14 West End, West Calder

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 5 Jun 2023

This nice old stone house on the way into West Calder from the West also goes by the name of 'Fairfield'. It went up at some point between Ordnance Survey's first two maps of the area, surveyed in the 1850s and 1890s. In the 1890s there was a field behind the house. By the time of the third map, surveyed in 1905, the field behind formed part of a golf course which occupied a long narrow series of fields stretching from the church two doors down to the left, to far beyond where West Calder's Burngrange residential area finishes today. The cemetery, which still marks the edge of the village, was about halfway along the course. There is, coincidentally, still a small unbuilt-on area at the back of this house in amongst the village suburbia, which runs alongside Burngrange Court. It is shown on maps by trees but is now something of a wasteland, so it might improve things if a couple of houses went up there. Or has it been recently been left in such a state to break down resistance to such an idea - i.e. it's all part of a cunning plan?

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