Newtoun Area of Townscape Character

Date 4 December 2013

Event ID 1000625

Category Recording

Type Characterisation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1000625

Bo'ness Urban Survey

This site covers the Newtoun Area of Townscape Character which was defined as part of the Bo'ness Urban Survey Project 2013. The text below relates to the whole area.

Historical Development and Topography

The Newtoun Area of Townscape Character is bisected by Linlithgow Road running north-south with mostly local authority housing to the east. The western side contains several facilities with Kinneil Primary School, Newtown Park Football Ground and St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church occupying the large open space to the south of Dean Road, and Bo’ness Hospital occupying a large plot to the north of Dean Road. Dean Road cuts east-west across the northern part of the area and follows the line of the Antonine Wall. This area was mostly developed from the early 20th century with development moving south from Dean Road.

The Newtoun area had its origins as a mining village during the mid-19th century. However, all traces of the original miners’ rows, which stood on the east side of Linlithgow Road and where the street Newtown currently stands, are now gone following the area’s redevelopment, with local authority housing designed in 1935 by Matthew Steele (1878-1937) and John Taylor (1884-1942) to rehouse the miners. The period of the late 1940s/early 1950s saw the greatest expansion of the Newtoun area creating the Garden City style layout around Newtown/Newtown Street, Birkhill Street/Crescent, Cadzow Avenue, Lothian Street/Crescent, Clydesdale Street, George Street and Baker Street. These comprise a series of four-in-a-blocks, terraced housing and flats, all rendered and with either red or grey tiled roofs.

The earliest surviving building in the area is probably the Matthew Steele-designed Seaforth, which stands on the corner of Dean Road and Linlithgow Road and dates from 1909. This is a two-storeyed, L-plan canted block of flats, which is typically horizontal in style, with a chunky parapet at eaves level, with five small square openings. There are timber-braced balconies giving access to the upper floors on both Linlithgow Road and Dean Road elevations. Some single-storeyed and single-storeyed-plus-attic, stone-built cottages from around the same period survive on both sides of the northern section of Linlithgow Road. A fever/infectious diseases hospital was built in the north-west of the area in 1910, though this was replaced in 1999 by a series of low buildings designed by John Nichol Jarvie (fl.1960s-1990s).

A large open area of ground stands in the far west of the area, with the football ground of Bo’ness United FC, established in 1945 when Bo’ness (first established in 1882, joining the Scottish Football League 2nd Division in 1921) merged with the Juniors team of Bo’ness Cadora. Further west is Kinneil Primary School by George Learmonth Harkess Walls (1902-77) & George Park Duncan (b.1926) of 1954.

On the south-western corner of Dean Road and Linlithgow Road is St Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church with its associated hall and clergy house designed by Fleming Buildings Ltd in 1990. This replaced an important early church (1960) by the internationally renowned architectural practice of Gillespie Kidd & Coia, and is much more modest being dry-dash harled with brick detailing and a tiled pyramidal roof.

Present Character

Newtoun Area of Townscape Character is primarily residential in nature, with large public buildings servicing this resident population: school, hospital, church and recreation facilities. The main roads through the area are linear, following the underlying topography. Within the Newtown Estate are cul-de-sacs and crescents based on Garden City principles.

The earliest buildings are stone-built traditional-style early 19th century cottages along the main roads. Most have bay windows at ground floor and dormers to the attic floors. The public buildings are clustered in the western portion of the area, and are single- or two-storeyed, sitting within large plots, giving this part of the area a very open character.

Moving further east, the area becomes more tightly packed, though the plot sizes for the 1935 workers’ improved housing within the Newtown estate are relatively large. While most of the housing here is two-storeyed, harled four-in-a-blocks typical of so many similar estates across Scotland, Birkhill Crescent comprises two-storeyed terraced and semi-detached, timber-clad Swedish-style housing which was a popular building design adopted by local authorities, and in particular the Scottish Special Housing Association, in towns across Scotland during the 1940s.

While there has been some renovation of some of the earlier blocks, a small block in Clydesdale/George/Baker Streets has been redeveloped with single-storeyed, semi-detached housing during the late 20th century. Although single-storeyed, these fit in well with the surrounding two-storeyed blocks and retain the density which exists throughout the area.

Information from RCAHMS (LK), 4th December 2013