Standing Building Recording

Date 30 July 2015 - 12 August 2015

Event ID 1013103

Category Recording

Type Standing Building Recording

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1013103

Photographic Survey of Learmonth Gardens retaining walls.

The West Lothian Council is proposing a landscape redesign for Learmonth Gardens, Linlithgow. Wardell Armstrong Archaeology was commissioned by the West Lothian Council Construction Service (CS14219) to undertake a measured photographic survey of the small public park, (NGR: NT 30335/677010, centred on the Doocot).

The garden is within the Upper Linlithgow & Union Canal Conservation Area. The area of Learmonth Gardens is part of at least 3 former Burgage plots. The proposed site is an existing garden which has historical significance with it being a former tail ‘Rigg’ (Burgage plot). One of the tree burgage plots belonged to the Barons Ross of Halkhead who had their town house on the High Street. The medieval burgage plots would have been aligned roughly north – south, dividing the land in several narrow strips of land. The whole of the garden falls within the area of increased archaeological sensitivity in relation to the likely core of the medieval burgh. The medieval royal burgh appears to have been planned as a single-street settlement, aligned east-west. The modern town still exhibits the typical landholding patterns of a planned burgh, with a series of long, narrow burgage plots leading back from the principal medieval thoroughfares.

The current setting of the retaining walls goes back to the mid-19th century, when the railway tracks were built through the property of several High Street burgage plots in 1842. The archaeological significance of the retaining walls is therefore of lesser value. Modern changes and rebuilt of the upper level, first and second step retaining walls further reduce their historic and archaeological value.

Information from OASIS ID: wardella2-220420 (A Buschmann) 2015