Alexander Caseby News Today

Valleyfield colliery was the scene of one of Fife's worst mining disasters, claiming 35 lives and leaving 42 children without a father.

THE photographs in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane look back at one of the worst mining disasters in Fife. It happened early on the morning of October 28, 1939, in the Diamond Section of Valleyfield Colliery. In all, 35 men lost their lives. An explosion of fire damp took place in the section in which all the 33 men who were employed there must have been killed almost simultaneously. In the Culross Five Feet Section some distance away from the scene of the explosion, abo...