Local history
The Courier have teamed up with our friends at Almond Valley Heritage Trust to bring our readers stories from West Lothian’s past.
While country footpaths are now associated with leisure-time and exercise, many were established as routes to work. Miners and oil workers might walk several miles each day to reach their workplace.
The Breich Water, north of West Calder, once marked the boundary between the counties of Midlothian and Linlithgowshire. During the history of local mines and industry, housing and the workplace often lay on different sides of a burn.
With few roads, the commute involved a trek though fields and footpaths, crossing the water by stepping stone or footbridge.
One crossing lay close to City Farm, providing a short-cut between parts of West Calder and Gavieside, and the pits of Westwood and Breich.
The 1850s OS map shows a rough track and a ford at this point, but by the 1890s a spindly footbridge was also marked.
It seems that the Breich Water frequently misbehaved. Through the years there are many accounts of the paths approaching the bridge being washed away, the burn wandering from its course, and bridge foundations being undermined.
There were various plans to move the location of the bridge, but these always failed to gain the agreement of landowners on the opposing sides of the burn.
Although the neighbouring parishes recognised their shared responsibility, coordinating maintenance and repair work often created difficulties.
One parish might undertake the work, billing the other for half of the costs but the process of gaining prior approval often caused lengthy delays in repair works.
In March 1903, this dithering had tragic consequences. Kate McGovern and her brother Joseph lived in the mining village of Mossend.
The children set off along the footpath to buy fresh milk at City Farm. Some time previously, the bridge had been swept away and planks had been put in its place while the two parish councils squabbled about who should pay for the repairs.
When crossing the rickety line of planks, Kate lost her balance and fell into the swollen stream, dragging her brother with her. Although Joseph managed to cling on to a post and shout until help arrived, Kate was swept away and died.
It was two years before the two parishes agreed to build a steel bridge, but two years later they were still arguing about who should pay.
Census records show that in 1901, Catherine and Joseph McGovern lived with their parents and three other siblings at 25 Front St. Mossend. It records Catherine as being three-years-old and Joseph as five, which would make them only five and seven at the time of the tragedy.
The bridge that now carries the path to City Farm is a much stouter and better maintained structure. The footpath is to form part of the route of the new Shale Trail linking Winchburgh to West Calder.