IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Erskine Place, LIVINGSTON, EH53 0LU

The recovery of oil from shale was an important industry in 19th century Scotland, and the entrance signs proudly declare Pumpherston to be "The Historic Centre of Shale Oil Industry" The Scottish parliament has decided to ban any future shale hydrocarbon recovery https://www.ineos.com/businesses/ineos-shale/news/shale-gas-ban-a-blow-to-scotland/

Modern housing against a winter backdrop. Livingston Pentecostal Church is on the right.

A collection of parallel streets of single story houses. Probably built to accommodate workers in the shale mines.

"Constructed to the south of the earlier Pumpherston North Village to house staff of the Pumpherston Oil Works" https://www.scottishshale.co.uk/GazVillages/PumpherstonSVillage.html

Like many of the woods in Livingston, this is managed by the Woodland Trust.

I don't think it would cause much argument to describe Craigshill as an unglamorous area of an unglamorous town. However, as with all of Livingston, it is close to a good network of leafy paths, and due to the town sloping down from North to South, has stunning views of the Pentland Hills from certain spots, including an open section on this linear woodland route. There is easy access to the wood via a tarmac path leading from Nasmyth Square, a dead-end road leading to lots of small industrial units with lots of parking space. Presumably the name arises from the woods being on the East side of Livingston, and the main mostly tarmacked path swings round Craigshill's NorthEastern corner, with access from various residential streets and the Mid Calder to Pumpherston road. Like most of Livingston's many small woodlands it is managed by the Woodland Trust, who have enormous exhaustive files available online about all of their sites. The only gripe I have with these reports is that they generally split up these suburban woodlands into 'compartments', with no accompanying map to determine where these compartments are on the ground. This time though it was easy enough to figure them out. This Northern section is mixed, and was originally planted in the mid 1800s. The Southernmost section though, in the neighbouring grid-square, is thought to have been planted during the building of Livingston, which mostly started with Craigshill in the 1960s. I mention this because the Woodland Trust report mentions problems there with various species of conifer having got too tall and therefore blowing over a lot. I wonder if they aren't present in the older section because these tree types weren't readily available at that time, they have already all blown over and/or been felled, or whether it is just a case of humanity becoming increasingly more stupid over time?!

Two of the parallel rows of single storey houses, probably associated with the oilshale industry.

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.

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.