Dalmore Mine Stair · East Ayrshire · Scotland

Hone stone was worked on or near the Dalmore estate beside the River Ayr from the late eighteenth century. The operation is conventionally dated to 1789, although the earliest references do not always distinguish clearly between the several estate and district quarries. By the mid-nineteenth century the Dalmore working is securely identified. The Ordnance Survey survey of 1857 described Dalmore Quarry as a whetstone quarry in claystone, with the workable layer about 40 feet below the surface and dipping gently eastward. It belonged to William Dunn, and the stone was taken to the nearby Dalmore Mill for dressing and polishing.

The quarry expanded during the nineteenth century and underground mining followed. RCAHMS map analysis and site survey identify a northern vertical shaft, sunk around 1870 to work another seam of Tam O'Shanter stone. This is the shaft represented by the surviving steel winding gear. It retains a cage and a small engine house with an electric winder adapted from a former marine haulage engine. An adit or drift entrance also survives in the quarry. A 20-foot beam engine formerly pumped the mine; it was dismantled in 1938 and its building had disappeared by 1967.

By 1895 a narrow mineral tramway linked the northern shaft and quarry area to Dalmore Mill. A separate tramway served a second shaft to the south. That southern working was later known as Sundrum Mine and was worked during the mid-twentieth century, but its surface buildings were cleared after 1967. The two shafts formed parts of the same wider enterprise, yet their machinery, dates and surviving remains should be kept distinct.

The Dalmore estate passed into Montgomerie family possession through marriage in 1876. The family developed the hone business and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the Dalmore and Milton works formed part of the Water of Ayr and Tam O'Shanter Hone Works company. These names were both trade names and descriptions of different local stones. Dalmore Quarry itself is principally associated with Tam O'Shanter stone, while finer dark Water of Ayr stone was obtained from other quarries, including Meikledale. Stone from several workings could therefore pass through the connected mills, and the history of the company is broader than that of this particular shaft.

Dalmore Mill and the associated Milton works cut, shaped and polished hones for customers in Britain and overseas. Natural hones faced increasing competition during the twentieth century from artificial emery and mass-produced silicon-carbide abrasives. Falling orders eventually ended the industry. The Dalmore mine and quarry were closed by the late 1990s, while accounts of the associated processing works place their final closure either in the late 1990s or around 2003. The northern shaft's steel winding gear, cage and small winder house remain as unusually complete evidence of this specialised, small-scale mining industry.