Addiewell, Blackburn Road, St Thomas' Roman Catholic Church
Church (20th Century)
Site Name Addiewell, Blackburn Road, St Thomas' Roman Catholic Church
Classification Church (20th Century)
Canmore ID 211506
Site Number NS96SE 48
NGR NS 99491 62843
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/211506
- Council West Lothian
- Parish West Calder
- Former Region Lothian
- Former District West Lothian
- Former County Midlothian
ADDIEWELL, from 1865
Paraffin Young's largest oil works. Shale oil communities characteristically took the form of long, low, single-storey, brick cottages, placed at random in unlikely rural locations - like Faraday Place, c.1890. Addiewell has no real centre, unless you count its crowstepped farm, 1762. St Thomas RC Church, 1923, by Reginald Fairlie, sitting high and harled on its raised site, has a baroque gable with niche for a statue at the apex. Priest's house with pyramid roof adjoins. The most eye-catching feature of Addiewell is the Five Sisters shale bing, the most predominant surviving symbol of the oil industry. Meadowhead House, 1899, by J G Fairley, is an impressive three-storey baronial tower grafted upon an Improvement farmhouse.
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
NMRS REFERENCE
Architect: Reginald Fairlie 1924
(Undated) information in NMRS.
