Place:Bathgate (town), West Lothian, Scotland

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bathgate is a town in West Lothian, Scotland, and formerly in the county of West Lothian. It is located on the M8 motorway 5 miles (8 km) west of Livingston. Nearby towns are Armadale, Blackburn, Linlithgow, Livingston, West Calder, and Whitburn. Edinburgh Airport is 13 miles (21 km) away.

Its economic prosperity (now much diminished) was based on the presences of a distilley and coal mining. Both industries are no longer in operation.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Medieval (c1100–1500)

Bathgate first enters the chronicles of history in a confirmation charter by King Malcolm IV of Scotland (1141 – 9 December 1165). In royal charters of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, the name of Bathgate has appeared as: Bathchet (1160), Bathket (1250) and Bathgetum (1316). Batket in the 14th century, and by the 15th appeared as both Bathgat and Bathcat, the latter an offshoot of Uchtred Dalrymple's feudal lineage, which ruled during ancient times. The name is a "manifest corruption" of an earlier Cumbric name meaning 'Boar Wood' (cf. Welsh baedd coed).

Early records of Bathgate are somewhat sketchy. It is recorded that, around 1160, Uchtred Dalrymple, Sheriff of Linlithgow, and Geoffrey de Melville came to Bathgate at the command of King Malcolm IV and measured out an area of land which was to form the basis of Bathgate Parish. The church and all its associate property were placed under the auspices of Holyrood Abbey at that time and paid a tenth of its income from the land to that institution.

In 1315, the daughter of King Robert I of Scotland (Robert The Bruce), Marjorie (alternatively spelt Margery) Bruce, married Walter Stewart (or Steward) (1293–1326), the 6th Lord High Steward of Scotland. The dowry to her husband included the lands and castle of Bathgate. Walter died at the castle on 9 April 1326. This marriage is still celebrated in an annual pageant forming part of the Bathgate Procession & John Newland Festival, colloquially known as the Bathgate Galaday (or Gala day).

In the 1846 book A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland, Samuel Lewis writes:

Another antiquarian, W. Jardin, in the Statistical Account of Scotland Vol I (1793), referring to Walter Stewart states:

Dating from around the same time the remains of Bathgate's former parish church still stand at Kirkton. The original 12th-century construction was absorbed by a later build in 1739 when a new church was erected on the same site. The walls of the church were consolidated in 1846. This simple whitewashed edifice served the community until its last service on 9 April 1882. King Malcolm IV makes reference to the original church in a charter, granting it to the monks of Holyrood Abbey. Records show that Holyrood Abbey gave the church to the abbot and monks of Newbattle Abbey in 1327.

17th–18th centuries

In 1606 silver ore was found at nearby Hilderston, in the shadow of Cairnpapple Hill, by a prospecting collier, Sandy Maund. This accidental discovery began a short-lived crown "project" in the area. Advisers to King James VI of Scotland became aware of the discovery, and in April 1608 repossessed the land for the crown. The prospector Bevis Bulmer and Thomas Foulis opened a mine called "God's Blessing". A sample of the ore was shipped to London, and assayed in the Tower of London by Andrew Palmer. By December 1608 it was clear that the ore in the mine was of varying quality and by March 1613 all efforts to extract silver from the area were abandoned.

Bathgate remained a very small rural community until the middle of the 19th century with only a foray by Covenanters in the 17th century to unrest the populace. Francis Groome, in the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882–84) writes:

Robert Louis Stevenson, in the book Lay Morals, Part 2: The Pentland Rising. A Page of History further elucidates upon this night in November 1666:

His depiction goes on to describe how the half the army perished in the freezing weather as they headed towards the Pentland Hills.

19th century

Established around 1800, the Glenmavis Distillery in Bathgate was purchased in 1831 by John McNab, who produced the eponymous MacNab's Celebrated Glenmavis Dew from the site until the distillery's closure in 1910. In 1885, the distillery was producing 80,000 gallons of single malt a year which was transported to Scotland, England and the colonies.

In 1831 Bathgate Academy was built. Designed by the Edinburgh architects R & R Dickson this is Bathgate's only large public building of historic merit. It was endowed by a Jamaican plantation owner John Newlands.^[1] The building later became part of Balbardie Primary School, and later still was changed into private housing.

By the opening of Edinburgh and Bathgate Railway in 1849, local mines and quarries were extracting coal, lime, and ironstone.

James Young's discovery of cannel coal in the Boghead area of Bathgate, and the subsequent opening of the Bathgate Chemical Works in 1852, the world's first commercial oil-works, manufacturing paraffin oil and paraffin wax, signalled an end to the rural community of previous centuries. When the cannel coal resources dwindled around 1866, Young started distilling paraffin from much more readily available shale. The landscape of the Lothians is still dotted with the orange spoil heaps (called bings) from this era. Collieries and quarries and the associated industries (brickworks, steelworks)^[2] were the main employers in Bathgate as the 19th century drew to a close.

Between 1882 and 1884, Bathgate High Parish Church was constructed on Jarvey St. Designed by Wardrop and Reid, the church was built of sandstone in Romanesque architectural style.^[3] It is Category B listed.^[3]

20th century

In 1904, St David's Church was built in Bathgate on George Street. Designed by the Scottish architect James Graham Fairley, it is in Early English architectural style and the church is Category B listed.^[4] The church includes a belltower in north Italian campanile style.^[4] The church is now the local Bathgate cinema. A few years later in 1908, St Mary's Roman Catholic Church was built to a design by Charles Ménart on Livery Street. St Mary's is in a Gothic architectural style and is Category C listed.^[5]

In the mid-20th century, many local industries in the town had closed and West Lothian was designated a Special Development Area. In such areas, extra financial inducements were offered by the British government to assist companies wishing to relocate. As a result, in 1961, the BMC—which consisted of the merged Austin Motor Company and Morris Motors—located a new truck and tractor plant in Bathgate rather than expanding their Longbridge plant as originally planned. The plant closed in 1986 under ownership of British Leyland.

On 24 March 1986, the Bathgate-Edinburgh railway line was re-opened to passengers for the first time since the 1950s. This railway line was extended as the Airdrie-Bathgate Rail Link to Airdrie allowing train services to run between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley via on time and on budget in December 2010.

The world's oldest known reptile fossil, Westlothiana lizziae (affectionately referred to as Lizzie), was discovered in East Kirkton Quarry, Bathgate in 1987; it is now in the Museum of Scotland.

Early in 1992, the US company Motorola opened a mobile phone manufacturing (Personal Communications Sector or PCS) plant at Easter Inch in Bathgate (now the Pyramids Business Park). In 2001, the global market for mobile phones dropped sharply and as a consequence, despite pressure from the highest levels of UK government, on 24 April 2001 Motorola announced the closure of the plant and the loss of 3,106 jobs. The site was occupied by HMRC. In 2021 and early 2022, the Pyramids operated as the principal COVID-19 vaccine centre in West Lothian. In December 2021, it was announced that the Pyramids Business Park would become the site of a new large film and TV studio. Some previous productions at the site have included the TV show Good Omens and the film T2 Trainspotting.^[6]

Research Tips

Refer to the Parish of Bathgate