Details have emerged of some of the proposed Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership (CCLP) projects utilising millions of lottery money.

The projects are called Coalfield Place Names and Life in the Lost Villages and are designed to help communities explore and celebrate the heritage of the local area.

Life in the Lost Villages is an oral history project led by Strathclyde University. The ‘Row Villages’ in the East Ayrshire coalfields are a distinctive man-made feature in the landscape. When built they played a vital role but couldn’t survive the exhaustion of the mineral resources they were built to exploit.

This oral history project aims to capture the history of life in the Row Villages and the impact of de-industrialisation by exploring in depth the so-called lost villages of Lethanhill, Burnfoot and Benquhat in the Doon Valley and Commondyke and Darnconner in the Lugar Valley.

The CCLP wants to hear from any former residents of these villages or their families. They want to hear any stories or memories about what these villages were like. Those wishing to participate are encouraged to sign up on the CCLP website.

Professor Arthur McIvor, director of the Scottish Oral History Project at Strathclyde University.said:”As a CCLP partner, I look forward to working on this exciting academic/community alliance and to delivering a major community oral history programme providing capacity-building training, recording, researching and preserving the memories of those in the East Ayrshire lost villages.”

The Coalfield Place Names project will be led by Glasgow University. This project will harness local interest in the subject of place names, to create a coherent volume of work that aligns with national activities in this field and acts as best practice guidance on the subject.

In April, we reported how the CCLP had secured £2.2 million in funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to transform the ex-coalfield communities in East Ayrshire. CCLP staff and community partners continue to raise more money to aid the delivery of the 22 projects included in the partnership. The CCLP has now secured £67,904 from the Organisational Support Fund run by Historic Environment Scotland (HES), which will fund the two new projects.

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