Parish Notice Board Retailers In Bathgate, West Lothian

Bathgate (Scots: Bathket or Bathkit,Scottish Gaelic: Both Chèit) is a town in West Lothian, Scotland, 5 miles (8 km) west of Livingston and next to the M8 motorway. Nearby towns are Armadale, Blackburn, Linlithgow, Livingston, West Calder and Whitburn. Situated 2 miles (3 km) south of the ancient Neolithic burial site at Cairnpapple Hill, Bathgate and the surrounding area show signs of habitation before about 3500 BC and the world’s oldest known reptile fossil has been found in the town. By the 12th century, Bathgate was a little settlement, with a church at Kirkton and a castle south of the gift day town centre. Local mines were time-honored in the 17th century but the town remained little in size until the coming of the industrial revolution. By the Victorian era, Bathgate grew in prominence as an industrial and mining centre, principally joined with the coal and shale oil industries. By the to the fore 20th century, much of the mining and oppressive industry on the order of the town had ceased and the town developed manufacturing industries, principally in vehicle production and superior electronics before these factories closed in the late 20th century. Today Bathgate is the second largest town in West Lothian, after Livingston and serves as a regional commuter town within the Scottish Central Belt.

Bathgate first enters the history of history in a affirmation charter by King Malcolm IV of Scotland (1141 – 9 December 1165). In royal charters of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, the publish of Bathgate has appeared as: Bathchet (1160), Bathket (1250) and Bathgetum (1316). Batket in the 14th century, and by the 15th appeared as both Bathgat and Bathcat, the latter an offshoot of Uchtred Dalrymple’s feudal lineage, which ruled during ancient times. The reveal is a “manifest corruption” of an earlier Cumbric proclaim meaning ‘Boar Wood’ (cf. Welsh baedd coed).