Category Archives: West Lothian Archives

Material sourced from West Lothian Archives

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.

 

Pte Jack: Over and Out

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This blog is written by Stephen Thomas

First and foremost I’d like to thank all of you who have followed the Twitter and Blog feed recording the First World War Diary of Peter Jack; (http://lothianlives.org.uk/?p=1462). This blog is simply a reflection on the things I have learnt while carrying out the project, the first time I’ve posted diary entries of any kind, and the lessons learnt for the future.

As many who have followed the whole of the diary, Peter was not the most descriptive of men and on some days wasn’t forthcoming with large amounts of information. One can only speculate as to why this was. He may have been unaccustomed to expressing himself fully at all, let alone in writing; there is very little in the way of emotion portrayed, no colourful descriptions of the sites or sounds or smells of where he was posted. He does not record any details on conversations or gossip amongst the men he fought alongside, in fact I do not believe he mentions any of the names of his fellow soldiers apart from a few regrettable deaths of officers. This could have been out of respect for the privacy of those men or to prevent, should his diary been lost, information falling into the wrong hands. Personal diaries, unlike for those fighting in Europe, though not exactly encouraged were allowed on the Mediterranean campaign. I am surprised however that Peter was allowed to record, in sketches of admirable detail, the camps and defensive positions of his squadron. Perhaps Peter’s medium of expression was in drawing, rather than the written word. As I say; one can only speculate.

I would have therefore liked to have augmented some of the less than fulsome diary entries with more maps detailing the places Peter visited and information on the campaign he was involved in. Unfortunately, as a small archive with a small number of staff, time allowed for social media projects is sadly limited and so I was restricted to simply to transcribing the diary and adding additional details when time permitted. I’ve therefore learnt that in future I need to research and prepare the project further in advance, to allow it to be a more immersive experience for those following it and to better inform and educate people about the place in history from which the material originated.

I have also learned not to try to second guess or the writer’s meaning of words or phrases; to interpret them with the speech of 1915 in mind, rather than from a perspective of 2012. There were a couple of occasions I wrongly thought that Peter had misspelled or used the wrong words, when in fact it was my modern day take on phrasing that was in error.  One must take what is written at face value and trust the writer, because their voice is clearer and truer to them, than when heard many decades later.

The Private Peter Jack blog with all the transcribed entries can be found at:

http://ptejack.blogspot.co.uk/

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.

 

Tom Fleming archive to come to West Lothian

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The well-known calligrapher, Tom Fleming is to deposit his archive of calligraphy and other records with West Lothian Council Archives and Records Centre. The archive will come to West Lothian after a touring exhibiton which will take Tom’s calligraphy across Britain.

Tom was born in Armadale in 1921. He left school at 14, becoming a despatch clerk for United Collieries. The beautiful plans which Tom saw in the mine surveyors’ office caught his eye and he a took a job there.

Tom was also a keen member of the scouts in Armadale and saved up to go the 5th World Scout Jamboree in Holland in 1937. Tom kept a diary of this event, which forms part of the archive that will come to West Lothian.

In 1940 Tom volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps. Tom served in the Middle East and North Africa before joining the invasion of Europe and was part of the first British unit to enter Berlin. One of Tom’s fellow mine surveyors sent art material out to him and when his army unit passed through Europe in 1944-45, he made a series of pictures of people and places he encountered. He also wrote diaries documeting his experience which also form part of Tom’s rich archive.

In the 1960s, Tom began to attend evening classes in calligraphy before eventually leading his own classes. After retirement in 1979, Tom continue to develop his technique, making illustrated maps including of the Burns’ Country.

Tom now lives in the North of England although he recently came home to Armadale to give a calligraphy demonstration during an exhibition put on by our partners in Museum Services.

 

Geraldine – My time in the Archive

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I began my work experience at West Lothian Archives and Records Centre on Wednesday 4th of July and for two months I have loved every minute of it! Having no previous experience in archives, the staff was quick to enlighten me and give me a wide range of tasks that gave me a better understanding of what it is like working in an archive.

 

I initially transcribed 19th century log books from schools in the local area to see if there were any major developments or changes to the area that the school’s Headmaster would note down. It was fun to read about the nuances of the school’s daily life that were so different to my own school experience. There were outbreaks of measles and whooping cough and children “absent without leave” from the school as they went to help in the harvest, which all paled my “struggles” of homework and maths. I later transcribed World War Two log books from my local village and was fascinated to hear about the various changes that everyone – pupils, teachers and school officers – faced together. When reading about the air raids or a teacher being called up for military service after it was noted he was married three weeks beforehand, you get a real sense of what it was like for the everyday person during that difficult time as well as the community spirit of the people mentioned.

 

I also catalogued Community Council minutes and agendas of West Lothian from the late 1970’s to the mid 2000’s. This was more of a challenge for me as I had to fill in the details of the archives onto a database, but I had plenty of help and once I got the hang of it I was able to progress through them. The de-stapling of the minutes and keeping track of all the catalogue numbers was a challenge I embraced. Like the school log books, the feeling of a community is felt in their collaboration of making their town or village theirs by taking an interest in the issues and problems of their area.

 

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in West Lothian Archives and I’m still amazed by what treasures they have in the building. Though some are grander than others, like the school log books and the Community Council Minutes, they are all a part of a community and I would like to thank the staff at the Centre for making me a part of theirs!

Whats happening in East Lothian

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Excuse the absence of East Lothian posts for a couple of months please – it’s been hectic!

Exhibition

Our new Sporting East Lothian Exhibition is up. Featuring gems such as sporting bibs worn by George McNeill from Tranent. George McNeill was one of the fastest men in the world in the 1960s running 110m in 11 seconds. Also included are archive sketches from the BBCs ‘It’s a Knockout’ when it was held in North Berwick and an account of the shooting of the silver arrow in
Musselburgh from 1647. The shooting of the silver arrow is thought to be the oldest sporting competition in the world.

Illustrating the Archive – Lucy Roscoe

We are lucky enough to have the very talented Lucy Roscoe working with us at the moment. Lucy is taking stories and records from our collections and providing beautiful illustrations. See her first blog and illustration on our website here.

Volunteers

We welcomed our volunteers back now that we are settled in our new premises. They are working on various projects including providing scanned images for each of our collections to help us build up an imagedatabase and to improve the appearance of our catalogue and helping us identify and prepare material in our collections for us to use for our WW1 centenary project next year. We’re glad to have them back!

New accessions

The accessions keep pouring in too. In the past 2 weeks we have had:

  • a collection of log books from St Josephs School 1930-1989,
  • diaries of a farmer covering the period 1913-1984,
  • records of Musselburgh Merchants Association 1898-1985,
  • ledger and maps relating to the former Bruntons wireworks 1916-1987,
  • a raft of bound District Council minutes 1975-1995,
  • diaries of a Musselburgh seamstress 1977-1983,
  • papers relating to the Hope family and Luffness estate 1915-1916
  • records of Musselburgh Tennis club 1924-1988

I’d better get cataloguing!

Visitors

Since opening the archive searchroom has welcomed almost 200 visitors and produced almost 700 items.

HLF funding award for West Lothian Council Archives

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In partnership with Community Arts Service, we 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 will run from May 2012 to February 2014 and will engage and involve the people of various communities within Livingston in researching, recording and presenting the story of the new town over the last 50 years.

 

Using selected material from the archive collections, an exhibition will be put on display in a variety of locations across Livingston and will act as a stimulus for the oral history and other creative and educational elements of this project. A wide ranging programme of free, intergenerational group education activities will include:

 

  • Introduction to archives to enable people to learn how to access the Livingston records as a source of inspiration for the creative elements of the project
  • An oral history project to train and organise volunteers to collect 50 oral histories from different sections of their own communities.
  • Working with award-winning documentary filmmaker Tomas Sheridan, groups will utilise the archive collection to research and develop a documentary on the themes of the project and to record select interviews.
  • Workshops to enable groups to look at Livingston through photography. They will work with photographer, Lisa Fleming and will develop a book, postcards and an exhibition.
  • Working with artist Tessa Dunlop, groups will research the archives collection and create a ‘Stained Glass window’ telling the stories of Livingston’s 50 years.
  • The development of a mobile phone app to reveal the public art around Livingston, utilising the archive’s digital image collection.

 

The oral history and photography projects will feed back into the archive exhibition. Listening stations and displays will be added to provide an opportunity for the community to tell its own story as the exhibition travels around Livingston.  The project will generate learning and research material in the form of oral history recordings, photographs and documentary film which will be deposited in the Archives.

 

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:

 

Jennifer Tortolano or Emma Peattie at the Archives and Records Centre, 9 Dunlop Square, Deans Industrial Estate, Livingston EH54 8SB.

 

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

 

Olympic Torch Relay 2012

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My name is Fiona Sinclair. I went to West Lothian Archives and Records Centre for my Work Experience. It was a very fun and enjoyable week that I will never forget. On Monday the 11th of June when I arrived at the Archive and Records Centre, I was given a tour of the archives by Stephen and Elizabeth. I was quickly shocked at how many boxes of documents, minutes and photographs that there were as I didn’t expect it to be so big.

 

When I started work I began digitising photographs of sport so that we could add them to the display board that we were preparing for the Olympic Torch Relay, which would be travelling through Broxburn. As well as digitising the photographs I also had the chance to experience cataloguing the photographs into their correct boxes. This took quite a long time as there were a lot photographs and Stephen and I had to find the correct box for each individual image to go into. Time passed very quickly as some of the images were very amusing. I really enjoyed the experience of cataloguing and digitising the photographs.

 

On my work placement I also had the very exciting experience of going to watch the Olympic Torch Relay. I felt very excited as I had never witnessed anything like it before. When we first arrived in Broxburn we went to the Church where our display boards were on show to the public. After we had shown the display, Emma, Jennifer and I fought our way through the crowds until we had a view of the Olympic Torch travelling through the street!

 

Overall I greatly enjoyed my Work Experience placement and I am very glad that I chose to go to the Archives and Records Centre! However it saddens me that next week I will have to return to school instead of going back to do another week of work experience which I would happily do again!

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.