Genius Fan

Of all the ways Boswell has been commemorated – statue (though not in his native Scotland or his beloved London), bust, engraving, signs, plaques etc – the one on the land reclaimed from the Twentieth century’s disused Barony Colliery has to be the most creative. The mine, just a mile and a half from Boswell’s family estate of Auchinleck, opened in 1907 and closed in 1989. The site has been redeveloped at a cost of more than £1million, to become an open air museum and monument to deep coal mining, with the gigantic, 60m tall Barony A-Frame, used for hauling men and coal out of the ground, preserved and astonishingly visible from miles around in East Ayrshire.

Some clever person(s) decided it would be a good idea to memorialise the big landowning name of the area, Boswell, and came up with the idea of creating a small avenue of trees, below the giant A-Frame, with species chosen to spell out the family name. I found it by chance, when I was staggering underneath the A-Frame after a visit to Boswell’s mausoleum at nearby Auchinleck parish church. I came across an information panel between a pair of scrawny trees in March 2023 and it was only when I read it and stepped back to see the row of trees in front of me, that I understood. Thus:

• B – Beech
• O – Oak
• S – Sycamore
• W – Whitebeam
• E – Wych Elm
• L – Larch
• L – Lime

Go there and see the trees. The arrangement will be impressive in 40 years time, but right now, today, the A-Frame is spectacular. Most people don’t know about coal mining any more, but the communities from the villages surrounding the Auchinleck estate all supplied manpower for the Barony Colliery over its 75 year life. It’s a great ‘museum’. Go see it.