King Jamie's Silver Mines
When a local collier found some unusual stones at Hilderston, near Cairnpapple in the Bathgate Hills, he couldn’t have imagined the stir in London his discovery would cause – and the personal embarrassment of King James VI himself. He took a sample of what he suspected to be silver ore to a well-known metallurgist and mining engineer in Leadhills, Sir Bevis Bulmer. Bulmer was very excited; the silver potential was so promising that the landowner, Sir Thomas Hamilton, went ah