The last wash house in Livingstone Street
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: The last wash house in Livingstone Street.
During the late 1860s a new village of about 360 homes was built to house the workforce of Young’s mighty oil works and refinery at Addiewell.
Much of the housing in Addiewell consisted of single storey rows of cottages with one or two rooms; as was typical of Scottish mining districts at that time. The streets that ran between the rows were named after famous engineers and scientists.
On the west side of the village, the turnpike road west to Breich bridge was flanked on either side by more substantial blocks of two storey tenements, with homes on the upper level accessed by external spiral staircases facing into the road.
These homes had the privilege of being named“Livingstone Street”after David Livingstone, the explorer and missionary who was a personal friend of James Paraffin Young.
Livingstone Street, and the two storey tenements of the nearby Watt Street, Stephenson Street and Davy Street were collectively known as the high rows.
By the standards of the day these were sound houses, described as commodious and comfortable, yet they lacked the basic amenities.
Water for cooking and for the washing of people and clothes had to be carried in buckets from communal standpipes behind the rows. The flight of stairs added to the burden of those living in upper houses of the high rows.
Toilets were of the most basic type of dry privy and ashpit, and were set some distance from the houses. They were shared by many and emptied only occasionally by a scavenger with his horse and cart.
Pails used in quiet corners were an essential requirement for the women of the village. Running water and the WC were gradually installed in many homes from the 1890s onwards, yet Young’s Paraffin Light and Mineral were disgracefully slow in sharing these improvements with their tenants.
The company was condemned in the socialist press for allowing such“evil conditions”. It was said that in the high-ends“health and morality have a hard struggle to survive”.
It was not until about 1929 that the wonders of running water were shared with the folk of the high rows. Brick walls were built to enclose the area at the head and at the foot of each spiral stair, providing the convenience of flushing toilets just across from your front door.
It is probably at that time that washhouses were built at the rear of the houses. Tall chimneys provided a fine draught for the wash boiler within, and there were coal stores for each home at the end of each washhouse.
Wash day was a laborious drudge, but no doubt there were giggles and happy gossip among the steam and carbolic soap.
During the 1950s the homes of Addiewell were boarded up as they fell vacant, and in 1967 Livingstone Street and the remaining high rows were demolished.
One wash house immediately adjacent to Addiewell farm seems to have escaped the clearance, presumably as it was of use to the farmer.
Today, Addiewell farm appears much as it would have done before industry transformed the area. Only the washhouse, and the superior housing of Faraday Street now survive from shale-age Addiewell.