How Saltcoats, then Ardrossan took over as the main coal port on the Clyde

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THE old Yorkshire saying “Where there’s muck, there’s brass” is all too true in the development of Ardrossan’s Harbour, where, for many years, coal, stone and ‘pig iron’ were exported in large quantities to Europe and North America as well as Ireland and Scottish coastal and island communities.

Trade through Ardrossan was predated, however, by Saltcoats, where from as early as the 1660 its newly built harbour exported coal to Ireland from the nearby Stevenston coalfield.

By 1770 Saltcoats was the main coal port on the Firth of Clyde. This was facilitated by a harbour extension and in 1772 the completion of Scotland’s first commercial canal linking the harbour with the Auchenharvie and Ardeer coalfields.

Shipbuilding had begun in 1775, and continued for a century.

Saltcoats’ pre-eminence was eclipsed in stages by the building of firstly the short local Ardrossan Railway in 1832, the completion of the through rail link to Glasgow in 1840 and most importantly the opening of Ardrossan’s wet dock and graving dock in 1845.

It was not just the local collieries and ironworks that used Ardrossan Harbour’s improved facilities as their outlet for their product, but they were ideal for collieries further afield, particularly those in Lanarkshire.

Growth was hampered, however, in the early forties by a trade depression, the closure of ironworks at Dalry, and curiously, the stoppage of most Irish distilleries and breweries as a consequence of, to quote: “the abstinent habits lately cultivated to so great an extent in Ireland”.

Such temporary interruptions aside, Ardrossan’s trade progressed rapidly, such that by 1880 it had come to increasing prominence as a coal exporting and bunkering port, with export coal now coming trainload after trainload largely from Lanarkshire via the Glasgow & South Western Railway. The tonnages were enormous and the harbour revenues more than satisfactory.

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In the Lanarkshire coalfield area itself, it was the Caledonian Railway that collected the local coal traffic to take it Gushetfaulds in south Glasgow, where it was handed over to the G&SWR for onward carriage to Ardrossan.

But the Caley had other ideas and, through its protégé, the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway, was able to create its own direct route from the Lanarkshire coalfields to Ardrossan Harbour which opened for traffic in 1889. Montgomerie Pier station was opened on 30th May 1890.

The ensuing, glorious but wasteful competition with the “Sou’ Wesr” for the passenger business between Glasgow, Arran and Belfast has been described in a previous article.

It was coal that was king, however, and that trade was further secured, by the opening in 1892 by Lady Gertrude Montgomery, of the Eglinton Dock (now occupied by the marina) and adjacent tidal basin.

The new dock was equipped with cranes of the most modern type and hydraulic coal hoists which could lift railway waggons bodily off the tracks and tip the contents into the holds or bunkers of the receiving ships.

Other important users of coal and generators of traffic for Ardrossan Harbour were the iron and steel works of Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.

In the earlier period of the harbours existence ironstone was exported, but in time, finished product predominated.

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Prominent among the producers was the Glengarnock works at Kilbirnie, founded 1843, as an iron-smelting works, which by the 1880s was producing high quality steel plates, angles, joists and was the first in Scotland to move into making H-beams for structures and bridges.

Ardrossan was the most convenient harbour for the export of these products and of course the Ardrossan Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. was a significant customer for steel plates and angles.

This period was in many ways the heyday of Ardrossan as a trading port.

Another big export was creosoted sleepers, manufactured locally while imports included iron ore, limestone, nitrate of soda and timber.

In 1907, however, the opening of the Rothesay Dock at Clydebank, equipped with modern bulk handling equipment, being closer to most of the coalfields, drew much of the coal traffic from Ardrossan.

Then in the years leading up to the Great War, competition from Germany and Belgium adversely affected the Glengarnock works.

READ MORE: Ardrossan ship Bayeskimo was doomed to an icy fate

But, boosted by war production, the steel works was reconstructed in 1916-18, by David Colville & Sons, following which business was buoyant for the next half century and Ardrossan harbour was a beneficiary.

One of my abiding memories from the 1950s and 60s, was the import of scrap iron to feed the furnaces at Glengarnock.

Much of the scrap came from Ireland and it was discharged from the ships’ holds by means of a claw-like grab and dropped into railway waggons with an almighty crash, tinkle and clang in a cloud of rusty dust. A most satisfactory sound to my young ears that still reverberates somewhere in the recesses of my brain.

Alas, all of that is long gone.

The coal trade ceased and soon our next generation will find it had to believe that burning black stones powered our economy and heated our homes.

The Glengarnock works was reduced to a rolling mill in 1978 and closed in 1985.

So now, Ardrossan harbour is a cleaner and quieter place, but I have to confess that I miss the stoor and clatter of the harbour of my youth.