Livingston, Deans, Main Street, School

Deans was centred on the old shale-oil village of Livingston Station: but the bings were flattened to form Deans Industrial Estate, and the station (Livingston North) is now a mile east by Carmondean local centre. Note particularly the church, 1949, Orphoot and Lindsay, typically Scots harled and slated with a pyramid-roof tower. School (now youth centre), 1906, has art-nouveau details at the entrances. St Paul's Church, Carmondean, 1980, by F R Stephenson, rides the contours with a series of jagged harled gables and pantiled mono-pitched roofs providing clerestory lighting into the kirk. The Livingston Ability Centre, 2001, West Lothian Council, centred on a circular, double-height social/café space, provides in-house work experience for people with a physical disability, all beneath a dramatic glazed lantern. The octagonal Copper Tun pub, 1981, Waters Jamieson Partnership, has gently pitched metal roofs and a tourie top-knot.

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