THE GRANGE COAL COMPANY 1800-1804

In about 1800 William Symington was appointed as the manager of the Grange Coal Company which was situated on the Firth of Forth, to the east of Bo'ness. [1] [2] He also built a steam engine for the Grange company. William Cadell 1737-1819 of Carron Park was then the lessee of the Grange coal fields. A letter from William Cadell to his brother Alexander, dated 10 August 1800, makes a passing reference to "Mr. Symington's accounts." 

In his 1826 Petition to Treasury, William Symington related that in the summer of 1800 he was making his way to inspect a coalfield when Lord Dundas hailed him from his carriage, seeking to engage him to construct a steam-powered vessel which would tow barges on the canal.  Until 1800, William Symington had managed the coal works on the Kinnaird Estate of the late James Bruce. Cadell was one of the trustees of the Kinnaird Estate. [3] Cadell and his father, William senior, together with Samuel Garbett and Dr. John Roebuck were the original founders of Carron Company which was established in 1759. In 1786, William Cadell established the Clyde Iron Works at Carmyle on the River Clyde, to the east of Glasgow. The boiler for the first steam tug built for Lord Dundas was made at the Clyde Iron Works. [4]

On hearing that William Forbes of Callendar proposed to lease his coal field near Pirleyhill on the Callendar Estate, William Symington wrote to him in January 1804. He was then living at Parkhouse in Falkirk but one of his letters to Forbes was addressed from Grange. Symington arranged a meeting with Forbes at Callendar House, accompanied by William Cadell, who had acted as a factor for the Callendar Estate before it was purchased by Forbes in 1783. After that meeting, Symington leased the Callendar coal field in partnership with James Miller, a distiller, from 1804 until the partnership was dissolved in 1807.

[1] SRO CS 229/S/12/79

[2] NLS The Cadell of Grange Papers Acc. 5381 Box 16.2

[3] NLS Airth Estate Papers MS. 10898

[4] SRO FCN 1/46 (Accounts) page 248

The Grange estate was originally owned by the pre-reformation church. The mansion house on the property, built in 1564 and known as "Old Grange House", was demolished in 1906. [1] An overseer for the Mining Company had been dismissed in 1789 for keeping a public house. [2] Cadell was involved in a law suit after Henry Black, a local farmer, was drowned on 5 January 1801 when his horse plunged into a disused pit on the estate. Black's family pursued damages in the Court of Session at Edinburgh. [3] A major disaster was to follow in 1810 when seventeen people were suffocated in an explosion in a mine pit at the Grange colliery. [4]

[1] Linlithgow Shire Gazette 30 June 1905 page 8

[2] Salmon, Thomas James, Borrowstounness and District Being Historical Sketches of Kinneal, Carriden, and Bo'ness c. 1550-1850 1913 

[3] Black, &c v. Cadell, reported in the Caledonian Mercury 12 March 1812 page 4

[4] Edinburgh Advertiser 17 July 1810

This photograph of Raeburn's painting is reproduced, facing page 168, in H.M. Cadell's Story of the Forth, published in 1913.