The Courier and Almond Valley Heritage Trust have teamed up to take readers on a trip down memory lane.
Torbanehill House was built in about 1779 and included six bedrooms, dining and drawing rooms, a parlour and servant’s quarters.
It was probably in about 1829 that the estate was purchased by Sir Richard Honyman, at one time MP for Orkney.
When Sir Richard died in 1842, the property passed to his widow, although her son-in-law William Gillespie took charge of the estate.
Back in the 1780s it was stated that there was “a certainty of coal” in the lands but little mining took place until 1850, when Gillespie leased the minerals of Torbanehill estate to the Falkirk coalmasters James Russel and Son.
What Russel knew at that time, and Gillespie did not, was that a narrow seam of extraordinarily rich cannel coal existed beneath much of the estate.
As huge sums of money began to be earned, Gillespie sought a larger share of the spoils.
His argument was that the mineral was not coal but instead a completely new class of mineral. The argument went all the way to the House of Lords, with scientific opinion testifying on both side.
Eventually the Lords chose not to make judgement considering the argument a matter of geology, not of the law.
Gillespie the started new action on grounds of “fraud, concealment, and misrepresentation”. The case seemed destined again to go to the highest court, until Russel & Son voluntarily increased the royalties paid to Gillespie.
The lease excluded the areas of land beneath the House and interpretation of the measurements sparked further legal action which, in 1871, was again taken to the House of Lords.
In trying to establish where the boundary of the garden lay, old gardeners testified how the garden had been worked in previous years. The arguments hinged on whether the garden wall marked the boundary of the garden, which was the ruling they reached.
