Blackridge, West Lothian

Blackridge is a small town located in the western part of West Lothian, Scotland.

The village name dates to 1581, first recorded as Blakrig. Later, Blackrig and then Blackrigg became the standard spelling until Blackridge became the norm in official documents after about 1840. Blackrig remains the local pronunciation.

The modern village dates from the building of the new Edinburgh-Glasgow road in 1796 and the erection of a coaching inn at the mid point between the cities, officially Westcraigs Inn but known locally as the Craig Inn. The inn now serves as housing, a community centre and library.

After the arrival of the railway line linking Ardrie and Bathgate in 1862, the exploitation of local coal reserves became more practicable although it wasn't until the late 1880s that the first local colliery was sunk at Westrigg. The village grew from a population of under 200 to over 2,000 by the Great War with coalmining and whinstone quarrying the main employments.

The last colliery closed in the late 1950s and Blackridge became a dormitory for nearby towns with, for much of the 1960s and 1970s, the British Leyland truck and tractor assembly plant at Bathgate the principal employer.

The building of council housing from the late 1920s until the late 1960s established the modern village with 85% of residents renting from the local authority. Small scale private house building in the 1980s gave way to more substantial developments in the 1990s and early 21st century and the current local plan visualises a doubling of the number of dwellings to around 1,500 by the early 2010s.

The Labour/Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive excluded Blackridge from the stations to be created on the Airdrie-Bathgate rail line, due to be reopened in 2010 but a local campaign seeks to reverse this. The campaign group Platform Blackridge expects the government to concede in Autumn 2008.

Blackridge forms part of Armadale and Blackridge Ward and is represented on West Lothian Council by local man Stuart Borrowman (Independent); Jim Dixon (Labour); and Isabella Hutton (SNP). The MSP is Mary Mulligan (Labour) amd MP Michael Connarty (Labour).

The local community council is chaired by Clark Steele. Blackridge can boast two native knights of the Realm, Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Livingstone and Sir Peter Matthews, chief constable of Surrey in the 1970s.