Scrubby woodland

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 18 Jul 2023

Small areas of woodland amongst agricultural land like this one, in this part of West Lothian, generally hint to there having been some mining activity at the location in the past. Old maps provide faint clues, but nothing conclusive - a small triangle at the North of the wood, long occupied by Campbell's vehicle scrapyard, roughly occupies a former spoilheap. The heap is shown on an 1890s OS map, but no nearby workings are ever shown - it is quite possible though, that something sprung up and got wound up within the 40-plus year period between the Ordnance Survey's first and second editions. Then again, the scrubby woodland is marked as boggy - unlike the surrounding fields - in their first 1850s map, and therefore was probably not farmable anyway, so it's hard to say. To add to the mystery, an interlinking road once ran from the main Armadale to Bathgate road and the 'scrapyard road' (as it's now commonly called) to the North. And off this shortcut once ran a spur to nowhere, for a short distance at the SouthWest of today's wood. It now resembles a short unfilled moat and it is hard to figure out if the old track was the high bit or the low bit, and whichever it was, why there is about a four foot drop between the two. The field to the South must always have been arable as there is no fence between it and the wood. And a couple of big bulky metal things are covered in moss in the wood - they looked like very old engines, probably dumped there due to some criminal activity in long-gone days before cybercrime took over.

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