Medieval (c1100–1500) Bathgate first enters the chronicles of history in a confirmation charter by King
Malcolm IV of Scotland (1141 – 9 December 1165). In royal charters of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, the name 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 name is a "manifest corruption" of an earlier
Cumbric name meaning 'Boar Wood' (cf. Welsh
baedd coed). Early records of Bathgate are somewhat sketchy. It is recorded that, around 1160, Uchtred Dalrymple, Sheriff of
Linlithgow, and
Geoffrey de Melville came to Bathgate at the command of King
Malcolm IV and measured out an area of land which was to form the basis of Bathgate Parish. The church and all its associate property were placed under the auspices of
Holyrood Abbey at that time and paid a tenth of its income from the land to that institution. In 1315, the daughter of King Robert I of Scotland (
Robert The Bruce),
Marjorie (alternatively spelt Margery) Bruce, married
Walter Stewart (or Steward) (1293–1326), the 6th Lord High Steward of Scotland. The dowry to her husband included the lands and castle of Bathgate. Walter died at the castle on 9 April 1326. This marriage is still celebrated in an annual pageant forming part of the Bathgate Procession & John Newland Festival, colloquially known as the Bathgate Procession. In the 1846 book
A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland,
Samuel Lewis writes: Another antiquarian, W. Jardin, in the
Statistical Account of Scotland Vol I (1793), and referring to Walter Stewart, states: Dating from around the same time the remains of Bathgate's former parish church still stand at Kirkton. The original 12th-century construction was absorbed by a later build in 1739 when a new church was erected on the same site. The walls of the church were consolidated in 1846. This simple whitewashed edifice served the community until its last service on 9 April 1882. King Malcolm IV makes reference to the original church in a charter, granting it to the monks of
Holyrood Abbey. Records show that Holyrood Abbey gave the church to the abbot and monks of
Newbattle Abbey in 1327.
17th–18th centuries In 1606
silver ore was found at nearby
Hilderston, in the shadow of Cairnpapple Hill, by a prospecting
collier, Sandy Maund. This accidental discovery began a short-lived crown "project" in the area. Advisers to
King James VI of Scotland became aware of the discovery, and in April 1608 repossessed the land for the crown. The prospector
Bevis Bulmer and
Thomas Foulis opened a mine called "God's Blessing". A sample of the ore was shipped to London, and assayed in the
Tower of London by Andrew Palmer. By December 1608 it was clear that the ore in the mine was of varying quality and by March 1613 all efforts to extract silver from the area were abandoned. Bathgate remained a very small rural community until the middle of the 19th century with only a foray by
Covenanters in the 17th century to unrest the populace.
Francis Groome, in the
Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882–84) writes:
Robert Louis Stevenson, in the book
Lay Morals, Part 2: The Pentland Rising. A Page of History further elucidates upon this night in November 1666: His depiction goes on to describe how the half the army perished in the freezing weather as they headed towards the
Pentland Hills.
19th century Established around 1800, the Glenmavis Distillery in Bathgate was purchased in 1831 by John McNab, who produced the eponymous ''MacNab's Celebrated Glenmavis Dew'' from the site until the distillery's closure in 1910. In 1885, the distillery was producing 80,000 gallons of single malt a year which was transported to Scotland, England and the colonies. In 1831
Bathgate Academy was built. Designed by the Edinburgh architects
R & R Dickson this is Bathgate's only large public building of historic merit. It was endowed by a Jamaican plantation owner John Newlands. When the cannel coal resources dwindled around 1866, Young started distilling paraffin from much more readily available
shale. The landscape of the Lothians is still dotted with the orange spoil heaps (called bings) from this era. Collieries and quarries and the associated industries (brickworks, steelworks) Designed by Wardrop and Reid, the church was built of sandstone in
Romanesque architectural style. Designed by the Scottish architect
James Graham Fairley, it is in
Early English architectural style and the church is Category B listed. St Mary's is in a
Gothic architectural style and is Category C listed. The area was later redeveloped as the Wester Inch Village, a housing estate in the early 21st century with more than 1,700 homes added. On 24 March 1986, the
Bathgate-Edinburgh railway line was re-opened to passengers for the first time since the 1950s. This railway line was extended as the
Airdrie-Bathgate Rail Link to
Airdrie allowing train services to run between
Glasgow Queen Street and
Edinburgh Waverley via on time and on budget in December 2010. The world's oldest known reptile fossil,
Westlothiana lizziae (affectionately referred to as
Lizzie), was discovered in
East Kirkton Quarry, Bathgate in 1987; it is now in the
Museum of Scotland. Early in 1992, the US company
Motorola opened a mobile phone manufacturing (Personal Communications Sector or PCS) plant at Easter Inch in Bathgate (now the Pyramids Business Park). In 2001, the global market for mobile phones dropped sharply and as a consequence, despite pressure from the highest levels of UK government, on 24 April 2001 Motorola announced the closure of the plant and the loss of 3,106 jobs. The site was occupied by
HMRC. In 2021 and early 2022, the Pyramids operated as the principal
COVID-19 vaccine centre in West Lothian. In December 2021, it was announced that the Pyramids Business Park would become the site of a new large film and TV studio. Some previous productions at the site have included the film
T2 Trainspotting and the TV show
Good Omens, which stars local actor
David Tennant. == Demography ==