IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Heaney Avenue, LIVINGSTON, EH53 0LL

Oil mining village, predating Livingston New Town. Now on the eastern edge of the new metropolis. A typical Scottish November day.

Cottages on Drumshoreland Road.

If somebody from a hundred years ago was transported forward in time to today, they would quickly conclude that the only things people aren't willing to use the cars they now all have to drive for are haircuts and takeaways. Pumpherston has never been that heavy on hairdressers, but until recently was something of a phenomenon in takeaway density - a relatively small village, it once boasted seven, including 3 Chinese. I only spotted three or four open tonight; the rest were shuttered. The big building ahead was once the village's main Co-op. This seems to have been more of an early shopping complex than the Co-ops we are familiar with today. It once housed a butchers, a drapers (in the olden days people made a lot of their clothes themselves, or at least paid somebody else to do so for them), a furniture store, a grocers and a general store. The building on the left, now divided between umpteen businesses, was built in the 1920s and was the Co-op bakery. The Co-op, which was part of the West Calder Co-operative Society at the time, arrived here in the 1880s. They took over an existing store and upgraded and expanded it. Within 20 years, however, they demolished it all and built the building shown here, complete with the clock tower which now only tells the right time in the winter. The ScottishShale website has a lot of pictures of it (including a colour postcard), but even they have no idea of the purpose of the bell above the clock. The old shop closed in the early 1980s. I'm not sure when the new Co-op opened, but it occupies a building which was formerly an independent store and can be seen in the distance, opposite the unseen side of the old building.

A development of modern houses just off the northernmost of the streets in South Village.

Seen on approach to Edinburgh Airport from the west.

Very wet after much rain.

The golf course is built on the site of the Pumpherston Oil Works, one of the busiest of the many shale oil works in West Lothian. The gate gives access to the course from South Village.

The streets in South Village are possibly the only part of Pumpherston that would still be recognised by the shale miners and oils workers who lived here in the heyday of the shale oil industry, but even here many of the cottages have been altered or replaced.

View over 16th tee.

Each of the cottages in South Village had a coal shed at the end of the block. Unlike the houses, many of the coal sheds have survived more or less unaltered.