IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bellalmond Crescent, BATHGATE, EH47 0JF

View westwards, past the Gothenburg (community public house) which is for sale.

Shortly before it meets the Almond.

The Goth in East Whitburn seems a lot younger than the time of the Gothenburgs - public houses as social centres. These were common in mining communities and usually date to the early 20th century. I expect this is built on the site of an older building.

Drum can be seen in the background. Viewed from an east bound coach on the M8 motorway.

I had originally assumed, wrongly, that this bridge was built to allow continued passage of an old road or farm track. Old OS maps though, going back to the earliest 1850s one, show that it was actually there to allow a mill lade, or race, to flow uninterrupted to Redmill corn and barley mill - it looks a bit oversized for its purpose to me, but I suppose they didn't do things by halves back then. Redmill is now the name of the Eastern part of East Whitburn but originally the mill was all that was there. It didn't provide me with any further information, but an interesting discovery while trying to find out more about the mill, was the existence of an old publication called 'Slater's Royal National Commercial Directory of Scotland'. This was published annually between the late 1700s and early 1900s and apparently changed its name occasionally over the years. It was basically a Yellow Pages without phone numbers. It also doesn't bother with addresses either, a village name was obviously deemed quite sufficient back then! It could be a handy resource nevertheless, and it can be viewed online at the National Library of Scotland site.

There was a station here on the Morningside (Lanarkshire) to Bathgate line.

Until recently I had always assumed that the small town of Whitburn took its name from a description of the River Almond, which, while really more of a large stream at this point, is still by far the largest watercourse in its vicinity. What did strike me as odd though, was that the slightly smaller town of Blackburn, a couple of miles East along the same road, and sitting even closer to the Almond, has a diametrically opposite name. It seems fairly certain that Blackburn takes its name from a description of the River Almond, as the old village sat very close to its banks, and there is no Black Burn nearby. Whitburn, however, would appear to have taken its name from this not-at-all white burn on the right of the picture. I do still have slight doubts due to its small size and the fact that the old village of Whitburn, which was formerly just a row of houses East and West of its central crossroads, was quite a bit closer to the river than the burn. However, old maps show that the old church was sited right next to White Burn, which changes its name from Mole's Burn (or Cultrig Burn depending on the age of the map) at that point, so the White Burn theory seems most likely. The village of East Whitburn also sits very close to White Burn, so its name might not actually be referencing its position with regard to its larger neighbour, as is commonly assumed, but just from a description of the burn at that point. The high embankments on both sides of the Almond around here look to be man-made, no doubt to mitigate the impact of flooding on the surrounding farmland.

Also used for East Whitburn Gala Day sports.