The View from England: Party time is upon us

The U.S.A. is celebrating this week but Scotland will follow soon after, and there are few nations on Earth that know how to party like the Scottish, especially when there is gold to be found.

On Thursday, November 25, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day. The annual harvest festival has been fixed on the fourth Thursday of November since a proclamation in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln (part of his attempt to foster a sense of unity between the northern and southern states).

Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. can be traced to a 1621 celebration of a good harvest at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. Although Thanksgiving has its roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has also long been celebrated in a secular manner. Indeed, the day after Thanksgiving is one of the busiest shopping days of the year (in many countries), and is known as ‘Black Friday’.

The Scottish need no lessons in celebrating, and their party season starts on Tuesday, November 30, with Saint Andrew’s Day.

The patron saint of Scotland was born in Galilee, now part of Israel. He died a martyr on the last day of November, 60 AD, being crucified in Greece by order of the Roman governor Aegeas. According to legend, Andrew asked to be tied to an X-shaped cross because he did not feel worthy of dying on the same shape of cross as Jesus.

Andrew has been revered in Scotland for some 1,300 years, and the shape of his cross (known as a saltire) has been represented on the Scottish flag by a white cross since at least 1385.

Oengus I (king of the Picts 732-761) built a monastery in what is now the town of St Andrews to house relics of the saint (supposed to have included a tooth, kneecap, arm and finger bone). These relics were destroyed in the 16th century during the religious conflicts of the Scottish Reformation but, in 1870, the Archbishop of Amalfi sent a piece of the saint’s shoulder blade to Scotland (where it is stored in St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh).

In the ninth century, Oengus II (king of the Picts 820-834) attributed a victory in battle (against a far superior English army) to an intervention by Andrew. It was not until 1320, however, that Andrew became the country’s official patron saint with the declaration of independence on April 6 — which was declared Tartan Day in the U.S.A.

Saint Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Russia, Barbados, Amalfi in Italy and the Order of the Thistle (second only to the Order of the Garter in ranks of U.K. chivalry). Wikipedia tells us that he also keeps busy as the patron saint of fishmongers, fishermen, women wanting to be mothers, singers, spinsters, maidens, sore throats and gout.

Scottish mining engineers have particular reason to party because Scotgold Resources has announced that its Cononish gold mine in Tyndrum continues to ramp-up production. The mine has just managed a third consecutive month where production revenue exceeds operating costs.

The U.K.’s only commercial gold mine has been a long time coming (the project dates back to 1984) and ownership has changed several times (as has Scotgold’s management, most recently in April). Moreover, with a target gold output of only 23,000 ounces per year, and a mine life of nine years, Cononish is unlikely to generate much excitement in Canada.

Nevertheless, five years ago, the company’s then technical consultant Chris Sangster told BBC Scotland: “Cononish itself is quite a small deposit (currently 541,000 tonnes of measured and indicated rock grading 14.3 grams per tonne) but we think the surrounding area holds a lot of potential.”

Indeed, although there has been no substantial finds of gold in England, the precious metal has been mined in Scotland (and Wales) for centuries. Gold from the hills around Wanlockhead and Leadhills in the Southern Uplands was used to make some of the Scottish crown jewels, and today’s exploration pales into insignificance compared with the Scottish gold rush of 1869.

The rush to Helmsdale in the remote north-east of Scotland (about 300 km north of Scotgold’s mine) was caused when a local newspaper reported that a prospector returned home from Australia’s goldfields had found gold in the Kildonan Burn (stream).

Locally-born Robert Gilchrist had been struck by the similarity of the gold-producing districts of Australia to his native valley. The site of his exploration, which hosted up to 600 prospectors, is now a park called Baile an Or, which comes from the Gaelic for ‘Town of Gold’.

Even the English admit that the Scots can throw a good party but the Kildonan gold rush only lasted a year and, for gold mining in the U.K., it’s too early for the bunting.

— Dr. Chris Hinde is a mining engineer and the director of Pick and Pen Ltd., a U.K.-based consulting firm he set up in 2018 specializing in mining industry trends. He previously worked for S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Metals and Mining division.