Explore the secret passage at the Palace
The Courier has teamed up with our friends at the Almond Valley Heritage Trust to bring our readers photographs and stories from West Lothian’s past.
This week - A Secret Passage to Linlithgow Palace?
Much of Linlithgow Palace, and a good proportion of old Linlithgow, was built from a golden yellow sandstone quarried at Kingscavil, two miles to the east of the town.
Shortly after opening of the Union Canal in 1822, work began on construction of a tramway linking Kingscavil quarry to a canal basin close to Park Farm – a distance of about 600 yards.
The tramway followed a straight route, starting level with the quarry floor, entered a tunnel about 250 yards long, passing beneath Kingscavil school, smithy and other buildings serving the quarry, before emerged at the foot of a ridge overlooking Park basin.
It continued down the slope of the hill, gradually emerging from a cutting, crossing the road to Philpstoun before terminating on an area of hardstanding beside the canal basin, equipped with a crane.
The first edition OS map, surveyed in 1853, shows the route of the tramway with the tunnel entrances clearly marked, and accompanying notes record:“There is a tramway leading from it to the Union Canal, part of the tramway going underground. Great quantities of the stone go to Leith for export. There are about 40 hands constantly employed.”
The quarry was operated at that time by William Duncan & Sons, who had offices at the Port Hopetoun terminus of the canal.
It seems that the quarry was abandoned some time prior to 1885 when a private railway was constructed to link the Linlithgow Oil Company’s Champfleurie Oil Works with the main line at St Magdelene’s in Linlithgow.
The Oil Company were later to install one of the earliest electric powered water pumps within the quarry to supply drinking water to their tenants in the new Kingscavil rows.
The second edition OS map, revised in 1895, shows the abandoned quarry with the tunnel apparently used for drainage, and the route of the tramway converted to a channel carrying water towards the canal.
The railway to Champfleurie oil works is shown crossing the culvert at right angles. The map also shows a number of air shafts immediately to the south of the Kingscavil smithy building, presumably installed to improve ventilation in the tunnel.
Today, the solid range of stone buildings that once housed the Smithy and School survive as a handsome home, with most of the doors and windows that fronted onto the turnpike road now walled-up.
The bridge carrying the Kingscavil to Philpstoun road over the oil works railway also remains intact, but most other features of the industrial landscape have disappeared.
In about 2005, when the Park Bistro was being built, mysterious stone-lined culverts and tunnels were uncovered on Park Farm.
Intriguing tales emerged of medieval monks and secret passages from Linlithgow Palace. While it would be wonderful to think that such things might exist, the discoveries are easier explained as drainage works for Kingscavil quarry, built on the course of an early 19th century tramway.