Coalface to Wildspace Scotland

Written by Samantha Bolan, Trainee for the Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire & the Lothians project

In Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, and the Lothians, you see reminders of Scotland’s mining past: old rows of houses, heaps of waste, ponds, and woods. Some are hard to miss; others, you’d never guess were shaped by industry.

For generations who have grown up since the decline of Scotland’s coal industry, it can be easy to walk through these places without realising what once stood there.

This relationship between the industrial past and the natural future lies at the heart of Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians.

Why Coalface to Wildspace?

The name tells the story of the areas we are working with.

The coalface represents their past: generations of miners, the communities that grew around the industry and landscapes transformed by extracting the resources beneath them.

The wildspace represents what can come next.

Froglife’s Coalface to Wildspace project is helping nature recover in Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians. We are creating and restoring ponds, grasslands and woodlands, linking habitats with wildlife corridors, and getting local communities involved in looking after nature close to home.

In August 2026, The National Lottery Heritage Fund announced more than £1.8 million in funding for Coalface to Wildspace projects in Scotland and Yorkshire, supporting 31 community conservation projects across the two regions. Of this, £940,480 has been awarded to the Scottish project, supporting landscape-scale habitat work across 14 sites in Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians and the creation of 9 Neighbourhood Wildlife Corridors.

But to understand why these places have been chosen, we first need to look beneath our feet.

A landscape shaped by mining

Mining changed Scotland’s land and communities, especially in Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, and the Lothians.

Although coal connected all three areas, it was far from the only resource extracted from beneath them. Ayrshire was rich in coal, iron, and limestone; South Lanarkshire was worked for coal, ironstone, lead, gold, and silver; while the Lothians supported industries extracting coal, oil shale, ironstone, fireclay, limestone, and silver.

These industries changed the landscape above ground too. Pits, waste heaps, railways and other infrastructure appeared alongside the towns and villages that grew around them. For generations, mining provided employment and became deeply woven into the identity of communities across Scotland’s industrial heartlands.

According to the Northern Mine Research Society, when the coal industry was nationalised in 1947, 225 collieries were operating across Scotland. During the second half of the 20th century, however, this landscape changed dramatically. Pits closed as reserves became too difficult or expensive to mine, and Britain’s energy sources changed.

The decline happened in varied ways across the three regions. In Ayrshire, deep mining, where miners dug tunnels deep underground to reach coal, was eventually followed by extensive opencast coal extraction, which means removing the soil and rock above the coal layers to dig the coal out from the surface. South Lanarkshire’s long history of intensive mining left many tunnels underground. At the same time, the Lothians saw major collieries close as Scotland’s deep coal mines closed down during the second half of the 20^th century.

By the beginning of the 21^st century, Scotland’s deep coal-mining industry had disappeared. The Northern Mine Research Society records that the last six pits to close included Killoch (Ayrshire) in 1989, Barony (Lanarkshire) in 1989, Bilston Glen (Lothians) in 1989, Monktonhall (Lothians) in 1998, Frances (Fife) in 1995, and Longannet (Fife), which became Scotland’s final deep coal mine when it closed in 2002.

But the end, mining did not mean the end of its impact.

Beneath and around many former mining communities remained altered landscapes, flooded workings, waste, excavations and other traces of an industry that had operated for generations.

And this raises an important question: when the mines closed, why wasn’t the land simply put back the way it was?

Why was so much former mining land left derelict?

There isn’t one simple answer.

Mining leaves behind tunnels, holes, and changed land. Restoring it is hard and expensive.

The circumstances also differed across Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians.

In Ayrshire, deep mining steadily declined during the 20th century, followed by extensive commercial opencast mining. The situation changed dramatically in 2013 when major private operators, including Scottish Coal, collapsed. Money was supposed to have been secured through financial guarantees and restoration bonds to restore sites once mining ended. However, it became clear that the money available fell significantly short of what was required, leaving former opencast sites with large empty holes left by mining, flooded areas and landscapes awaiting restoration.

In South Lanarkshire, generations of intensive mining created extensive interconnected underground tunnels. As mines closed and the pumps stopped running (these pumps were used to keep underground tunnels dry), water could flow in and flood the empty tunnels left behind. The exhaustion of more accessible coal layers, combined with the growing financial and practical difficulties of keeping mine systems operational, left land with a very different legacy: one often hidden beneath the surface.

In the Lothians, the story was again somewhat different. Deep mining remained an important industry during the 20th century. Still, competition from other energy sources and the wider contraction of Britain’s coal industry led to pits closing progressively through the post-war decades. Former mining infrastructure and land then had to find new uses, with redevelopment and restoration occurring gradually and unevenly.

In other words, these landscapes did not become derelict because everyone walked away and forgot about them. Some were extremely difficult and costly to restore; some were affected by flooding and ground instability; some lost the companies expected to pay for restoration; and others were left managing the long transition away from an industry that had dominated the landscape for generations.

Since then, significant progress has been made in restoring and repurposing former mining land. But the effects of such an enormous industry cannot always be undone quickly. In some places, something interesting happened as these landscapes changed.

Nature began to move in.

When derelict land becomes habitat

The legacy left by mining is complicated. Former mine sites can have real environmental and safety challenges, but land described as “derelict” is not always empty of wildlife.

In ‘Scotland’s Black Diamonds: Coal Mining in Scotland’, Guthrie Hutton notes:

The impact of old mine sites is mixed. Subsidence can still damage buildings, although when it occurs in open country the lowered ground can fill with water to become a boggy wet-land habitat for wildlife.”

Coal waste and other abandoned industrial land can also turn into many types of habitats over time, including wetlands, grasslands, scrub, and woodlands. This creates new opportunities for wildlife.

Froglife has already demonstrated the potential of former industrial landscapes through an earlier Coalface to Wildspace project in Walsall. Running from 2022 to 2025, Coalface to Wildspace Midlands sought to reconnect people with Walsall’s natural and geological heritage while creating and improving habitats for amphibians, reptiles and other wildlife.

Working with communities across Walsall, the project created 8 Neighbourhood Wildlife Corridors and 9 new ponds, as well as mini ponds, bog gardens, toad shelters, meadows, and other habitat improvements. The project also used creative activities to explore how the area’s history and geology relate to the wildlife found there today.

The work in Walsall demonstrated how landscapes shaped by industry can continue to evolve, providing space for wildlife while allowing communities to explore and celebrate the heritage beneath their feet.

Now, Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, and the Lothians is bringing that approach to Scotland’s former mining landscapes.

From industrial landscape to wildlife landscape

This is where Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians comes in.

With support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Froglife will carry out landscape scale habitat creation and restoration across 14 sites in Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians, improving freshwater and terrestrial habitats for amphibians and reptiles and developing Neighbourhood Wildlife Corridors to reconnect fragmented habitats and give wildlife more opportunities to move between them, while also creating connections between local communities, their greenspaces and the amphibians and reptiles that live alongside them.

Ponds are particularly important for amphibians, but a healthy pond is never home to amphibians alone. Ponds support an extraordinary two-thirds of all freshwater species, including frogs, toads, newts, aquatic invertebrates and plants. However, one third of ponds are thought to have disappeared in the last fifty years or so, and more than 80% of those that remain are considered to be in ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ condition, according to Freshwater Habitats Trust research.

This makes the creation of new ponds and restoration of existing ones particularly important. Surrounding land habitats are also vital for amphibians and reptiles, providing places to forage, shelter and overwinter.

Amphibians and reptiles themselves are an important part of the wider food web, acting as both predators and prey. They can also help us understand the condition of the surrounding environment. As indicator species, changes in amphibian and reptile populations can warn us about wider environmental problems, including poor water quality and human disturbance.

Creating a pond, restoring an existing wetland or improving the surrounding land therefore has benefits that stretch far beyond frogs, toads and newts.

Bringing communities back into the landscape

Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians is about people too.

Many of the communities built around Scotland’s mining industries experienced enormous change when those industries disappeared. Today, some former mining communities experience high levels of deprivation and have fewer opportunities to participate in conservation and heritage projects.

This was one reason Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians were chosen for the project, several of the nature reserves and greenspaces involved are former mining sites themselves or lie close to them and former mining communities.

Community involvement is therefore an integral part of Coalface to Wildspace: Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and the Lothians.

Through our Neighbourhood Wildlife Corridors, Froglife will work with local people to create and restore ponds and other wildlife features within their own neighbourhoods for the benefit of native amphibian and reptile species, as well as other wildlife. Activities will provide opportunities to learn about our native amphibian and reptile species, as well as other wildlife, gain practical experience and explore both the natural and industrial heritage of the places people call home.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund describes the wider Coalface to Wildspace programme as an opportunity for transforming former collieries, pit dwellings and industrial sites into wildlife havens, while giving people of all ages opportunities to become involved in nature recovery.

Now, communities help reshape the land their ancestors mined.

The coalface is an important part of their history.

The wildspace can become part of their future.

These places once powered Scotland. Now, they can support wildlife and new community life.