Coal Mining
Opencast coal mining is now one of the main employers. The Knockshinnoch Disaster Memorial in New Cumnock is dedicated to the 13 people who died in that event; the miners who survived and the rescuers who were sent to save others. The Scottish Wildlife Trust took over the Knockshinnoch Bing, turning into a wetland reserve with paths.
Read more about this topic: New Cumnock
Famous quotes containing the words coal and/or mining:
“In those days, the blag slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of our hill. Not enough to mar the countryside nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers between the green.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)