THIS weekend a ceremony will be held to commemorate the lives of 22 miners who died in an underground fire at Cadder, three miles from Bishopbriggs.

It was one of the worst mining disasters in Scotland.

News reports at the time said a fireman at the Carron Company mine reported seeing raging flames at the bottom of the shaft.

Word spread rapidly and a rescue operation was mounted.

It was Sunday, August 3, 1913. By midnight, the lights were burning in every miner's house in Mavis Valley, the village closest to pit No 15 - the workplace of many men from the village.

Anxious residents, many in tears, awaited news from the pit.

At the pithead, however, few miners held out hope that many of the back shift crew who had been working down the shaft could have escaped.

According to a new history of the disaster, by local historian Bill Findlay, rescue workers recovered all of the bodies by noon on Monday.

Fifteen bodies were found huddled together. They had been overcome by gas or lack of oxygen. The men were all found in the same direction, as if they had been fleeing from the flames.

One rescuer noticed how close the men had been to the safety of an air-trap door.

The dead men were Hugh Anderson, Charles Armstrong, Cuthbert Bell, brothers John, Alexander and William Brown, Patrick Darragh, George Davidson, Patrick Duffin, Andrew Dunbar, James Flynn, George Harvey, Thomas Holland, Owen McAloon, Hugh McCann, Alexander Macmillan, George Macmillan, brothers Robert and William Ramsay, Patrick Regan, Charles Reilly and John Worthington.

Hugh McCann left behind nine children, according to the Scottish Mining website.

James Flynn had 10, Charles Reilly seven. Patrick Darragh's widow was just 15.

SIx of the dead miners - the Brown brothers, the Ramsays, and the Ramsays' brother-in-law, George Davidson - came from Mavis Valley.

The fatal pit went down almost 1000 feet and ran north under the River Kelvin.

At its peak, it produced some 400 tons of coal each day, and employed 300 men. Iron was also mined there.

On Sunday, 100 years after they perished, all 22 miners will be remembered when East Dunbartonshire Council Provost Una Walker unveils a specially commissioned cairn.

Mavis Valley suffered badly in the disaster. Its first houses had gone up about 1850 and by 1901 there were 428 people living in 89 houses.

Today, there is almost nothing of it left. Traces of it are hard to find.

Provost Walker took the Evening Times a few hundred yards along the path of the Forth & Clyde Canal from Bishopbriggs Leisuredrome.

Parallel to the canal bank, screened by trees, is Mavis Village's main road.

It was along here that the horse-drawn hearses made their way to the funeral service at the village hall, two days after the disaster.

Today, the site of the village is marked by a large raised concrete bed, which was part of the machinery used to load iron and coal on to vessels on the canal.

Behind the bed, and overgrown by weeds, lies the remains of the road between the village and the canal.

Here and there, old house foundations can be glimpsed through the trees. A hidden ditch indicates where villagers disposed of waste.

"The Carron Company demolished Mavis Valley in the 1950s when it was still a village," said Provost Walker.

"I think it was because of the lack of electricity and sewage pipes to the village, but it still seemed to be a vibrant place, even then.

"My older sister said that even in the 1950s there were young children from here who were being bussed to school in Glasgow.

"We have spoken to one gentleman in his 90s who took us along here and he remembered there was a Co-operative shop in the village, and there seemed to be a nursery for young children."

The provost added: "There was a big inquiry into the disaster.

"The Carron ironworks and colliery were able to employ lots of lawyers and experts to prove it was not the company's fault.

"It said it was the fault of one of the workers, who had dropped something out of a lamp.

"In those days they didn't have the expertise or technical knowledge we have today to pinpoint the seat of the fire.

"The company was determined not to be blamed for the blaze. An open verdict was returned.

"This was long before the Welfare State and the bereaved families were more or less abandoned.

"There were widows who, because they did not have anyone else old enough to go down the mine, were put out of their home.

"One widow, who had three children, married another miner within weeks because otherwise she and her family would have been out on the street."

The council now plans to clear some trees from the area of the old village, carry out a survey and erect a storyboard and a fingerpost to mark out Mavis Valley to visitors.

Sunday's ceremony will take place outside Bishopbriggs Library at 2pm.

In a final twist, the building houses the local school that some of the children of Mavis Valley would once have attended.

Mavis Valley And The 1913 Pit Disaster: Local Stories, by Bill Findlay (East Dunbartonshire Council);

http://scottishmining.co.uk