Pond Outflow joining Caw Burn

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 13 Mar 2022

This muddy burn looks man-made to me, though it has followed the same course for at least 200 years, judging by old maps. The 1850s OS naming book says that it was "formed by the drainage of several fields," which kind of validates my theory that it is, in effect, a large drainage ditch, in its early stages at least. It eventually reaches the Brox Burn, which drains into the River Almond. It used to start somewhere in what is now Livingston, though it is hard to say exactly where, as it used to form some kind of administrative boundary, which always makes the old maps harder to decode. Today, though, it flows underground from an indeterminate point and only appears overground about a hundred yards from here. There is a Cawburn Inn in Pumpherston (which seems to have changed from a normal pub to a major darts and pool venue at some point in the twenty years or so since I was last there) just West of here - an indication of the burn's original course The water joining it on the left comes from a smallish pond that must be the result of some remedial works to part of the vast former mining land around here, as it is not shown on any of the older maps available online (which stop in the late 1960s at present). The pond is shown on modern mapping, but the water leading from it to this spot is not.

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