Following my bout of genealogy research over lockdown, I decided it was time for a field trip to see if I could find ancestral graves. My mum's paternal grandfather (David Howieson) hailed from West Calder in the Lothians where he started his working life as a shale miner. His wife Elizabeth was from the same village and both were apparently interred in the local cemetery. Moreover, David's and Elizabeth's folks were also buried in this graveyard, as were three of David's siblings who died as young adults. It was time to go and investigate.
My mum never knew her grandparents from her father's side and my research was something of a revelation to her. David grew up in what I can only imagine to be tough circumstances. Eight children in a two-roomed house. Four of the siblings died between the ages of 17 and 25. I've confirmed TB as the cause of at least two of those deaths. The four surviving lads all started as shale miners but went on to bigger and better things. David became a colliery manager, as did two of his brothers - Robert and Matthew. The fourth man (Joseph) had a distinguished army career. All this certainly got me thinking about the old nature versus nurture chestnut. My mother is a supremely academic person who was dux of the school. Here we have four of her forebears who probably had a rudimentary education and swung a pick axe as there would have been few other realistic employment opportunities. Yet in time all went on to hold senior positions. Now, that doesn't happen by accident! Mum readily agreed when I suggested the brains were running through the Howieson line. Much to the disgruntlement of my old man! Lockdown was lifting and there were no further restrictions on driving so off I headed to West Calder - a place I had never visited before. The journey took around 45 minutes. My plan was to visit the cemetery on the edge of the village and then climb the Five Sisters shale bings - now a protected monument. I located the graveyard without difficulty. I had a note of the the lair references, obtained from the West Lothian Family Heritage Society who had promptly responded to my enquiry. I have an online membership with the National Library of Scotland which entitles me to use a genealogy website called Find My Past. This resource had yielded the burial details for my West Calder ancestors and the heritage society fleshed the matter out further.
I had never gone looking for a grave site before, apart from a visit to Père Lachaise in Paris where I tracked down Jim Morrison's final resting place and also found the tombs of Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf. As I strolled into West Calder Cemetery I looked for a plan of the plot layout. I knew my great grandparents were buried in Section K and surely there would be some indication of where that might be. Alas I couldn't see any pointers and had to resort to inspecting stones one by one. I decided to start by searching the outer walls then work my way inwards. After checking the perimeter and then walking up and down rows, I finally twigged that some graves were marked with little plastic tags showing the section and lair number. I quickly ascertained that area K was wrapped around the boundary walls. I must have missed something on my first pass. I was in for a disappointment. My second circuit brought me to a blank space between other stones. This was my great grandfather's grave, but unmarked. It was exactly the same story with my great grandmother. Now, I had known in advance there was no guarantee I would find an actual gravestone and I didn't expect to find this evidence for my great-great grandparents as they were working-class people and a permanent remembrance stone was most likely beyond their means. However, my great grandparents would presumably have been in a stronger financial position. David had died in a detached house in Airdrie (I assume a coal company property) while Elizabeth had resided in a desirable part of Edinburgh prior to her death 14 years later.
Mum chortled upon hearing about my discovery - "they must have been even tighter than the Frasers" and I was able to fill her in about the village of West Calder. She had never been. It seems there were several reasons for people being buried without a headstone. Lack of finance being the obvious one, or perhaps the surviving family members being unable to agree how the costs would be apportioned. Many funeral insurance plans covered only the purchase of the plot and costs of the ceremony. There were also folk who specified in advance they wanted a simple resting place. I determined the approximate location of my great-great grandparents' graves. They were in an area of mainly grass with only a handful of headstones dotted around. Wooden markers were probably placed here in the past but of course they haven't survived the ravages of time. I paid my respects before I left the graveyard and was glad I'd made the effort to travel out. I haven't yet unearthed any photos of my great-grandparents from the Howieson line but pictured above is my grandad - born in 1899! Wasn't he a rather dapper chap? Unfortunately I never knew him as he passed a couple of years before I was born. He was 46 when my mum arrived on this earth and this "older dad" status transported me back to Victorian times when tracing his forebears. He worked in the insurance industry as a young man but went down the pits when he became a father as the pay was good at the time. My mum insists her dad hated working underground and it serves as a reminder that - much as we romanticise the old days - a lot of men who actually worked in the mines didn't want their sons to follow suit. There would have been little choice in the matter back in the 1800s but one good thing about the second World War is that it changed the opportunities for working people beyond all recognition. I reflected on all this as I walked back to the car and prepared myself for a post-lockdown assault of the Five Sisters.
The shale oil industry grew rapidly from the 1850s onward, following the registering of a patent by Glasgow-born James "Paraffin" Young. He worked out an efficient method of distilling oil from coal and shale. Another great invention from a Scot! Bathgate Chemical Works - established in 1851 - was arguably the world's first example of mineral oils being processed on a massive industrial scale. Production plants proliferated around West Lothian, taking advantage of the ready supply of suitable shale. Thousands of workers were attracted to this new industry, my great-great grandfather among them. He moved from Ayrshire with his two infant sons and settled in Mossend, a workers housing scheme on the edge of West Calder. Another reason for upping sticks may have been the fact he was starting a second family with a much younger woman while his legal wife was still alive. But that's another story! See my post on genealogy for the gossip. As the 20th century progressed, shale oil had to compete with imported crude oil and some production plants faced closure. The ailing industry was given a stay of execution by the outbreak of WW2 - the government providing subsidies in order to ensure a steady supply of domestic fuel stocks. In fact, the brand new Westwood Oilworks were constructed outside West Calder in 1941. The slag heaps from this project formed my climbing assignment for today. The saw-tooth (and surprisingly green) series of peaks is now an accepted feature of the surrounding landscape. Westwood was the final shale plant to close as the industry vanished in 1962.
I took a path around the base of the bings, which were too steep to scale at the point of arrival. As I worked my way through 180 degrees, a very obvious route led upwards. Although the gradient presented no problems from a climbing perspective, I was soon puffing as this was my first serious ascent in many weeks. A few other folk could be seen on the slopes and it's obviously a popular spot for locals to get some fresh air. After a couple of pauses, I reached the summit and the enjoyed the excellent views across an otherwise largely flat landscape. The series of bings upon which I was standing is now a listed monument - a fact I found rather strange at first as my homeland of Fife was once covered in mining waste heaps, nearly all of which have been removed and I don't remember anyone talking about saving them. It's nice to keep a reminder of a once powerful industry rather than obliterate all traces. I saw a hare (or was it a fox?) dart across a neighbouring slope, proving that nature eventually reclaims untouched environments in any case. There may well have been access routes to the other peaks but I felt I'd done more than enough for the day and began to make my way back down. With the café in West Calder offering only limited seating, I headed for nearby Bathgate and lunched in a supermarket car park. I was surprised at the size of the town and amount of shops. It was a place I'd only ever passed by previously. I will return however to visit the town museum which has information on local industry.