West Lothian Courier

Ghost villages included the hamlet of Starlaw Row

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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 - Starlaw’s Moving Story. Ghost villages abound in West Lothian. In the Victorian age of industry, workers’housing was often hurried and cheaply constructe­d to serve new mines and works in rural locations.

Such industries often had a short life, leaving these remote homes empty, neglected and slowly falling into disrepair. Once demolished, their sites returned to agricultur­e or wilderness, leaving little trace in the landscape. Many were too short-lived to appear on maps, and few were ever photograph­ed.

Starlaw Row, between Livingston and Bathgate, was such a ghost village, but was rather unusual in that some of its houses were dismantled and erected elsewhere.

Boghall (often referred to as Starlaw) Oil Works, was a bold enterprise begun in about 1867 to rival James Paraffin Young’s mighty Addiewell works. It’s backers included a former partner of Paraffin Young and the local landowner and MP.

It seems that Boghall works and its associated mines never lived up to expectatio­ns and the owners turned their attentions to their other works in Uphall.

The proprietor­s of Boghall Oil Works erected over 60 homes to house their workforce; 30 in Starlaw Rows, eight in Stable Rows.

All but one of the eight victims of the terrible 1870 Starlaw pit disaster were residents of the Starlaw Rows. The location of the remaining 20 or so homes is unknown – some might have been temporary huts used during constructi­on of the works which continued in use as rough homes afterwards.

A number were, however, of brick constructi­on, as evidenced by an 1881 advertisem­ent seeking contractor­s to take down 12 brick houses from Boghall and re-erect them at Uphall Oil Works. It seems that among the workforce of the appointed contractor was the 14-year-old Annie Allan, employed to chisel off the mortar from the old bricks at Boghall. She died when the gable end of one of the old houses collapsed and crushed her. A further ghost in a ghost village.

It’s not known where the Boghall houses were re-erected in Uphall Station; a large number of new houses were built to serve the rapidly expanding Uphall Oil Works at that time. One possibilit­y is that they formed the odd collection of buildings known as Office Rows.

Boghall works closed in about 1880 and much of the remaining housing lay empty until sold to the West Lothian Oil Company, who opened their new oil works at Deans.

The village enjoyed something of a renaissanc­e with a new school at Starlaw constructe­d with funds from the oil company. Little was invested in improving the housing however.

There had been outbreaks of scarlet fever and a fatal case of smallpox. The ditches in front of the rows were described as“in a most filthy state”. A reliable piped water supply did not reach the village until 1895.

The West Lothian Oil Company collapsed in 1891, although by then many of the houses in Starlaw Row already lay empty. At that time, the Pumphersto­n Oil Company were reconstruc­ting Seafield Oil Works on the site of an earlier failed enterprise.

New housing was urgently required for new Seafield workers, therefore old rows at Starlaw were taken to house Pumphersto­n Oil Co. staff, presumably as a temporary expedient.

It seems that little was done to improve living conditions, and in 1914 it was reported that there continued to be only four privies to serve the 30 houses of Starlaw Row.

During the 1930s, it seems that some of the internal wall between houses were knocked down to provide more spacious homes, but by the end of the decade the 10 single room houses had been demolished, and the 20 room-and-kitchen homes at Starlaw and the houses of Stable Row appear to have shared this fate soon after.

Starlaw school closed in 1938 and was sold by the council a decade later.

The only surviving physical link with this lost community is Starlaw Cottage. This fine establishe­d home at the western end of Starlaw Row is on site of the works manager’s house or office, and might incorporat­e parts of the original building,

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