Rory Walsh hunts for gold in the Lanarkshire hills in the latest instalment of Discovering Britain
View • Rural • Scotland • Web Guide
Sat among the rolling Lowther Hills is a place with unusual claims to fame. Leadhills is Scotland’s second-highest village. It’s home to Scotland’s highest golf course and Britain’s highest adhesion railway, both around 456 metres above sea level. The Leadhills Miners’ Library, founded in 1741, is Britain’s oldest subscription library. A grave in the village churchyard, meanwhile, records that resident John Taylor died aged 137.
Leadhills is also a remarkable geological site. This Lanarkshire village is one of the few spots in Britain where people have found gold. Previously named Waterhead, Leadhills developed through mining. Lead mining was underway in the region from at least the 1100s and became an important industry. Mining activity led to alluvial gold deposits being found during the reign of King James IV (1488–1513).
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In the 16th century, up to 300 men worked to mine Leadhills’ gold. There are accounts of nuggets weighing up to 60 grams. Leadhills gold was used to make the Scottish crown jewels, now on display in Edinburgh Castle. Commercial gold mining ceased by the 1620s, when the most accessible ores had been exhausted. Afterwards, generations of lead miners hunted for it as a hobby.
Besides gold and lead, mazes of underground mine shafts revealed that the heather-topped peaks surrounding Leadhills contain more than 70 minerals. Some are unique to the area, including lanarkite and leadhillite. Their abundance means one of Scotland’s largest rock formations is called the Leadhills Supergroup.
An ancient ocean, earth movements and objects from space shaped the village’s geological diversity. Most of the Earth’s gold is contained within rock ores. Scientists estimate that some of it arrived within meteorites. Around 455 million years ago, the land that became Britain lay at the bottom of the vast Iapetus Ocean. Meteorite particles, including gold, settled on the ocean floor. The Iapetus Ocean spanned several tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust. Where these plates collided, land was pushed upwards into peaks. These periods of orogeny raised the buried gold.
Leadhills’ mines closed in the 1920s. Gold has since been found in sediments lining the nearby river, Shortcleuch Water. Fast-flowing rivers erode soft rocks and soils along their course. At Leadhills, this sometimes reveals glittering traces of gold. Visitors with appropriate licenses can pan the river. The phrase ‘there’s gold in them thar hills’ usually evokes the American West. It also reflects this unique part of southern Scotland.
