Category Archives: Livingston Development Corporation

Livingston in the 1970s

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I have been cataloguing the archive of the Livingston Development Corporation for eight months now. The collection is great on the technical detail, on the why and how the town was built, on who made the big decisions, but sometimes you get the hankering for a personal touch – a view of the town that has an opinion. Because the Corporation was, well, a Corporation, much of its documentation can be a little dry, efficient, business like and very much to the point – and even, dare I say it, a little self-congratulatory.  

However, a couple of months ago, whilst cataloguing the records of the Housing Department, I came across the “Reports of the Assistant Housing Visitor.” They don’t sound that promising, but these turned out to be almost diary like entries made monthly by two or three women employed as Assistant Housing Visitors. From 1970 onwards and through the 1970s these women (they were all women) visited new tenants in the town and make sure they were settling in okay, to ask if they had any problems or any issues; and, unfortunately an all too common a problem, to help them find ways to pay their rent arrears. They ended up acting, in a town with limited community facilities and services, as quasi-social workers.

These reports, far from being brisk businesslike collection of stats and targets, give a wonderful insight of Livingston in the 1970s, and of the problems the community faced and overcame.  For example, something that I come across time and again is the problems caused by dampness in Corporation housing, this arose due to poor industrial construction techniques when building vast quantities of housing in a short space of time. I’ve come across a good many technical reports as to why the dampness happened, but in the visitors reports the issue is made far more human.

 

“The main complaints come from tenants in Bison flats who are “humbugged” by “dampness”. In most cases they are using their storage heaters properly and keeping their windows open slightly as they have been instructed – this does not seem to cure the trouble.”

The Corporation, in the early days, was reluctant to accept that their choice of building construction was to blame, and instead chose to tell people that because they had never used central heating before, it was their fault the wallpaper was hanging in damp shreds off the wall.

Another related issue was the cost of heating. Many of the early houses in Livingston were installed with electric storage heaters when electricity was cheap – then electricity prices rocketed. This was a pressing concern for many years (and one it looks like we are all going to have to face again). In 1972 the housing visitor wrote -

“There is a great deal of concern and anxiety among tenants over electricity bills. In many cases, money is not saved towards this bill at all – it is the ‘great unknown’ and panic ensues when it arrives…. for most people… the main problem is the insecure feeling caused by a large, long term fluctuating bill. The cards provided by the SSEB for calculating weekly costs are not widely used… most because people people would not really believe them or do NOT want to know about their bills, hoping they will be smaller when they arrive. “

In 1974 the visitor recorded that -

“I found that a great many of my tenants have solved their fuel bill problem this winter with some ingenuity. Several tenants living in the area arrange to visit one house for two days, then another house for two days, the person they visit has a warm house whilst the visitors can leave their heating off.”

Despite this novel solution, however, the cost of heating remained an issue for many years. In March 1977-

“It is generally accepted that this is the most quarrelsome time of the year and this is assuredly born out by the number of tenants who have sent for me because of family feuding, not necessarily about rent arrears, most because of the excessively high gas and electric bills… whilst Mrs is wondering how on earth she managed to accumulate such a bill, Mr is wishing he never got married, or blaming her for being extravagant.”

There are several more entries in the reports about this issue, it dragged on for years – however, the reports provide such a breadth of insights into life in the 1970s, it is worth moving on. There is another area of insight that the reports can give – into the social and economic mores of the time.

“It is now obvious that a percentage of women work either part time of full time and that it is not possible to make contact with them during working hours.”

This was a time when it was still thought that men were the breadwinners, and women were the housewives, though times were a-changing. But even then, there were obvious issues with unemployment in the early 1970s.

“It would appear that there is a shortage of jobs for the under twenties as well as part-time work for women and according to tenants, the Department of Employment & Productivity hold out very little hope of any immediate improvement. Two cases of men having given up their jobs to move to Livingston came to light. This could be a mounting problem with all its attendant difficulties.”

And, by 1977, problems with inflation –

“this past year has been one of inflation and its attendant problems. After dealing with rent arrears problems last winter, I suggested to tenants that they should try to keep their rent a little in credit each month to try to help out with the problem months… it would be wise to stock up… as a buffer against the winter and the increased prices.”

The reports also record an issue that was unique to New Towns. The New Town Blues.  Because The main reason people moved to Livingston was “high standard of housing provided by the Livingston Development Corporation, probably the main reason why families choose to come, and remain in Livingston.” Housing in Livingston was newer, cleaner, warmer and better than the old slums and tenements of Glasgow, where many had come from, but these people left behind established communities to move to a town that had only existed since 1962, the first residents –  “the pioneers” – moving to Livingston from 1964 onwards, moved to a building site, a place of “dust in the summer and mud in the winter”. It was a town that had no established community; no established groups or societies; no cafes, cinemas, parks, or sports fields. Loneliness was rife.

“I have been discussing the problem of loneliness with quite a number of tenants. This problem is known as the New Town Blues and is widely recognised. Its avoidance lies in the development of a sense of community.”

This is something that the residents of Livingston tackled with relish. From zero in 1964, by 1973 there were two hundred and thirty clubs and societies, one for every 100 residents in Livingston. Community spirit in Livingston had flourished.

Finally, as well as the ‘big picture’ the reports also capture the smaller details that show that perhaps life doesn’t change as much as we think –  

“Another dangerous game of the children’s is to get boards and slide down the steep grassy slope from Eden Drive to the main road near the bus stop. I have seen children rolling down the slope which is quite steep and stopped my car to shout at them. One false move and these kiddies are straight under a passing car.”

Or, taking a break from work for a relaxing thirty minutes,

“the light entertainment of the month was caused through a tenant who had a hive of wild bees in her garden, these have now been removed by LDC… however I spent a quite pleasant half an hour watching the bees at close quarters, from the number of bees and the size of the mound I imagine it was quite a large hive.”

This remark attracted an annotation from the housing visitor’s boss Leslie Higgs, “Time available for this?”

Bosses are bosses, I suppose, no matter the decade. 

The Housing Visitor Reports are the subject of an ongoing blog about Livingston in the 1970s  which can be found at  http://newtownlivingston.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Aidan Haley, Project Archivist (Cataloguing), Livingston New Town: From Plan to Community, 1962-2012.

 

Livingston 50 – share your story

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Were you among the first of the New Town residents?; or already living in West Lothian in the 1960s?; or perhaps one of the many children who were born and grew up in Livingston over the past 50 years?  Would you be willing to take part in our oral history project and share your experience of New Town life with future generations?  Whatever your story is, West Lothian Council Archives would like to hear from you.

 

2012 was the 50th anniversary of Livingston New Town.  In partnership with Community Arts Service, West Lothian Council Archives have been awarded £49,800 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the “Life is for Livingston – 50 years of new town life” project. This education and arts project is working with various communities and groups within Livingston in researching, recording and presenting the story of the new town in new and exciting ways.  For more information on the project read our blog at http://lothianlives.org.uk/?p=3057

 

Over the next few months we will be training volunteers to gather oral history in order to record and preserve stories and memories about all aspects of Livingston life.  If you would like to participate either as a volunteer or to share your story we would be very interested to hear from you.   

 

Please contact us:

Jennifer Tortolano or Emma Peattie

 Tel: 01506 773770 or e-mail: archive@westlothian.gov.uk

Cataloguing the Livingston collections

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At the beginning of 2012, West Lothian Council Archives were successful in a bid for a £42,858 grant from the National Cataloguing Grants Program. The grant was awarded to enable the Archives to appoint a Project Archivist who could catalogue the records of the Livingston Development Corporation and five other collections that concerned Livingston, produce an online catalogue, and write a summary guide. My name is Aidan Haley I am the archivist that was appointed to work on the Livingston collections. I started the 18 month project back at the beginning of July and am now almost a quarter of the way through my time here.

The six collections that I have been working with are:

1)  The records of the Livingston Development Corporation, the body responsible for developing Livingston’s economic, housing and community facilities from 1962 until 1996. This is our most comprehensive collection, comprising some 25,000 items.

2) The papers of the Reverend Dr James Maitland, who was, in 1966, inducted as the first Church of Scotland Minister in the Livingston Ecumenical Experiment. The ‘experiment’ brought together the Church of Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Congregational Church (now the United Reform Church)and, later, the Methodists, in collaboration in the running of the Livingston Ecumenical Parish.

3) A selection of papers from Tam Dalyell MP, who represented Livingston as part of his West Lothian constituency, from 1963-1983. The papers we hold relate to issues that affected West Lothian.

4) The papers of Craigsfarm which became, in 1967, the first community centre in Livingston. Craigsfarm was the hub of community activity in the early years of Livingston’s growth and in 1973 was instrumental in forming the first Community Council in Scotland.

5) The papers of the Livingston Players, a community theatre group that performed its first play in 1970.

6) Papers of Community Councils of West Lothian which have been, from 1975, the most local tier of government in Scotland. (Livingston jumped the gun and had their own Community Council two years prior to this legislation coming into force.)

The idea behind choosing these six collections was that between them they provide a balanced overview of the development of Livingston across the fifty years of its existence, from its roots in three small villages with a population of around 2,000, to the largest town in the Lothians outside of Edinburgh. The information available within these collections covers the planning, architecture, demographics, politics, religion, culture, education and community development of Livingston; as well as its economic, social and environmental history. The records include official documentation, ranging from the Charter of the Livingston Development Corporation to internal office memos; technical maps, plans and drawings to minutes of meetings with community groups; there is also a wealth of photographs, around six thousand in total. These records are comprehensive in how they show why and how Livingston was built.

Outside of the Development Corporation records there is also personal material, such as the preparatory notes made by Reverend Doctor James Maitland when he started writing his book on Livingston. These notes include his memories of Livingston in its very early days – when there were less than a few thousand people living in Craigshill. Because we have this personal material, the collections contain both the ‘official’ history of Livingston as seen in the records of the Corporation that built it, but also the voices of the people who moved here, and sought to build a complete community where none had existed before.

Although Livingston has only just passed its fiftieth birthday, it has a rich and vibrant heritage. By cataloguing these collections the ultimate aim is to enable researchers, of any type, to locate and use information that interests them as easily and efficiently as possible, opening Livingston’s heritage to all.

 

Volunteer!

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Would you like to help West Lothian Council Archives in its work of preserving and enabling access to its historic collections?  Anyone with spare-time and an interest in history or considering a career in the archives profession can volunteer in the Archives and Records Centre.

Volunteering provides an opportunity to work within a small friendly team, to use existing skills and learn new ones.  It offers a unique perspective of archives and allows you to get up close and personal with historical documents and photographs.

Volunteers can assist in a variety of projects such as cleaning, sorting, listing and re-housing records, or help in the digitisation of some of the thousands of photographs and negatives held in the archives.  Recent volunteers have been listing estate papers and the records of the Soroptimist Club of West Lothian; assisted with putting together exhibitions and promotional material for Livingston 50; and digitising negatives from the Bob Wallace collection and hundreds of LDC photographs.

The Archives has been awarded funding from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives to catalogue our Livingston collections. The funding award recognises these collections as being of national and international significance and the project coincides with the 50th anniversary of the new town.  Entitled “Livingston New Town, from Plan to Community, 1962-2012”, the project will involve cataloguing and preserving the records of Livingston Development Corporation; local Community Councils; Craigsfarm Community Centre; the Livingston Players; Tam Dalyell, MP; and the Reverend Dr. James Maitland.  The project archivist will begin work on the 18 month project in July and there will be opportunities for volunteers to work on a number of different tasks and types of record.  If you are interested in helping in this exciting project then please contact us by the end of July.

We also offer week-long work placements to local school pupils throughout the year, through the West Lothian work experience programme.  The pupils are shown all aspects of the work carried out at ARC and are given small pieces of digitisation, preservation and indexing work to complete.  We also encourage them (and our volunteers) to write blogs about their experience!

We consider all requests for voluntary placements or work experience, we provide basic training, and work with volunteers to develop an interesting and varied programme of work.  If you are interested in volunteering some of your time please feel free to contact or visit the Archives and Records Centre.

Livingston 50: Celebrating 50 years of new town life

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Pupils at Harrysmuir Primary visiting LDC HQ

Livingston was designated as a New Town on April, 17th1962, with the promise that Livingston would have it’s first residents by 1964. 50 years later, we are getting ready to celebrate Livingston’s 50th birthday. This important year offers us the opportunity to reflect on the transformation of Livingston from a settlement of farms and villages to a vibrant and economically active town in the heart of Scotland.

As part of the celebrations,  the Archives and Records Centre will host a free exhibition ‘Livingston Lives’ – 50 years of new town life.  Visitors will be able to enjoy a glimpse into new town life over the last 50 years through a display of archive photographs and records.  Visitors will also be give the opportunity to share their own memories of life in Livingston and to add comments to the images on display.  The exhibtion will run from 16th-30th April, Mon-Sat 10am – 4pm at the Archives & Records Centre, 9 Dunlop Square, Deans Industrial Estate, Livingston EH54 8SB

We will also be celebrating this important year on Twitter and will use the records of the Livingston Development Corporation to recreate the first 15 years of development through an innovative twitter feed. Over the course of a year we will tweet key events as they happened. Each week in 2012-13 will represent 15 weeks in the life of the early new town. Join us on the 17th of April when the New Town will be designated once more. Follow us at  https://twitter.com/LivingstonAt50

National Cataloguing Grant Success

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As we move into the New Year, here at West Lothian archives, we are looking forward to busy and changing times for our archive service.

Last month we learned that we had been awarded a National Cataloguing Grant of £42,588 to catalogue our Livingston collections. The 18 month project entitled “Livingston New Town, From Plan to Community, 1962-2012” will be led by a project archivist and will involve the cataloguing of the records of Livingston Development Corporation as well as some of our smaller Livingston collections, the creation of an online catalogue, and the publication of a summary guide to the collections.

The project coincides with the 50th anniversary of the new town of Livingston and will allow us to celebrate and permanently document the history of the local community.

Many people think of archives as being hundreds of years old, but this award recognises the importance of 20th century history to both our local communities and our wider cultural heritage.

The grant is a massive boost for our archive service and we are excited about enabling community access to these important collections.

 

Craigshill Mural

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One of the fulfilling aspects of working in an Archive is helping with and promoting programmes within the community that it serves. A recent enquiry highlighted this; from Julia Priestley, the Arts Development Officer at West Lothian Council, and Thomas Connelly, Library Manager asking for photographs of Craigshill as source material for a mural.

Craigshill is one of the oldest districts in Livingston, being one of the first areas built when the New Town was created. The mural project involving Arts Services/Community Regeneration entailed young people attending a local arts-based youth project Offbeat and working with an experienced public artist to create designs based on life in Craigshill over a period of time. These designs would then be applied to large mural pieces by artist Tom Ewing to the exterior of Almondbank Library in Craigshill.

Being a native of Craigshill, I was deputised to look out photographs from our extensive Livingston Development Corporation collection of images for buildings and landmarks that are memorable to those who’ve lived there.

Hopefully the images supplied, like this photograph of Craigshill fire station training tower would provide inspiring enough visual sources to help create a mural worthy of Almondbank Library and the community.

The mural was unveiled on the 30th September. Not long after I strolled up to have a look see and took some pictures.

The mural blends familiar house types, landmarks and features into an image that represents and embodies Craigshill to those who have lived there.

As well as the glimpsing the lives and activities of it’s inhabitants; from the past, and as seen through the eyes of those youngsters who took part in the murals creation.

As a repository that holds most of Livingston’s written and photographic history, we at the West Lothian Archives were more than happy to provide pictorial references to the project. As a resident of Craigshill for more than 40 years, I was particularly pleased and proud to have at least one of the photographs I sourced from our collection used as an element in the mural.

The Craigshill mural can be seen at Almondbank Library, The Mall, Craigshill, Livingston, West Lothian, EH54 5EJ

(Written by S. Thomas)

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Capturing History: Livingston 50

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My name is Caitlin, I went to the West Lothian Archives and Records centre for my work experience, and it proved to be a very enjoyable week. When I arrived on Monday morning I was taken for a quick tour of the archives, and I was amazed to see how many boxes of documents there are! I was also delighted by the moving shelves in the archives, what can I say; I’m easily amused!

I then began work digitising photographs of Livingston from the ‘60s and ‘70s in preparation for them to be uploaded to flickr, a photo sharing website, for Livingston’s 50th birthday next year. You may think that it’s just a little early to start uploading pictures for an anniversary next year, but there are 6000 photographs in the Livingston development corporation collection, each with their own description written in three log books and even with a week of working on this task I barely scratched the surface.

Some of the photographs that I was digitising proved to be very interesting; there were many aerial shots of Livingston revealing lots about the town that I didn’t know, and it was fascinating to see as I went thought the pictures, the progression from plans for buildings, to construction, to the buildings as they are today. As well as enlightening aerial shots, there were a number of photographs that I liked, not only because of the insight they gave into what this area was like forty or fifty years ago, but because they were excellent photographs. In particular a photograph of three little girls with their hands on their hips in a v formation on steps, looking down on another little girl made me laugh when I first saw it, and a black and white photograph of a helicopter put a smile on my face.

On the whole I greatly enjoyed my time working at the archives, and I’ll be sad when, on Monday morning, I have to go to school and not come back here.

Have a look at some of the images I digitised, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/westlopics/

 

Livingston 50 – let the celebrations begin!

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On the morning of April 18th 1962 the front page of The Scotsman declared that “Livingston will get its first tenants in 1964.” The previous day the Secretary of State for Scotland officially designated Livingston as a “New Town,” setting aside 6692 acres in West Lothian and Mid Lothian as a site for the town.Livingston’s development is a story of both successes and failures but underlying this has been the growth of a vibrant community, who are proud to have Livingston as their home. Next year Livingston will celebrate its 50th birthday. Here at West Lothian Archives  we don’t want this important anniversary simply to pass by; we hope that this occasion will give local people a chance to celebrate both the town and the community at its heart.

West Lothian Archives already holds the records of the Livingston Development Corporation; this extensive and varied collection charts the development of the town from designation to wind-up. Perhaps the only failing of these records is that they don’t always convey the human element of the town’s growth. We plan to use this important year as an opportunity to collect the stories of the people who made Livingston their home and of the first generation to grow up in the New Town. If you would like to share your story with us, contact us at archive@westlothian.gov.uk

Livingston’s  anniversary is not only an opportunity to celebrate what has been but also to celebrate what is. Children and young people are an important part of life in Livingston today.  Their perceptions of life in Livingston as it is now offer us not only insight into the heart and minds of a new generation but also offer a hint of the Livingston that will develop over the next 50 years. West Lothian archives is currently working with three local primary schools to help pupils create an archive of life in Livingston today. These collections will be transferred to the archives service in 2012 and will become a permanent record of life in Livingston, 50 years on from designation, from the eyes of Livingston’s children

The Reverend Dr. James Maitland

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The Reverend Dr. James Maitland was an influential figure in the early years of Livingston New Town. In January 1966, he was inducted as the Church of Scotland minister for the Livingston Ecumenical Experiment, in a joint ceremony with the Rev. Brian Hardy of the Episcopal Church. This bold venture was an expression of unity between the churches, and helped to foster a sense of community among the first residents of the New Town in the 1960s and 1970s. The churches shared their pastoral duties, buildings and resources, and even held joint services for their growing congregation. The Episcopal Church, the Church of Scotland and the Congregational Church were the founding churches of the Experiment, with the Methodists joining in 1968. 

The Archive Service holds a collection of the Rev. Dr. James Maitland’s private records, which includes collected papers, diaries, newspaper cuttings, reports and minutes. They provide an insight into the pivotal role that the Rev. Maitland played in church and community life. He was an active figure in the development of community forums, which gave voice to the concerns of local residents and helped people to share their experiences of adapting to their new environment.

The Rev. Maitland also chaired the Leaking Flats Committee, and helped establish such projects as “Growing up in Livingston” which aimed to create a sense of community and inclusion amongst the town’s young people. His concern for education and environment is evident within the archive collection, which includes extensive notes on the subject. With the involvement of the town’s younger residents, James Maitland and others came up with innovative approaches to the social problems affecting those growing up in the New Town. Particular measures included the setting up of Neighbourhood Houses, which could act as focal points for community work.

One of the crowning achievements of the Ecumenical Experiment was the building of the Lanthorn, in Dedridge, which was officially opened in 1977. This represented a further step towards unity, because the design of the building allowed Roman Catholic services to take part in the same premises as those of the other denominations.

The Centre was built by Lothian Region Council, West Lothian District Council and Livingston Development Corporation along with the churches of the Ecumenical Experiment. In his pamphlet, Living Stones, James Maitland wrote of the spirit of cooperation that created the Lanthorn, which he described as ‘a place where people could meet easily and naturally and begin to find what life in community can really mean.’

The papers also record James Maitland’s ideas on the importance of compassion and care for those marginalised by society, and the role of church unity in the creation of community. Many of these ideas were expressed in his book “New Beginnings: Breaking Through to Unity”, published in 1998, and the Archive contains some of its early drafts. The Rev. Dr. James Maitland left a significant legacy to the Livingston community, which can be explored in his own words through this absorbing collection.