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00:00Scotland has some of the most spectacular natural landscape in the world.
00:18Its oldest rocks were formed a staggering 3 billion years ago.
00:25But some of our most interesting geology isn't quite as old as it might seem.
00:30This hill was only created around 1941, that's because it's a bing, made up from the spoils
00:41from Scotland's last shale oil works.
00:48More than a hundred years before oil was discovered in the North Sea, the world's first commercial
00:53oil strike was made here in the flatlands between Scotland's two largest cities.
01:00It signalled the start of an oil boom that would transform this landscape.
01:08Workers flooded in and towns sprung up overnight.
01:12Fortunes were made and lives were lost.
01:15And all in the name of this, oil shale.
01:22This is a tale of the rise and fall of the world's first oil industry.
01:27The forgotten story of Scotland's first oil rush.
01:30As a geologist, I've seen some fascinating places.
01:46But nothing quite like this.
01:52What a crazy landscape.
01:54It just looks like you're, I don't know, in a Star Trek set.
02:01This is Albin Bing, near Broxburn.
02:06At one time this was part of a massive oil works.
02:09And to understand what's going on here, you have to look very closely.
02:13Oh, this is great.
02:20Just a slice through the bing.
02:22You can look at what we call the stratigraphy, the layers of strata inside, except that these
02:27are made of fragments of shale that have been processed, the oil's been taken out.
02:33And then it's been just dumped behind, so you've got these layers that would have continued
02:38up above our head.
02:41What we're seeing here is the geological evidence of a century of intensive shale mining.
02:47Not to be confused with modern day shale gas and its controversies, oil shale was blasted
02:53with explosives, then dug out of the ground by hand.
02:56It was subjected to intense heat before oil could be extracted.
03:03So this is a history, 100, 150 years of man-made geology.
03:14To understand the forces that created all of this, we have to go much further back than
03:19a couple of hundred years.
03:20This may seem like an unlikely place to start my search for oil, but this is Scotland, and
03:42its landscape was never going to give up its treasures easily.
03:45Luckily, my guide is Tina Doyle, known as Tinsy, and she happens to be someone who knows
03:54these woods well.
03:56So how far is it from here?
03:57Just a wee bit around the corner.
03:59It's not far now.
04:03See, the rock layers are amazing here.
04:06As a geologist, you can never stop.
04:17This is shale before oil is extracted.
04:21Look at that.
04:21I always try and look to see if you get fossils.
04:23Sometimes you get fossil fish and things like that.
04:25Yeah.
04:25These layers, the little layers of mud.
04:27And inside, it's all the organics.
04:31And then in these little thin, what we call laminations, oil.
04:37350 million years ago, this part of Scotland was a vast lagoon surrounded by tropical forests.
04:45The mud that settled at the bottom of this lagoon was rich in dead plants and animals that
04:50over time decomposed to form carriage and bearing oil shell.
04:57Lying at depths of up to 2,500 feet, these mineral-rich seams were to be found in a band
05:03stretching south from the Firth of Forth, an area of 75 square miles, covering a large
05:09swathe of what's now known as West Lothian.
05:13But its value wasn't discovered until the mid-19th century.
05:18Tinsy's taking me to one of the earliest known shale mines.
05:24How did you find it?
05:25Eh, we used to play in it as a kid, yeah, so.
05:28Oh, really?
05:29Yeah, so.
05:29This was your playground?
05:30It was.
05:31Cool.
05:31What a cool playground.
05:35Is this it?
05:36It is.
05:37It's a sort of black shadow in there.
05:39That's where the entrance is.
05:40Whereabouts?
05:41Just straight ahead.
05:42Is it out there, right in the back?
05:44Yeah.
05:44I can just see a black...
05:45Ah, that's where the entrance is.
05:46A sort of dark hole.
05:47It may not look much, but this is all that's left of one of the first shale mines in Scotland.
05:57Oak Bank Mine, in its neighbouring oil works, opened in the 1860s.
06:01Back then, this would have been a hive of activity.
06:05I'd never have spoiled that.
06:07It's quite hidden.
06:08It is, isn't it?
06:09You actually go in there?
06:10Yeah, inside.
06:11We've come here in the middle of winter, and with the river this high, there's no way
06:15we can get any closer today.
06:17Teensy is one of a growing band of urban explorers.
06:22People who are drawn to forgotten and abandoned spaces.
06:25For her, this was a passion which began with the disused mines around our hometown.
06:34So what got you into this in the first place, wanting to go into places like that?
06:38Well, my great-granda used to be a miner.
06:40Right.
06:41So you're kind of fascinated by the mines then?
06:43I'm sort of fascinated by anything underground, eh?
06:46You've been born in the wrong generation.
06:48I know, I have.
06:49I wish I could go back in time later.
06:59Fortunately, along with her rope, safety meter and torch,
07:03Teensy also takes her camera on these excursions into the underworld.
07:09And her footage provides a rare glimpse into a forgotten past.
07:16It's a queer feeling.
07:22Realising it, how far down you're under the ground.
07:29Oh, you're down below, you're down in the bowels of the earth.
07:36That's all I can say.
07:38You're in the bowels of the earth for sale.
07:41If you went away from the pit bottom into the darkness, you couldn't see your finger.
07:49It's pitch black.
07:55You'd never get darkness like anywhere in the world than down a mine.
07:59It was so pitch black, you couldn't see anything.
08:01It's wrecked at least 150 mines like this were sunk into Scotland's shale fields.
08:14And it transformed the landscape.
08:16I want to find out how a rural agricultural society suddenly changed
08:29into one at the forefront of global industrial innovation.
08:32In the early part of the 19th century, Scotland had some of the leading scholars and thinkers of the time.
08:42It seemed that anything was possible.
08:47The Victorians had this unshakable belief in the power of progress.
08:50Now, they believed that men of science and industry could change the world through invention and hard graft.
08:57One of those men was the son of a carpenter who would go on to become the world's first oil man, James Young.
09:07Young was one of a new breed of inventor entrepreneurs.
09:10Born and raised in Glasgow, he quit school early to work with his father
09:15and got his first taste of academia while fitting windows at what's now Strathclyde University.
09:21Six years later, he was teaching chemistry at University College London.
09:27He wasn't just driven by scientific curiosity.
09:30He was a practical and principled man and he wanted to leave his mark on the world.
09:38In 1850, Young's attention was drawn to an interesting discovery made here.
09:43Bog-headed state, one mile south of Bathgate.
09:49Home to a mysterious mineral known as torbenite.
09:56This is a piece of torbenite and geologically, it's a complicated little beast.
10:00It's a halfway house between coal and oil shells.
10:03So like coal, it's light and it's just packed full of organic material, something like 90% carbon.
10:09But you don't get the black stuff coming off.
10:12And in terms of its appearance and its texture, it's essentially an oil shell.
10:19When this rock was first discovered here,
10:21amongst the small coal mines dotted around the Boghead estate,
10:24it caused great excitement.
10:26I've come to meet farmer David Darling,
10:30whose family have worked this land since the middle of the 19th century.
10:35If I was here 150 years ago, what would I have seen?
10:38Hundreds of small mine workings.
10:41All over this area?
10:42All over.
10:43Digging away to power the start of the Industrial Revolution, really.
10:47So how did they find the torbenite here?
10:51It was two guys sunk a shaft and as they dug the shaft,
10:56they discovered this black substance that had peculiar properties.
11:00It's a really volatile material, isn't it?
11:02It's very volatile.
11:03You could light it with a match.
11:05It would burn as easily as that.
11:07It was very, very rich in oil.
11:10It was called parrot coal because when you lit it, it squawked like a parrot.
11:14They stockpiled a large quantity and it went in fire.
11:19So as it burned, the oil was running down the road into the Almond River
11:24and it burned for weeks and weeks, according to all accounts anyway.
11:29It would be something to see.
11:30It would be something to see, actually.
11:32These rivers of fire came to the attention of James Young,
11:35who'd already begun experimenting with ways of extracting oil from coal.
11:40He enlisted the help of a talented chemist, Edward Meldrum,
11:46a friend and collaborator.
11:48Here at Meldrum's cottage near Bathgate,
11:52their quest for oil would occupy many late nights.
11:56Meldrum's chemistry lab was at the back of the house
12:01and it was here that he and Young experimented,
12:04trying to turn torbenite into commercial oil.
12:07It wasn't quite like getting blood out of a stone.
12:10It wasn't far off.
12:14My plan is to get the oil from coal by distilling it.
12:19In theory, it was simple.
12:22It had to be mined, ground into smaller pieces
12:26and then heated to a vapour.
12:28Young realised early on that the key to successfully producing oil
12:33would be in the refining.
12:36Using every ounce of his scientific knowledge and patience,
12:39he finally came up with a process he believed could work.
12:44Here's the oil I've got from it.
12:49Real mineral oil.
12:53Putting his theory into practice required planning and a huge investment.
12:58When it was first built, Young's refinery was known as the Secret Works.
13:03It was surrounded by high stone walls.
13:05Its heavy wooden gates were constantly guarded
13:08and all workers were sworn to secrecy.
13:12I think it must have been very strange for the local residents.
13:16There were very few factories in the area at that time.
13:19Most people still worked in agriculture
13:21or Bathgate was very much a weaving village.
13:23So nothing like that would have been seen before.
13:26It apparently had very high palisade or paling round about it
13:29so you really couldn't see what was going on inside.
13:32The workers only knew their own bit of the job
13:35so they didn't have an overall idea of what was being done there.
13:38Central to the whole operation was a cast iron chamber called a retort.
13:44The torbonite was crushed by heavy steel rollers
13:51and tipped into a hopper at the top of the retort.
13:56It was then subjected to an intense but controlled heat for up to 24 hours.
14:06This released the oil vapour from the shale.
14:10This vapour was drawn off and transferred into huge stacks of iron pipes.
14:15Here it was cooled and condensed into thick black crude oil.
14:20Young's true genius lay in the perfection of the refining process.
14:25By repeated distillation,
14:27he discovered he was able to separate this crude oil into different products.
14:33At first the market for his oil was as lubricating oil
14:37but he began to realise as he refined the processes
14:40that he had a very good lighting oil.
14:43Lamps at that time worked on whale oil
14:47which apparently was quite dirty, it was smelly
14:50and it had a very sad tendency to burst into flames
14:53and it was quite dangerous.
14:55A lot of deaths were caused in that way.
14:57Young's oil came onto the market at exactly the right time.
15:01British Empire was expanding, industrial activity was increasing
15:05and people were crying out for safe, affordable light.
15:09Young knew that providing that
15:11would be the key to growing the business.
15:17Young, in another one of his flashes of inspiration,
15:20realised that if this light oil could be refined to a certain degree
15:25and if the right sort of oil lamp was there available
15:28then he had this cheap or relatively cheap fuel for paraffin lamps
15:33and there would be a whole new domestic market for that product.
15:39He produced this lighting oil that was clean and safe
15:42and didn't have too bad a smell
15:44and he then had to produce a market for this new product.
15:47So he set up a very large lamp factory
15:50and he marketed these lamps in a quite modern way really
15:54in a very intensive way.
15:59You buy our lamp and you buy our fuel for it.
16:03He created a market for the product that he had already produced.
16:08So a very modern and astute businessman I think.
16:13Young's lamps were bright, safe and easy to use
16:15and they changed the way that people set up their homes.
16:19Chairs were arranged to take advantage of the light
16:22and that brought families closer together.
16:25It also made James Young and his partners very wealthy men.
16:39Young's high growth, high profits business
16:41enabled him to buy this place.
16:43Limefield House near Paul Beth.
16:51Known to the world as Paraffin Young,
16:53he moved here in 1855
16:55and promptly gave it a Victorian makeover.
16:57Even rekindling his carpentry skills
17:00to build these stairs.
17:04A devout Presbyterian,
17:05he wasn't given to elaborate displays of wealth.
17:08But he did allow himself the odd extravagance.
17:16This is a mini-replica of the Victoria Falls
17:18which he built to commemorate his lifelong friendship
17:20with David Livingstone.
17:24Now, by the standards of today's oil oligarchs,
17:26these are pretty restrained gestures,
17:28but Young's fortune was vast
17:30and he was determined to keep it that way.
17:35He did everything in his power
17:36to protect his discoveries and his profits,
17:39taking out more than 45 patents.
17:42But there was one thing that Young had no control over
17:46and that was a finite supply of natural resources.
17:49His torbonite was running out.
17:52But rather than this being the end of the industry,
17:54Scotland's oil boom was just about to start.
18:00They may have exhausted the torbonite seam,
18:02but beneath West Lothian soil,
18:04another type of rock had been discovered
18:06that also produced oil.
18:12It would become known as oil shale
18:14and across a swathe of fields and moors
18:17there were seemingly untold reserves.
18:24Young wasn't alone in realising
18:26the potential of shale.
18:28In the 1860s, an enterprising mine owner
18:31by the name of Robert Bell got in on the act.
18:37He bought some land to mine,
18:39built a refinery,
18:41turned Broxburn into Scotland's first boom town.
18:54Within a short space of time,
18:56there was an astonishing 650 retorts,
18:59producing 10,000 gallons of crude oil per day.
19:08Must have been like the Klondike back then.
19:10All those mines and works just popping up overnight
19:13and all that noise, the smells, the clamour.
19:19Workmen poured in daily,
19:21transforming this rural village
19:23into what became known as Shaleopolis.
19:26It all happened very, very quickly
19:28and there were accounts of sort of half-built cottages
19:31and muddy roads and odd-shaped works
19:36with big flares and flames coming out
19:38and holes in the ground all over the place
19:40where the shale was mined.
19:42So it must have been really sort of lively
19:44and interesting place in the early days.
19:46The word was out.
19:49There was money to be made in shale.
19:52The map of West Lothian changed dramatically
19:54during the second part of the 19th century.
19:57Mines, refineries and oil works
19:59began emerging all over the landscape.
20:02And of course, those massive shale bings
20:04started to appear on the horizon.
20:06It's majestic, isn't it?
20:08Our very own ears rock.
20:11This picture shows how quickly things change
20:15for the people here.
20:16Shortly after it was taken,
20:19this farm was buried under the advancing mountain
20:22of shale looming behind it.
20:24Within a decade, Scotland was producing
20:27over 20 million gallons of crude oil a year,
20:30even exporting to mainland Europe and Scandinavia.
20:40Nowhere were these incredible changes
20:42more apparent than in Addywell.
20:44Here, the world's biggest oil refinery
20:47was built in 1865.
20:49And to find out how quickly rural villages
20:51like this were transformed,
20:53I've come to meet retired schoolmaster John Watts.
20:56When the work started,
20:59they were looking for a whole lot of workers.
21:01And so there were a high proportion of single men
21:04came to the village.
21:06There was a shortage of beds as well.
21:08So what they did apparently was,
21:11when the day shift men left for work,
21:14the night shift men took their beds.
21:16Did they swap around?
21:17Did a kind of swap around, yes, exactly.
21:21In shale towns, the company built and owned the houses.
21:25They were hastily constructed
21:27and the majority weren't built to last.
21:32We're in Graham Street.
21:34It looks pretty empty,
21:35but in fact it would have been full of people.
21:37So it's kind of a new town?
21:39Totally new town.
21:40Grew from 23 soles right up to 1300 in the space of six years.
21:45They were a rows of single-storey houses,
21:48just one room each.
21:49They say that the man of the house could light his pipe off the fire
21:53without even moving from the bed.
21:55Just stretch it.
21:56Just stretch, aye.
21:57It did grow tremendously fast.
22:00The priority, of course, was to get the oilworks built
22:03and the mines sunk and housing came a poor second
22:06and any social facilities a very poor third.
22:09So for a long time the population must have been living
22:12in very, very poor conditions.
22:17As demand for Scottish oil increased,
22:19so did the need for workers
22:21and thousands arrived from across the Irish Sea.
22:24Tara Dolan's grandfather was one of them.
22:27We went from pit to pit, trying to get better wages.
22:31So their first child was born in Tobracks,
22:34but their next child was born in Livingstone,
22:39Bathgate, Deckmont, Addywell, before they moved to Newbury.
22:44My granny said her stuff was never off the cart.
22:47She'd no sooner got her house the way she wanted it,
22:50and then she'd have to move again.
22:52The Irish weren't always popular at that time
22:56because coming from extreme poverty in Ireland,
22:59they would find the wages in the shale industry very generous,
23:03so they would be willing to work for a penny or two a day
23:07cheaper than the local workforce,
23:10and that, of course, was undercutting wages
23:12and made them quite unpopular at first.
23:15In Addywell, the new immigrants settled in such huge numbers
23:18that it quickly became known as Little Ireland.
23:22This village got a priest of their own.
23:25Right.
23:26And when he first came, he had nowhere to live,
23:29no church, no nothing.
23:31And so, eventually, they got their own church over there?
23:34Yes, yes.
23:35It took them a long time, and they got their own church.
23:38If you look towards the church there, you'll see the land dips.
23:41Yeah.
23:42But at first, originally, it dipped a lot more,
23:46and it was all waterlogged,
23:48and the authorities actually said,
23:50you cannot build there, we will not allow it.
23:53So there was a real problem.
23:55Father Kenny gathered the men and said,
23:57can we help?
23:58Can we do something?
23:59And what they did was, after their work,
24:03every day, they would come with wheelbarrows,
24:07and they would gather spent shale off the wing
24:10and bring it down and dump it.
24:12To build it up?
24:13Gradually raise up the level.
24:15And Father Kenny reckoned that they shifted
24:18100,000 barrow lords to do it.
24:21After a full day's work?
24:22After a full day's work.
24:23And you know, you could in a kind of sense say,
24:27this parish was built on shale.
24:30Yeah.
24:31That's a lovely story.
24:44Shale didn't just change the landscape,
24:46it changed the way people earned a living.
24:48And although the scientists had found a way to extract oil from rock,
24:52those rocks still had to be dug out of the ground by hand.
24:56It took one tonne of shale to produce 25 gallons of oil,
25:00and it was down to the miners to keep the retorts fed.
25:03I was a miner's drawer, I was drawing to my father.
25:14He shoveled the shale into the hutches
25:16and got it sent up to the surface.
25:19We would fill 18 hutches a day between two of us,
25:26so that would be like 18 tonnes.
25:29Shale miners were paid by the amount of shale in a hutch,
25:38rather than the dirt.
25:39So the shale inspector would go and look at the hutch
25:42and decide, was it 50% shale or 90% shale?
25:47And therefore that was a key position
25:51for deciding what the wages were.
25:54If they were behind, we were getting held up,
25:57we were getting their hutches filled,
25:58for any unknown reason,
25:59I used to hang the piece on a string,
26:02and take a bite at us,
26:03it would be backwards and forwards the hutches.
26:04There was a lot of miners that did that.
26:06It was a competitive environment.
26:11The men would vie amongst themselves
26:13to produce the most shale and to be the strongest.
26:17So when you look at the pitch with just the muscles on them,
26:21you'd have to be down in the gym doing a lot of work nowadays
26:25to look anything like that.
26:27I think they were very proud of the fact
26:29that they could produce so much shale.
26:32I brought this along for us.
26:43I mean this thing here is a hefty weight.
26:45Eddie Maclean and Bert Carroll are retired shale miners
26:49and I'm joining them in the local pub
26:51to get a better idea of what life was really like underground.
26:54How much of that would you be shifting in a session?
26:58Well, I'd say we've gone on...
27:01Well, we were doing maybe 20 hutches.
27:03So how much were we going on a hutch?
27:05A tonne. A tonne?
27:07A tonne. OK.
27:08So he was cutting the stuff down and your job was what?
27:11To put it in the hutches.
27:13You work as a team, if you know what I mean.
27:16Everybody's doing what they can to get the money out of the pit.
27:20The shale had to be brought down with explosions.
27:23And it was the faceman's job to set the charges.
27:26You had to drill your holes.
27:28Yeah.
27:29To do the blasting.
27:30Right.
27:31And then you had to put the fuse in.
27:33The explosives went into these holes in the face.
27:35The explosives went into these holes in the face.
27:36And then you just walked away and shouted,
27:38Fire!
27:39Right.
27:40Hoping nobody would have heard it.
27:46Black powder was just set off by putting a strum into it.
27:53You'd seen it on the old cowboy films where they light it and goes psssss and fizzles along.
28:04Because that must have been the dangerous bit.
28:09Just once you'd blasted and there was bits hanging off the roof.
28:12And things like blocks like this are heavy enough.
28:15And did you think it was a dangerous job when you were doing it?
28:18Well it was a dangerous job.
28:19You would get the pick and do that to the roof.
28:25It was boom.
28:26You knew that had to come away.
28:27Right.
28:28Or it would come down sometime.
28:30The most common injuries in mines were collapses of the roof when a great lump of shale would come off.
28:39And because the seams were higher than in coal, the shale had further to fall.
28:43And therefore the injuries might be correspondingly greater or fatal.
28:47The shots went off.
28:51The place would be full of smoke and dust.
28:54You had to sometimes take your light off your helmet and shine it on the rails to find your way back in.
29:00And you started straight away among the dust and the smoke.
29:04There was no wait till it cleared.
29:06The roof all came in.
29:09And that's when they got smashed up.
29:11And what I can always mind, when they were getting me out, something else came from the roof.
29:20And me, I didn't like it when they were getting me out, it hit me and they splat my head on.
29:28So that was my luck out that day.
29:32This technique of blasting through the rock changed little over the years.
29:35And many men lost their lives.
29:38The shots had been fired.
29:39We were getting ready to go in and start filling.
29:44And one of the lads didn't appear.
29:49And we looked round to see where he was.
29:52And all we saw was a slab that had come out the roof and landed on top of him.
29:57So that was him.
29:59The worst shale mining disaster happened in January 1947 at Burn Grange Pit in West Calder.
30:10It was a bitterly cold Friday evening when the sirens sounded.
30:14It was a terrible turn.
30:17It cast a gloom over everybody.
30:23Gene Sherlock's father was John Steen, a mining agent for the oil company.
30:28And Burn Grange was one of the pits he was responsible for when the alarm was raised.
30:35He went into the Regal cinema and went onto the stage and announced that there had been a very bad accident at Burn Grange.
30:48The lights came on, screen dimmed and the manager came onto the stage and said could anybody's rescues please go to Burn Grange as there had been an explosion.
31:03The picture house was empty because everybody knew somebody that worked in Burn Grange.
31:10It quickly became clear how serious the situation was.
31:15A large number of men had been trapped by a roof collapse.
31:20For three days rescuers fought through flames and fallen rock to reach the miners.
31:26When the dust cleared, 15 were dead.
31:30Two of those who perished were the uncles of Bert Caro.
31:37So what age were you back then?
31:39I was a five-year-old coming on sex at that time.
31:44So you remember, I mean pretty young, you remember it all right?
31:47Well I remember the siren going off.
31:53An investigation into the accident determined that all but one of the men had died due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
31:59This map produced at the inquiry detailed the last moments of the men's lives.
32:06And you get the forensic detail, like the jacket on the D Muir, the peace box and the flask, the prop screen, some drills, some haversacks, all like a paraphernalia of the drill and just recording.
32:22Aye, my uncle Davey's jacket.
32:26It's got here, this is a site of ignition here.
32:30Yeah.
32:31So I guess a blast was here.
32:33Yeah.
32:34And then fires moving upwards.
32:36Aye, it must have.
32:37And my uncle Davey, that was some, he was found here.
32:40Where his body was found?
32:41That's right.
32:42That's right.
32:43He left five of our family.
32:44And my uncle Wally, he left two of our family.
32:48And they were all, well, young.
32:50Very.
32:51Young.
32:52God.
32:53Behind each of these names was a family left without a son, brother or father.
33:02And as this close-knit community mourned its loss, there were stories of men like William Ritchie, who died that night only because he swapped shifts with his brother, whose wife had just given birth to son George.
33:16My father was on the back shift, so my mother turned very ill and his brother had said to him, I'll do your shift and you can do one for me later on because my mother was very ill.
33:36So that's what happened.
33:38And of course, you know, he perished in the disaster.
33:42That saved my father's life.
33:45You know what I mean?
33:46Unfortunately, it was the cost of my uncle's life.
33:50Oody and new bonnie laddie,
33:55Oody are wished and gone to sleep.
34:00Daddy slumbers amongst the shield here.
34:05Lee has buried him so deep.
34:10What was the feeling that was left behind in that community?
34:15Devastation. Devastation.
34:20My granny losing her two sons after losing her husband through an accident in the shield pit as well, you know.
34:31The Black Isles and the Borders
34:32T'was centuries ago, they laboured round the caulders, above Grund and Ablow, and there was no idle bread.
34:52Oh, their faithers they were bastards, and their grandfathers they say.
34:58But every man, a mason grand, no godless Irish they, oh no.
35:05But I still remember them.
35:08Author and poet Alistair Findlay is the son of a shale miner.
35:15His father spent the first 20 years of his adult life working in the mines around Winchborough.
35:20I was brought up in a housing scheme in Bathgate, but my parents and my grandparents who lived with us spent all their time talking about Winchborough.
35:30It was about the Winchborough neighbours rather than the neighbours that we actually had.
35:35So it was this kind of folklore almost, you know.
35:39Raised on stories of the shale mines and its people, Alistair began researching the subject, when by chance he stumbled on rare recordings of early shale miners recounting their experiences.
35:53I discovered this treasure trove.
35:55Tapes interviewing about 80 old shale miners and their wives.
36:00So I managed to get my hands on that.
36:02And all the kind of old language, you know, that I'd been brought up with, kind of just came suddenly back to me.
36:09And I could see there was a lot of social history.
36:13And then, can mind me some of the folk that used to be in the tree,
36:18there was the Mallons, Devlins and the Quinns, the McEwans and the Plins,
36:24the Nicholls and the Whitticks, the Newtons, Ryders and the Burns.
36:29As he sifted through these recordings, Alistair found not only the tales of hardship,
36:35but also songs, poems and tales of a disappearing world.
36:39The Donahue's, there were the Johnson's, Andersen's and Twiggy's,
36:44the Donahue's, Cannons and Barnes.
36:47The stories about mining communities, about the masculinity and the hardship,
36:53are not untrue, but they're not the whole story.
36:57And in a way, I was trying to get the other side of the story, the cultural side.
37:02They shut down the old old works, aye, and they shut down o' the mines.
37:08They brought money a body's hurt, with a changing o' the times.
37:14So, in many ways, I was writing about the folk memory of the shale mining community.
37:21I wanted to emphasise the poetry and the song side of that community.
37:26For the people of the shale towns of West Lothian, the gala day was when the workers downed tools and had some fun.
37:44In the early years, it was their only annual holiday.
37:47I think there was a huge sense of community in the shale industry and the works and the houses which were owned by the companies.
38:02All were part of one big machine, if you like.
38:07Certainly, there were a lot of rules and regulations determining how people lived and how they played as well in some circumstances.
38:17At one time, almost every shale community had its own band.
38:24And even though the mines are gone, the tradition continues here in Broxburn.
38:29Today, they're known as the Broxburn and Livingstone Brass Band, and two of the longest-serving members are Alec Chambers and Jim Ferguson.
38:48It started in 1892. The works managers supplied the instruments.
38:54The shale miners used to pay a penny a week for us, for the band, of their wages.
39:02It's a family band. My dad is right in the middle, my uncle on the right, my brother, and, of course, me in there.
39:11The band, all that connects to the shale?
39:14Downy. He actually worked with my dad doing in the shale mine.
39:18This film shows the band leading the Broxburn parade in 1910.
39:27But within a few short years, many of these men would be marching to a different tune.
39:32During the first few months of the First World War, masses of recruiting meetings were held,
39:38and they would often try and have a band there to dispense patriotic music.
39:43And the Broxburn Public Band was used to play music at these recruiting meetings.
39:48And I suppose fired up with their own fervour, the band en masse enlisted into the 2nd, 4th Battalion of the Royal Scots
39:57and became the regimental band of the Royal Scots.
40:02Tom White's grandfather, David, was one of those who enlisted.
40:06It was an adventure, you know?
40:09And they were going to get fed, they were going to get clothed, so on and so forth.
40:13And they were used as a recruiting band.
40:16So they would go round the country looking for volunteers.
40:21The lads, they were only young men, and they probably thought,
40:26well, we've got to give our bit for our country.
40:30As war dragged on, the men swapped their instruments for weapons.
40:34And nobody expected it to last as long as it did.
40:38So they were all dispersed into different regiments.
40:42And quite a number of them never returned.
40:48Among the six band members who perished on the fields of France were three brothers from the same family.
40:58James, Archie and Robert Webster.
41:03The war brought devastation to millions, but for Scottish oil, it was good for business.
41:17Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, converted the British naval fleet to oil and awarded a massive contract to Scotland.
41:29With so many men at the front, the only way to meet the increase in demand was for women to help out.
41:36There was a shortage of workers in the oil works.
41:40And some women were certainly taken on in Broxbourne oil works, and no doubt in most of the others too.
41:46There would be a limit to the sort of work that they could do.
41:48I mean, if it was heavy physical labour, perhaps they weren't so suited for that.
41:52But it's known that women, for example, were emptying the hutches on the top of the bings, and they were doing all sorts of other jobs in the oil works.
42:05When the war ended, the men returned from the trenches to the mines.
42:09But they didn't find a land fit for heroes.
42:12They came back to find their livelihoods under threat.
42:15Crude oil had been discovered in Pennsylvania decades earlier, quickly followed by the Caspian region.
42:23Compared to shale, it was like turning on a tap.
42:27In an attempt to compete, the shale bosses imposed wage cuts.
42:35Workers became more militant, and strikes were frequent.
42:40Industrial action very much affected the women and the families.
42:45Because as soon as the man wasn't working, there was the problem of how on earth they were to feed the family and pay the rent.
42:51There was no financial cushion in those days in mining families.
42:55You depended, you lived week to week on your wage.
42:59So then, in times of industrial strife, actually, the women seemed to come into their own, making ends meet.
43:07The 1920s were a very difficult period for working class families.
43:12It was a great social upheaval, political unrest.
43:17I mean, I remember my aunt, she would have been about six or so, talking about children, being hungry and having no shoes.
43:27There was quite a lot of poverty at the time.
43:30From the midst of this political unrest, emerged a woman from Adiwell, who would become a local legend.
43:37Her name was Sarah Moore.
43:40Known to everyone as Ma Moore, she was a mother of nine, a political campaigner and a poet.
43:46The broken and the maimed came back, to find not peace, but this instead.
43:54The people they loved the best on earth, unclothed, uncared for, unfed.
44:00Not even the right to work and live, not even the right to cry.
44:05Against the fate that life had spread, only the right to die.
44:11She was an ordinary woman in many ways.
44:16She had no particular education.
44:18But she became active, first of all, perhaps in the 1925 shale strike,
44:23which was quite a major strike by the shale miners,
44:28protesting against a proposed 10% cut in their wages.
44:35In those days, poor relief was paid by the parish council.
44:39But in this instance, they refused to help the families of the men on strike.
44:44She was saying, but the women and the children are starving.
44:47You must pay them.
44:48And she made her point and persuaded the parish council
44:52that they did have to relieve that poverty
44:54and prevent the children, basically, from starving.
44:58The following year, her militancy would bring her into direct conflict with the authorities.
45:04During the general strike in 1926, Ma Moore organised a protest.
45:08Here at what was the West Calder Parish Council Office.
45:13During the strike, the council had decreed that the miners weren't eligible for hardship benefits.
45:18So a bunch of miners' wives and children from Addywell came here to protest.
45:23That demonstration was broken up by batten-wielding police.
45:27But the council relented, and the miners got their benefits.
45:33Victories like this would make Ma Moore a hero in the shale villages of West Lothian.
45:38And to this day, she's still revered.
45:40In an attempt to combat the threat from imported oil, the surviving companies pulled resources to form Scottish oils.
45:54They set up their HQ here at Middleton Hall near Broxburn, and the man who took charge was James Bryson.
46:07Bryson lost his father in a mining accident when he was 13, and he had to become self-reliant and inventive.
46:12As a young man, he had designed a retort which could process three times the amount of shale at half the cost.
46:22He knew the only way to survive was by continued innovation.
46:27Scottish oils held ahead of a water by just being able to produce a wider range of products from the oil shale.
46:34They were basically ringing as much as they could out of the rocks beneath them.
46:38Paraffin coke, to make carbons for electric furnaces.
46:44Sulphate of ammonia, an effective fertilizer.
46:48Paraffin wax, to make candles and matches.
46:51To render cloth and paper waterproof.
46:54To insulate electrical apparatus, and to pack foodstuffs.
46:59By further improving the refining process, they developed a product which would be hugely profitable.
47:04They called it motor spirit, and it was used to power the invention of the age.
47:11The internal combustion engine.
47:16Shale companies acted very decisively.
47:22They set up new distribution depots right through Scotland, and they had little horse and carts,
47:28or latterly very early motor tankers, taking this oil out to where it was needed.
47:34So they did respond, and were very innovative in the way that they promoted and publicised their products.
47:42The new strategy seemed to be working, and there was a real sense of optimism here at Scottish Oils.
47:48But it would be short-lived.
47:49These buildings might project an era conference, but it was misplaced.
47:54Things were on the turn.
47:56As well as America, crude oil was now being produced in Russia, Romania, Indonesia, Iran, and South America.
48:04The 1920s weren't going to be easy for the industry.
48:07With the support of the British government, British drilling had begun in the Persian Gulf,
48:18and to process the crude oil, a state-of-the-art refinery was built on the edge of the shale field at Grangemouth.
48:25Tank steamers bring crude petroleum from across the ocean to the new refinery at Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth,
48:32where it is converted into products similar to those obtained from the native shale.
48:36When the British produced oil came in from overseas, from British interests, and started to be refined,
48:44really the whole economics of the shale oil industry was disturbed.
48:48Places like Grangemouth were built with Scottish know-how and technology,
48:54but were soon producing oil from Persian crude at a fraction of the price that it cost
49:00to actually dig it out of the ground in West Lothian.
49:02Shale oil just couldn't compete, and the 20s was a decade marked by closures.
49:10Adewell Refinery was the first to go.
49:13In 1926, the Tarbracks oil works followed.
49:16It was devastating for the town and its 2,000 people.
49:21Workers were evicted from company housing, and then re-employed to demolish their own home.
49:26In 1927, the refinery at Broxburn, the original boom town, also shut down.
49:34Closure happened kind of suddenly as well, so people didn't have time to adjust to it.
49:39People who had good jobs and were proud of the work they were doing suddenly found nothing.
49:44It would be a slow and lingering death.
49:52The industry was kept alive by government subsidies and defence contracts.
49:58And somehow managed to survive a further three decades.
50:06The end finally came in 1962, with the closure of the last oil works at Westwood,
50:15in the shadow of what became known as the Five Sisters Bing.
50:19Nae mair tae hear the hotches timmin' o'er the tips.
50:29Nae mair tae go on the auld high kerts, to our annual trips.
50:35Nae mair tae hear the auld pogs whistle, or the work's horns blows.
50:40Nae mair tae wander up the brae, tae just stand there and pause.
50:45Or linger on the memories, o dear old Nidrae Roze.
51:02The houses, mines and oil works may be gone,
51:05but there's a very visible reminder of this fascinating chapter of Scotland's past
51:10and it's hard to ignore.
51:15The shale bings have their own story to tell, as botanist Barbara Harvey explains.
51:22As we go up here, you'll notice that we've got quite strong shrubs on either side.
51:28Yeah.
51:29It's unusual that they're just appearing in this avenue.
51:33And they're mainly hawthorn, a few rosehip trees.
51:36This is the hawthorn?
51:37This is the hawthorn?
51:38This is the hawthorn, it is.
51:39There's some berries just here.
51:40Oh yeah, look at that.
51:41Yep.
51:42Yeah.
51:43And this is because the guys that worked at the top of the bings
51:47would take a lift on the bogies that were carrying the shale.
51:51That's the trolleys going up, yeah.
51:52As they were going up, they were creating a lift
51:54and they would be eating their pieces as they were going along
51:57and throwing the crusts out if they didn't fancy them.
52:01And birds would come along to eat the crusts
52:04and deposit the seeds on either side.
52:07Ah, so you've got this kind of avenue.
52:09Yes.
52:10So that's a kind of sandwich ecology.
52:11Definitely, yes.
52:13I wonder if the workers didn't get any idea
52:14that throwing away their jelly pieces
52:16they were creating a new ecosystem here.
52:18I doubt it very much.
52:22This is Green Dykes being near Broxburn,
52:24one of the few still intact.
52:27In the 60s, when the oilworks shut down,
52:29there were 27 of them,
52:31containing 200 million tonnes of burnt shale.
52:35Much of that was put to good use.
52:37These great, rosy hills,
52:39the crushed remains of rocks which once provided oil,
52:42are providing a new source of wealth.
52:45Motorways are based on this gravel.
52:47For so long disused and seemingly worthless.
52:50It provides the raw material for bricks to raise homes.
52:54It is an unexpected asset for the new town of Livingstone,
52:57where they're building for a population of 75,000.
53:08In recent times, the Bings have been showing
53:10a bit more appreciation.
53:12In 1995, Green Dykes and the Five Sisters
53:15were declared national monuments by Historic Scotland,
53:18and they have a unique ecology all of their own.
53:24The individual species of grass are completely different up here
53:28from the ones that you see in the countryside round about.
53:32In the summer months, these Bings are in their full glory.
53:37Teeming with wildlife, there's more than 350 different types of plant life,
53:42including a rarely found species of orchid.
53:47The climb up here is rewarded with a stunning view.
53:49This is the climax of it all.
53:51This is it.
53:52What a vista.
53:53Absolutely.
53:54And, I mean, this is on a cold, wet day in January.
53:57Not everyone comes up here to enjoy the scenery.
53:59So they're getting used, they're actively getting used as leisure places.
54:10They're very much actively getting used as leisure.
54:14They may be noisy, but it's good to know this piece of industrial heritage
54:18is as much a part of West Lothian's present as it is its past.
54:22I just think they're really quite beautiful, though.
54:27Yes, I think they're amazing celebrations of the work of the men
54:32that actually built them with their own hands.
54:35And when you talk to some of the older miners,
54:38they're really proud of what they've created.
54:49I like to think of these Bings as man-made volcanoes.
54:51Not just because of their shape, but because the rocks that they're built on
54:55have been thrown up from inside the earth.
55:02Few of the men who spent their working lives
55:04hauling these rocks out of the ground
55:07have seen inside a shale mine since finishing the last shift
55:10more than half a century ago.
55:11For ex-miners Eddie and Bert,
55:19Teensy's exploration of an abandoned mine
55:22is a vivid reminder of those times.
55:24I thought there would have been mere collapse.
55:35Aye.
55:36It's like it's just been abandoned, aye.
55:37It's like it's just been abandoned, aye.
55:40It's like it's just been abandoned, aye.
55:43It's when you see how old it is, it looks desolate.
55:49But I don't think I would like to go down there now.
56:03Brave girl.
56:04One, two, three, four.
56:10One, two, three, four.
56:12MUSIC
56:40The story of Scotland's first oil rush is one of an epic 100-year struggle to exploit our natural wealth.
56:49The breakthroughs made by James Young and those that followed him are still very much the basis for oil production today.
56:57And that expertise has been exported far and wide.
57:03What is most striking is the determination and hard work of the people whose lives depended on shale.
57:10And then, later in years, they started to not doing the old works in the mines.
57:21And that was the beginning and the end to one of the finest communities that I would have known.
57:29Of course, all mining villages were the same.
57:33MUSIC
57:39I spend a bit of time around here.
57:41You quickly realise that Scotland's oil shale story is fading away, being consigned to the history books.
57:47And with the move away from fossil fuels, it's something that's never coming back.
57:51And yet, the ingenuity and the sheer hard graft of those times has helped build more on Scotland.
58:00Those bings, those bings are our pyramids.
58:04We should celebrate them.
58:05You too.
58:13I have to track most of them.
58:20You too.
58:23I have to note that the corruption was in the lavaまで.
58:27You go onto it and just you know the kid has to come up here.
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