11.  COPPER MINE SITE, GLEN OF SORROW

Dollar

NS 945 002

A small 18th century lead and copper mine. A contemporary account indicates it was a project of Edinburgh architect Charles Freebairn and six others in the 1760s. They built a lead smelter but had difficulty separating the mixed ores, so smelting trials were unsuccessful . There remains a weathered waste tip by the stream, a few barely visible ruins including the smelter up a small gully on the south side of the stream, and some slag. The levels and shafts are collapsed or filled up. [Mindat]

The mine is at an altitude of 305 m (National Grid Reference NN 946002) near Dollar, Scotland. It was worked for copper and lead in the eighteenth century until 1795 (Dickie and Forster, 1974) and hand-picked ore was washed and dressed at the site. A spoil heap some 100 m long and 15 m max. width remains. The spoil is, in many places, a distinctive orange colour from a mixture of pink and white barytes, pyrite, chalcopyrite and galena with traces of malachite, azurite, limonite and chrysolla (Francis et al., 1970). The site has a patchy vegetation; much of it is barren, some is sparsely colonized mainly by Agrostis capillaris* and Festuca rubra, in other places there is a more substantial species-rich plant cover. Proctor and Bacon (1978) made a preliminary description of the site and their soil analyses showed that high concentrations of copper, lead and zinc were extractable by acidified ammonium acetate solutions. [Thomson & Proctor]

I was told that I would easily find the mine because of the abundance of Blue stone in the Burn of Sorrow – but by the time I visited no blue stones were left. The Mine was served by at track cut diagonally across the front of Dollar Hill called the “Roman Road” but the link to the Romans was never established. I was informed that the structural outline was in fact the old wheel house used for hauling the bins from the mine to meet the road. The ore was shipped to Falkirk for smelting. The last person down the mine was Ian Cullens (Farmer, Dollarbank), probably in the 60’s. The mine entrance was then boarded up.’ [John Graham]

Ian Cullens also found the Spitfire pilots after 3 spits crashed into Kings Seat during World War II. (See also POI 14)