St Ninian’s Eco-Leisure and Wellness Park

Every summer for close on thirty years we have travelled north on the M90 past a mighty scar of an opencast coal mine. I have no early memories of it; my eyes must have been blind to the ugliness. Ten years or so ago it began to be transformed into a country park of sorts¹St. Ninian’s Fife Earth Project. Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/st-ninians-fife-earth [Accessed 31 August 2026]. We vowed to take a look. What we found was rather sad looking, but full of potential, with one man and his digger beavering away at the landscaping.

The story beneath the mud goes back further than the pit itself. I reckon in this photo once stood Lassodie, a mining village of over two thousand souls. When its colliery closed in the early 1930s, the place emptied out row by row. By 1933 the Scotsman was reporting the demolition of the last houses and the closing of the post office, after fifty years of service in someone’s front room²A DISAPPEARING VILLAGE, Lassodie in Fife. The Scotsman, 19 August 1933. Page: 9. Only the church and manse survived, turned into a weekend retreat. A whole community, gone within a generation.

Decades later, opencast mining tore into the same ground, and a section of the old coal road was recently rediscovered beneath it, a small clue to a much larger buried history³Kelty: Coal road discovered at former St Ninian’s opencast mine. Central Fife Times. 17th February 2022. https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/19929290.kelty-coal-road-discovered-former-st-ninians-opencast-mine/ [Accessed 31 August 2026].

Now St Ninian’s is being reimagined again, this time as an eco-leisure and wellness park—whatever that may mean—with paths, planting and quiet corners promised where the excavators once ruled⁴Former Fife opencast coal mine to be transformed into eco-wellness destination. 22 April 2026. https://projectscot.com/2026/04/former-fife-opencast-coal-mine-to-be-transformed-into-eco-wellness-destination/[Accessed 31 August 2026]⁵St Ninians Wellness. National Pride. https://nationalpride.co.uk/st-ninians-kelty-dunfermline/ [Accessed 31 August 2026]. Progress here has never been tidy. It has always come in fits and starts, one closure making way for the next beginning.

• 1
  St. Ninian’s Fife Earth Project. Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/st-ninians-fife-earth [Accessed 31 August 2026] ↩︎
• 2
  A DISAPPEARING VILLAGE, Lassodie in Fife. The Scotsman, 19 August 1933. Page: 9 ↩︎
• 3
  Kelty: Coal road discovered at former St Ninian’s opencast mine. Central Fife Times. 17th February 2022. https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/19929290.kelty-coal-road-discovered-former-st-ninians-opencast-mine/ [Accessed 31 August 2026] ↩︎
• 4
  Former Fife opencast coal mine to be transformed into eco-wellness destination. 22 April 2026. https://projectscot.com/2026/04/former-fife-opencast-coal-mine-to-be-transformed-into-eco-wellness-destination/[Accessed 31 August 2026] ↩︎
• 5
  St Ninians Wellness. National Pride. https://nationalpride.co.uk/st-ninians-kelty-dunfermline/ [Accessed 31 August 2026] ↩︎