Video Archive

A reading from one of the 2800 books held in the MIners’ Library – Thomas Grierson Gracie: Songs & Rhymes of a Lead Miner; 1921- read by Davie, Tour Guide

A reading from one of the 2800 books held in the Miners’ Library – – Mahmut: Letters writ by a Turkish Spy’, 1748

John has previously published two collections of photographs capturing images of local landscapes and the people who work there. The focus of his recent work has been on the people of Wanlockhead and neighbouring Leadhills.

Dead Interesting! A whistle-stop tour of Scottish historic graveyards.
Historic graveyards are full of life: stone libraries brimming with stories and experiences that connect us people, places and times past.

Lead has paid and important part in high-status burials in England since Roman times. In the seventeenth-century, when the landed gentry took advantage of lax faculty jurisdiction to create burial vaults beneath parish churches, the funeral furnishing trade turned to lead as a means of providing sanitation for the dead. At the other end of the social scale the trade also used lead for cheap coffin furniture. Many examples of such from the period 1600-1900 survive, as this talk will illustrate.

A cheerful Anniversary introduction to the Museum of Lead Mining.
From carob seeds to crowns and book bindings. From kibbles to barouches,
toothpaste and canaries. From curling ponds to Madras, Windsor Castle and Paraguay.

Francis Smith: The Canary: Its varieties, management and breeding. 1866 – read by Jackie, Tour Guide 

A taster from the Miners’ Library – – Robert Jameson: A Mineralogical Description of the County of Dumfries, 1805. – read by Judith, Museum Mentor

A taster from the Wanlockhead Miners’ Library – – Georges Louis Leclerc De Buffon, Buffon: Natural History, 1780