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Explore! Our articles cover anything and everything to do with West Lothian, West Edinburgh and Falkirk.
A selection of what goes into print is published here.
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Editor
- Oct 4, 2019
- 5 min
The Calders Witches
Cunnigar Hill, Mid Calder; when Mid Calder was gripped by the witch hunting craze of the 1640s innocent women were dragged up this hill and put to death. At that time the hill was just outside the village boundary. An artificial hill or “tumulus” probably dating from the bronze age, it earned the name of “Witches Knowe.” The violent deaths of these women added to the long and violent history of this particular spot next to the River Almond. Here in Mid Calder, a locally-bo

Editor
- Jul 4, 2012
- 4 min
There's a coach coming in!
West Lothian’s varied travel history includes a 90 year period when stagecoaches ruled the roads. Between 1760 and 1850, stagecoaches thundered to and fro along the three main roads cutting through the county and connecting Edinburgh and Glasgow. Coaching inns, a few of which remain today, like the Fork & Field in Midcalder and Livingston Village’s Livingston Inn, were purpose-built staging posts strung out along these routes like vital links in a chain, providing food and s
Editor
- Jan 5, 2009
- 2 min
Who was Lizzie Bryce?
Lizzie Bryce was born to William Baxter and his wife Margaret Wilson in the parish of Mid Calder in January 1776. She grew up like any other poor child of her time: a few years of schooling at the parish school in Mid Calder, then out to work on a local farm. At the age of 23, Lizzie Baxter married Alexander Bryce, a ploughman who like Lizzie was born and bred in Mid Calder. In the records of the time, the name is always spelled Bryce, not Brice. Their first son, Alexander
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