Leadhills

The North End of Leadhills

Leadhills is not an imaginative name for a village located high in the Lowther Hills and founded on lead mining, but it is an apt one. Scotland's second highest village (after nearby Wanlockhead) lies at a height of 395m or 1295ft and is reached via the B7040 from Elvanfoot or the B797 from Abington.

Village Post Office The Hopetoun Arms Hotel Leadhills Miners Library Village Signpost

Leadhills may not quite be Scotland's highest village, but it does have a number of unique claims to fame. In 1741 it became home to the UK's oldest subscription library when 23 lead miners clubbed together to set up the Leadhills Reading Society. Membership was not cheap by the standards of the day, with a joining fee of £0.15 and an annual subscription of £0.10. This was an innovation picked up by other communities nearby including Wanlockhead and today the Library holds an excellent collection of books from its early years.

Houses in Leadhills

Village Cottages

The Leadhills & Wanlockhead Railway

Leadhills Signal Box

Leadhills is also home to the country's highest adhesion (i.e. normally driven) railway. This is a 2ft narrow gauge railway built along part of the track bed of the branch line from Elvanfoot to Wanlockhead that operated from 1901 to 1939. A visit to Leadhills Station is a fascinating experience, with a range of ex-industrial engines on view in its high moorland setting.

Operating since 1996, the Leadhills & Wanlockhead Railway runs trains from 11.00am to 5.00pm each Saturday and Sunday from May to September, plus Easter Weekend and May and August bank holiday Mondays. Services run from Leadhills to a point not far short of Wanlockhead, allowing a combined trip to the Lead Mining Museum there. You can find out more from the Railway's own website.

In a country whose national sport is golf, Leadhills boasts Scotland's highest course at 456m or 1500ft above sea level. This nine hole course is described as "not for the faint hearted" and lies just to the east of the village.

And for those in search of extremes, Leadhills graveyard is the final resting place of one John Taylor, a miner who died here in 1770. What is remarkable was that he was born in 1633, making him 117 years old when he retired as a miner in 1751, and 137 when he died. It is easy to dismiss this as a mason's typographical error on the tombstone, but it is said that he could remember seeing the eclipse of 1652.

Lead was mined in Leadhills from the 1100s, and in about 1500 the village also had a gold mine from which nuggets as large as 60g were extracted. By the 1660s the lead mines were owned by Sir John Hope, and profitable enough to justify building or improving roads the full 50 miles to Leith to allow the ore to be exported.

The coming of the railway in 1901 was not enough to return the mines in the area to profitability, and mining activity in Leadhills ceased in 1928, though it continued for a while longer in Wanlockhead.

There was every chance of the village simply melting away when the mining ceased, but Leadhills' uniqueness extended to the freehold ownership of much of its land by the occupants. As a result the community survived with a determination exemplified by the rebuilding of its railway.

Leadhills certainly makes the most of its assets and local accommodation providers have also benefitted from the steady stream of footweary travellers following the Southern Upland Way long distance footpath which passes through nearby Wanlockhead.