The lowest place in Scotland
Readers will be aware of recent stories in the press that Rubislaw Quarry in Aberdeen has been in the news of late, having been placed on the property market at offers over £30,000.
According to Google, the floor of the quarry is 180 feet below sea level.
I expect that some coal or mineral mine shafts may have reached greater depths, but Rubislaw was always open to the elements.
Can any reader tell me if this was the lowest place in Scotland, or U.K. even, when in use?
John Fiddes,
Inverness. thetilt26@ukonline.co.uk
Mark Chalmers explains: Rubislaw Quarry’s sump definitely was not the lowest place in Britain: I think that honour goes to the pit bottom of the Boulby Potash Mine in Cleveland, the deepest mine of any sort in the UK.
I have not been there (yet) but I did visit Harworth Colliery at the end of last year – www.scottisharchitecture.com/blog/read/495 – and went 3,218 feet under the surface. It is the deepest of the remaining coal mines in the UK.
In terms of unenclosed places, as far as I am aware a couple of Welsh slate quarries have holes which are deeper than Rubislaw’s. One is called Dorothea Quarry: the water there is 492 ft deep, as opposed to approximately 394 ft at Rubislaw; Dorothea closed in 1970/1, virtually at the same time as Rubislaw.
See www.topforge.co.uk/Photographs/Indust