Broxburn, General

BROXBURN

A village on the lands of the Earls of Buchan, with toll house and good inn - the early 19th-century Buchan Arms - its transformation into Shaleopolis preceded by the arrival of the canal in 1821 and the railway in 1849. After the discovery of oil-bearing shale - Raeburn shale, Mungle shale, Broxburn shale, Fells shale, Houstoun coal and Foote coal - everything was utterly transformed by shale mines, shale bings and oil works and the inevitable miners' rows - the Stewartfield Rows and the Greendykes Rows. Old Broxburn was overwhelmed. The road north to Winchburgh passes a number of reconditioned miners' rows, winding between gigantic pink bings, as though it were Shale Canyon. The centre lies at the Greendykes Road turn-off to Winchburgh, marked by one of the older surviving buildings in the town - Green Tree Tavern, harled with stone margins, c.1800 - and the Buchan Arms.

Central Broxburn is almost entirely Victorian with modern insertions. The demolished town hall, a large rubbly barn, stood shoulder to the Buchan Arms Hotel facing down Station Road. Its clock survives in the foyer of the rambling Strathbrock Partnership Centre, West Lothian Council with Wheeler & Sproson. Reconfigured and extended from Our Lady's High School, 1969, Alison & Hutchison, with overarching blue pitched metal roofs and banded facing brickwork

Taken from "West Lothian: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Stuart Eydmann, Richard Jaques and Charles McKean, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

NT07SE 103 centred 0750 7213

NMRS PLANS:

Broxburn, Factory site

Dick Peddie & MacKay, Edinburgh new

Attic 2, Bin 35, Bag 1 Dick Peddie, McKay & Jamieson 1946

(Undated) information in NMRS.