Old Bridge near Site of Rusha Quarry

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 27 Jul 2021

The bridge allows passage across Longhill Burn, which further downstream turns into West Calder Burn, the village of West Calder being, in the main, built on its Southern side. Rusha Quarry, which old maps show was operational between at least the mid 1800s and early 1900s, was situated on the right hand side of the burn past the bridge. It seems unlikely that the bridge was connected with the quarry, as there was a track leading to the quarry from the road which Rusha farm was (and still is) situated on. The only old map showing a continuation of the track over the bridge shows it as stopping just short of the former farm of Dykehead, which itself could be reached from another road, so it was probably built just to get produce and livestock across without faffing about with fords. In the OS naming books, compiled during the surveying of their initial maps, the quarry is described as being "of considerable note". Some kind of firestone called 'lake-stone' (which doesn't appear in any dictionaries) was extracted here, and must have been of very high quality as small amounts were apparently shipped to America for use in ovens and fire safes. The quarry gets its name from the farm of the same name. Having done a bit of digging it turns out that the name, disappointingly, has no connections to Russia itself. Pre-OS maps call it both Rushaw and Raeshaw. My hunch is that it is an eliding of 'Rush Shaw'. Lots of place-names just East of here have 'Rash' (a Scottish version of 'rush') at the start, and "shaw' is generally agreed to have denoted a wood, or something wood-related in Middle English, a common dialect of which was spoken in the Southern Scotland and Northern England in mediaeval times.

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