Bathgate, 51 Gideon Street, Glenmavis Tavern

Main Street

All that remains of this historic Bathgate street, where Sir James Young Simpson (discoverer of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform) was born in 1811, is the plan and the Star Inn, c.1860, a handsome black-and-white L-plan hostelry. Simpson Memorial Church, 1979, by Ian McMillan consists of curved harled walls at odds with the regiment of vertical windows on their brick plinths. The Glenmavis Tavern, probably 18th century, is a white, substantial inn, with stone margins, good doorway and wallhead chimney.

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