THE HISTORY OF HALFWAY HOUSE
The Courier and our friends at West Lothian Local History Library have teamed up to help readers take a trip down Memory Lane.
We will be featuring regular photos and details from West Lothian’s past.
This week we tell the story of Halfway House near Whitburn.
Halfway House is a property with an interesting history.
It stands at the entrance of the driveway leading up to Polkemmet House. The mansion house has been demolished and the grounds are now Polkemmet Country Park.
There is an interesting connection between the house and Robert Burns.
His first child was an illegitimate daughter by his mother’s maidservant, Elizabeth Paton.
The girl, Elizabeth Burns, was brought up first by her mother and then by Robert Burns ’brother Gilbert in East Lothian.
She married John Bishop, the overseer on the Polkemmet Estate, and they lived at Halfway House c.1820.
Sadly, she died young, and her grave and that of her young daughter, can be seen in the churchyard of Whitburn South Church. The house was either re-built or much altered in the Victorian age, and no longer looks like the house that Elizabeth Burns would have known.
Halfway House got its name because it was the halfway point between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
In coaching days, the house was an inn and travellers would stop and refresh themselves here and the teams of horses would be changed.