Bo'ness from the shore

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 12 Aug 2010

Writing in the 1720s, Defoe stated in his 'Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain', that Bo'ness "has been, and still is, a town of the greatest trade to Holland and France of any in Scotland, except Leith (...) for as they have the most shipping, so they are the best seamen in the Firth, and are very good pilots for the coast of Holland, the Baltic and the coast of Norway". From the 1770s, however, most of the burgh's trade was slowly lost to its rival, Grangemouth, following completion of the Forth-Clyde Canal. "The houses, bearing the marks of antiquity, are low and crouded; but for the most part, clean and commodious. The smoke from the coal-works, was lately a great nuisance. The town involved continually in a cloud, the houses were blackened with soot, the air impregnated with vapour, and strangers were struck with the pandemonium appearance of the place. But these nuisances being now removed from the immediate vicinity, to a considerable distance, and more attention paid to cleaning the streets, the air is more pure and salubrious, and the town assumes a very different aspect. Still, indeed, the smoke from the Grange coal works on the east, the Bo-ness salt-pans on the west, and the dust excited by the carts carrying the coals to the quay for exportation, occasionally incommode the inhabitants." -- Old Statistical Account, 1794

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