Steelend

Steelend
Fife
Steelend in 2006
Location
Grid reference:	NT036924
Location:	56°6’43"N, 3°32’56"W
Data
Population:	320  (1991)
Post town:	Dunfermline
Local Government
Council:	Fife
Parliamentary constituency:	Dunfermline & West Fife

Steelend is a former mining village in western Fife, on the B914 road approximately three-quarters of a mile east of the village of Saline and four miles north-west of Dunfermline. The 1991 census recorded a population of 320.

To the south of the village is Bandrum Hill, on top of which is a large standing stone, which are accessible from Steelend by a path. To the north of the village is the eastern end of Saline Glen, which carries the Saline Burn and a footpath which leads west into the centre of Saline.

The village is without a church; there was once a kirk in the village but it was demolished in the 1980s.

Society

The village has a community centre and the Steelend Miners Welfare Club.

The now-defunct Steelend Victoria F.C. were based at Woodside Park on the east side of the village until 2013 when the club folded.

History

The name of the village comes from a farm on Saline Hill north of Steelend.

Coal mining was the major industry in Steelend for generations, the mine's having been created by Wilson and Clyde Coal Co. The mine closed in 1965. In 1960 an episode of the BBC drama series Doctor Finlay's Casebook was filmed in Steelend: in the episode the doctor is called out to a lad trapped in a mine.

A goods railway station once existed to the east of the village on the West of Fife Mineral Railway. The station served the several collieries that once operated nearby to Steelend, which included Sunnybraes Colliery, Saline Valley Colliery, Killernie Colliery and North Steelend Colliery.

References

• Scottish Mining
• CANMORE (RCAHMS) record of Steelend: Colliery, farmstead, ironstone mine, rig and furrow, tramway