IN November 1948 the Bulletin sent a photographer and a reporter to Blantyre’s Priory Pit, after learning of a move by the National Coal Board’s Scottish division. In effect, “wives of young miners in Lanarkshire are to be guaranteed a modern home by the NCB - provided their husbands agree to ‘emigrate’ to collieries in Fife, Lothian and Ayrshire.”

The gesture was designed to encourage a flow of manpower from uneconomic pits in Lanarkshire to “rich new coalfields”on the east. The offer included lodging and settling-in allowances, free travel vouchers and free removal of furniture. At Blantyre, a NCB official said it was inevitable that some exhausted Clyde Valley pits would shut.

One Priory miner talked about coming home each lunchtime to what he called his “daily miracle” - a hot, three-course meal that his wife had prepared on a coal fire. This family’s modest “but and ben”had no bath, and no gas supply, By contrast, the Bulletin spoke to one miner’s family who were living in Danderhall, near Dalkeith. This family’s new home was a four-room-and-kitchen, steel-framed property with all mod cons; the kitchen was fully equipped.

An idea of the fate of mining in Blantyre comes from the Blantyre Project, which says that there were signs by the 1930s that the local industry was in decline, with pits becoming exhausted. The 1950s witnessed a number of closures in Blantyre. The last to close, in the early 1960s, was the Priory Pit.