Camp Colliery Photograph Album, Motherwell, early 1900s

A rare collection of photographs showing the working conditions in a Motherwell coal mine at the turn of the century.

The photographs - which are helpfully captioned - show miners underground as well as the different processes and safety measures used at the time. The first page is signed Melville B. Craig, who may have been either the photographer or the owner of this album.

Camp Colliery, which was operated by the Camp Coal Company Ltd, had two pits which were located roughly where Airbles Cemetery is now. It first appears in the 1859 Ordnance Survey (Lanarkshire, Sheet XVIII, published 1864). By 1910 there was over 400 employed between the two. It seems to have closed by the 1930s.