Threemiletown - Three Miles from Where?!

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 2 Apr 2021

Threemiletown is a hamlet of around 60-odd properties, all residential, scattered around a staggered crossroads on the main road between Winchburgh and Linlithgow. (I'm guessing the only reason this road is classified as a B-road is that there are a couple of lowish bridges as you near Linlithgow). Originally it was just the name of a farmhouse, built in the 1700s, which still stands today and has been recently incorporated into a cul-de-sac which sits just East of here. The name remains something of a mystery - three miles from where exactly?! Of the historically well-populated settlements nearby, Winchburgh is definitely too close (1.8 miles according to Google's route planner), which leaves Uphall (2.6 miles), Kirkliston (4.4 miles), Linlithgow (4.2 miles) and Broxburn (4.0 miles) as the remaining candidates. I would rule out Kirkliston on the grounds that it has never looked noticeably more substantial than Winchburgh and you would pass through Winchburgh if travelling from Kirkliston anyway. The other three are all a possibility though. Even though the roads round here seem pretty much unchanged for centuries, older mapping is of such a small scale that minor tracks of the time wouldn't have been recorded, so there could well have been a shorter route to Broxburn in days gone by. Uphall does seem a bit near, but then again there is no way of knowing where exactly in Uphall the distance would have been measured from. While the distance to Linlithgow is measured on a very direct route, this being, historically, the most important town in the area, it may well have had some marked outer town boundary way back when. And to all of this must be added the fact that in the 1700s, when the farmhouse would have been named, the old Scots mile, which at 1984 yards was almost exactly an eighth longer than its English equivalent, was still in common usage. The houses on the right are actually mostly flats, though whether they have always been is unclear. The first house has the street name Rosebank on it, and the last house has a sign saying St James Place. This was what alerted me to the fact that it wasn't just a row of nice big houses - I really took the picture as was quite taken with the blue Land Rover parked up though!

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