessing,” because of “the wonderfull works of God, that he had seene, which never before, the like thereunto, within any of his Majesties kingdoms [were] known to be.” Another politician in London, Sir William Boyer, wrote in August 1608 that the mine “far exseeds annye that euer was in Garmanie.” In October 1608, the King imported miners from Germany and later from England. At least six further shafts were sunk.

In expectation of the large quantities of rich ore, a processing plant was constructed at Linlithgow and a significant amount of money committed. (The exact location of the plant in Linlithgow has been lost). The finishing touches were made to the smelting mill in March 1609 – a boy was sent from Linlithgow to the mines at Hilderston to order metal to be brought to the mill, and wine, ale and bread was laid on for the “meltars and workmen at the Melting Mill, the first day they began to melt.”

In the meantime, trials in England on the sample ore were still on-going. The problem was they were returning different results for the yield of silver.

Very thorough testing using different methods by different experts indicated by December 1608 that things were not all as they had initially seemed. The ore was of variable quality. One trial reported: “Until the same redd-mettle came unto 12 faddomes (18m) deepe, it remained still good; from thence unto 30 fathome (55m) deepe it proved nought.” In August 1609 a further 400 barrels of ore were taken from Hilderston to London.

Reading about all the trials, it’s almost as if they were desperately willing for some good results to justify the nationalisation – which was starting to look rash. It took a long time to accept that the mine was in fact exhausted almost before it started; the best silver had been near the surface, and Hamilton had already taken it.

As an indication of the high profile the Bathgate project had in London, a play called “The Silver Mine” was written and staged at Blackfriars Theatre in 1608, during the time that the mine was under consideration for Crown acquisition. The script of the play has not survived, but it caused a political furore as it included a slanderous representation of the King, his Scottish mine project and all his favourites. Three of the actors were imprisoned; the author fled. James was furious and banned any other plays dealing with contemporary events.

The accounts from May 1608 onwards demonstrate how unprofitable the nationalised silver mine was. Finally in March 1613 the Crown gave up. It was let to a private firm, and abandoned shortly afterwards.

There was some mining in the same spot in the 18th century for lead and zinc. And an attempt in the 1870s to find nickel ore, but no metals of value were found and it was abandoned.

Today, you can see three depressions in the ground near the road which are remains of the 18th century shafts, and the ruins of a building which was associated with the silver mine.

It’s a very quiet spot near Cairnpapple, and you can enjoy walking around the site and imagining the industry and excitement here, 400 years ago.

Historic Maps of the Area

From an archaeological perspective one of the most useful documents about the overground and underground remains at Hilderston is undoubtedly the plan of the site, titled “plan of the Works of the silver Mines of Hilderstoun and Tartraven“ prepared by the surveyor Joseph Udny, dated 14th July 1772 and held in the archives of the Hopetoun Estates. This date evidently marks the end of late 18th Century mining activities started in 1766.

Enjoy a few photographs

Location

Park in the lay-by for Cairnpapple at the top of the hill (NS 989 718). Immediately west of the road, the quartz-dolerite sill of localities 3 and 6 crops out forming a good N-S feature some 40 m wide. The sill dips steeply to the cast as at The Knock, and is really a dyke-like step between levels of sill. A diversion may be made at this point to the burial mound of Cairnpapple Hill. 250 m to the south-west, which is also a good viewpoint.

Follow the sill/dyke southwards into the valley to the ruins of Windywa’s which are on the site of the original 17th century Hilderston silver mine (Cadell 1925. 359-378; Stephenson 1983).

Three depressions close to the road at Windywa’s mark the site of the main group of 17th century shafts. A large mound in the field east of the road marks the main 18th century shaft on the northern lead vein. The 1873 shaft is probably marked by a pile of debris, crescentic in plan, south of the burn and 35 m east of the road. Two adits in the west wall of the flooded Silvermines quarry mark two branches of the northern lead vein, probably excavated in the 19th century. If the water level is low, these adits can be examined. Do not attempt to enter them. Thin calcite veins with galena can be seen cutting the sandstone roof of the northernmost one.

The Petershill Limestone is no longer visible in the quarries, but the overlying clastic sediments can be examined in the cut to the south. Here an upward-coarsening sequence of clastic sediments can be seen with mudstone at the base of the quarry, gradually passing upwards to sandstone at the top. Fallen sandstone blocks at the foot of the quarry show good examples of trace fossils, both burrows and feeding trails. This type of upward-coarsening succession is typical of that associated with deltaic sedimentation. A thin N-S tholeiite dyke in the west wall of the southern quarry is altered to ‘white trap’ at its northern end.

Minerals Found

The full list of known minerals from the mine is: baryte, calcite. Dolomite, quartz, galena, sphalerite, niccolite, erythrite (nickel bloom), annabergite (cobalt bloom), bravoite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, albertite (solid hydrocarbon) and native silver. Most of these, with the exception of the nickel. cobalt and silver minerals, have been obtained recently from the waste heaps.

The materials evidence such as ore and metallurgical waste from mining and smelting respectively has been scarce and when available, at best inconclusive. Silver occurs in its native state at Hilderston in an unusual and quite rare type of mineralization with arsenic and nickel. Silver is more commonly produced as a by-product of lead (galena, PbS) ore.  Evidence for smelting must centre around the site of the Furnace which lies currently at the edge of a ploughed field. A 1 mm silver platelet with small fragments of translucent phase is most certainly the relict of silver processing. Although the shape of the platelet suggests that it may have been a cutting perhaps generated by the type of shears illustrated in Agricola, the presence of lead (oxide?) “trapped” within the platelet implies cupellation with the peculiar shape resulting from liquid immiscibility. This is the only evidence so far for this type of activity at Hilderston.

Metal exploration should always be seen in the political and historical context of its time, of the people behind the ventures and of the events that justified their actions. In Scotland, the Union of the Crowns had just taken place (in 1603) and James VI of Scotland became King James I of England and VI of Scotland. In the popular mind King James’s reputation has rested on greed, the Scottish King who turned his back on his native land once he tasted the finery and intellectually stimulating high life of the London court. Yet “few sovereigns have equalled his literary output and no other prince ever carried to the English throne as extensive a knowledge derived from reading and study”. King James gave his wholehearted support to “projects”, through the granting of patents and monopolies to individuals, usually over-confident adventurers who were willing to undertake risky enterprises.