Shale Mining Villages

[Pandabean]

Just stumbled across this website, seems to have been set up recently.
It is very good in the sense that when you click on a place you get an old map of the area and when it loads you can hover over this and a present day aerial photograph will be shown along with the map. Very handy.


http://www.almondvalley.co.uk/V_home.htm

[Jamboesque]

Andy,

Thanks for that link. Being a Broxburn lad, born in Edinburgh but moved there within a week or so of being born, it was a fascinating glimpse over ground that I played on when I was a lad some 40 – 50 years ago.

I don’t have much evidence to help them but I will contact them with a couple suggestions for the site. The idea of the old maps and satellite imaging is very similar to that on the National Libraries of Scotland map site http://www.nls.uk/maps/townplans/overlays.html which I use extensively to locate address’s from old Wills & Testaments and Census’s to the present day.

[Rockford]

Hi Andy,

Interesting link! Let's hope that they add much more to it.

Coming from West Lothian, many folk in my family worked in the shale industry. My great-grandfather was a shale miner in Broxburn after he arrived from Ireland, before the family moved to to Deans Rows - which I now know are likely to have been Deans Cottages over which the M8 was built.

For anyone interested, the photo of Greendykes Road in Broxburn from the present day makes in look like the old cottages are all gone, but there are a few stragglers at the top of the road nearest the bing.

Best wishes

Brian

[Anne H]

Hi Andy,

Great link, thanks. I seem to recall that I have a sort of 'big shot' connected with Pumpherson Oil Co. so must investigate this link further.

Regards,
Anne H

[Pandabean]

Well I sent them an email yesterday and got a reply from them this morning about one of my rellies. It seems I solved a mystery for them . One of the houses was occupied by my great great gran for nearly 50 years but they thought the record had stopped.

I was told quite a lot of archives still exist for the company but they are with BP (hmm wonder if i can knock on their door their main HQ is round the road from my work )but they are mainly technical rather than personal resources.

They said:

"The website will hopefully develop into a proper resource for family history"

I cant wait to see what comes out of this .

Jambo - I didnt realise NLS did that. Must check it out. Thanks

[Roxy]

As another Broxburn lad, thanks for a great link.

Roxy

[scottishshale]

Hi! I know it's been about a year since the last post on this subject but the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry in Livingston have begun to further develop the website to cover all aspects of the Scottish shale oil industry. The new website is at http://www.scottishshale.co.uk. Although, we are still in the early stages with the website, much work has been done and is now online, including a genealogy search of transcribed oil company employment and tenancy records. Transcription and digitisation of the records is ongoing and the online search will be added to, along with other content, as the project progresses.

[AndrewP]

To continue from the post above, I received the following by e-mail today:

• The Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry at Almond Valley Heritage Centre in Livingston is developing a new wesbsite to celebrate, exchange knowledge, and encourage research into the heritage of the Scottish shale oil industry. The resource is intended to be of particular value to those researching family histories and includes the facility to search our employment and tenancy records which are currently being transcribed. Although the website is still undergoing ongoing development, it is already populated with a great deal of information and searchable records.
  
  The website can be found at http://www.scottishshale.co.uk .

I've had a look at the site and their digitised documents are probably unique and are very well presented and easy to search; and they are free!

All the best,

AndrewP