Addiewell

This house is first shown on an 1820s county map, and first named on the initial OS map from the 1850s. Back then it went by the name of Mountgrove and appears to have either been bigger, or (more likely) to have had other buildings attached. It is described in the OS naming books, which were compiled when drawing up their first maps of an area, as being a single storey farmhouse - what looks like a first floor from the picture would have just been an attic. The name later changed to Grovemount and on modern maps this has become Grove Mount. It still has a roof of sorts, which has partially collapsed, and is boarded up at its Eastern end. However, a door has either fallen off or been pulled of at this Western end. Intriguingly there are things inside, which is always exciting, however old you are! There is a stack of mostly unopened mail - the only date I spotted was 2000 - and a number of very rusty old tools along with numerous empty jars and other garagey bits and pieces. So presumably, once the cottage became unfit for habitation it was rented out to somebody doing some kind of vehicle repairs. There is also an open-sided small outbuilding nearby, with two rows of bricks inside above a very shallow pit, which would definitely have been used for underbody repair work. I also spotted an unopened can of corned beef with a best before date of 2017, so somebody was planning on making sandwiches here about five years ago too.

Lying close to the ruined farm cottage of Grove Mount are a number of long, mostly intact, brick walls. Modern large-scale maps don't show them all and it looks like they would once have formed large enclosures. This is one of two sets of former dog kennels attached to the outside of the walls - presumably they were added later on, making use of the original constructions, but it is hard to say for sure.

In the shade of the trees at Rusha

Substantial stone building

With a very neat stone dyke running alongside the road

The bridge allows passage across Longhill Burn, which further downstream turns into West Calder Burn, the village of West Calder being, in the main, built on its Southern side. Rusha Quarry, which old maps show was operational between at least the mid 1800s and early 1900s, was situated on the right hand side of the burn past the bridge. It seems unlikely that the bridge was connected with the quarry, as there was a track leading to the quarry from the road which Rusha farm was (and still is) situated on. The only old map showing a continuation of the track over the bridge shows it as stopping just short of the former farm of Dykehead, which itself could be reached from another road, so it was probably built just to get produce and livestock across without faffing about with fords. In the OS naming books, compiled during the surveying of their initial maps, the quarry is described as being "of considerable note". Some kind of firestone called 'lake-stone' (which doesn't appear in any dictionaries) was extracted here, and must have been of very high quality as small amounts were apparently shipped to America for use in ovens and fire safes. The quarry gets its name from the farm of the same name. Having done a bit of digging it turns out that the name, disappointingly, has no connections to Russia itself. Pre-OS maps call it both Rushaw and Raeshaw. My hunch is that it is an eliding of 'Rush Shaw'. Lots of place-names just East of here have 'Rash' (a Scottish version of 'rush') at the start, and "shaw' is generally agreed to have denoted a wood, or something wood-related in Middle English, a common dialect of which was spoken in the Southern Scotland and Northern England in mediaeval times.

This is the western end Addiewell Bing Nature Reserve.

Walking towards the west the path became more difficut to follow Link

Hanging on to the edge of Addiewell Bing

Looking towards St Thomas RC church on right and row of former miners' cottages on left

View to woodland on north bank

Former triangular area of forestry beside Breich Water

The bank on the right has been reinforced.

The fact that maps show no trace of anything having ever been round here would normally imply that the passage under the railway was created for farm access. However, as the land behind camera could also be accessed from the West Calder to Blackburn Road, just to the West of here, it is possible that the track which used to go under the railway at this point did once lead somewhere, the maps before and after the railway's introduction being 40+ years apart. The line which was once here went by the misleading name of the Loop Line. A loop, to my mind anyway, refers to something that returns to, or returns very close to its starting point. In this case, while it did meander a bit and have some sweeping bends, the railway was essentially a short detour from the still operational Edinburgh - Shotts - Glasgow route. It branched off from the main line in what is now the Southern half of Polbeth, passed through Stoneyburn, and rejoined the main line in between Addiewell and Breich, heading in the same direction. Study of older maps nearby shows that it wasn't part of a larger loop either, as I had previously assumed.

Originally a farmhouse dating from the 18th century. The present building was extended and remodelled by a local architect in the 1890's. It was a popular hotel 1960's-1980's

Farm buildings backed by railway line

Possibly a second or third cut

Large whisky bond south of Addiewell