Happy
Land
coordinates:
55°51'2.23"N,
3°34'34.80"W
location: within West
Calder, West Lothian.
former parish: West
Calder
current
status:
demolished 1930's? New houses built on site.
date
constructed: c. 1868
owner/builder: Young's Paraffin
Light and Mineral Oil Co.
"
These houses belong to Young's Mineral Oil Company, and
consist of 95 single- and 64 double-apartment houses. The
rent is 1s. 9d. and 2s. 3d. per week for single- and double-apartment
houses respectively. They are old houses and of a very poor
type. Single-apartment houses have bricked floors. Where
wood floors are substituted, the tenants have to remove
the clay and dirt, and 1d. per week is added to the rent.
There are no coal-cellars, wash houses, or sculleries. Privies
are provided, but the conditions are anything but satisfactory.
There are four stand-pipes for 159 houses. Refuse is removed
daily by the Company."
Theodore
K. Irvine, Report on the Housing Conditions in the Scottish
Shale Field, 1914.
"There
is a new quarter of the town towards the north west , bearing
the euphonious title of “The Happy Land”, applied
to it be the wits of the place. The houses are in rows,
one behind another, about ten yards apart like lines of
soldiers in the form of an oblong square. The houses have
no gardens, but apparently were built with more regard to
the utilization of the feu ground than to the health and
comfort of the tenants."
“Silvester
Sprightly” writing in the West Lothian Courier, June
30th 1877.
Happy times in Happy Land; image courtesy of Guthrie Hutton
Site
of Happy Land, West Calder; view N.W. towards footbridge over
the railway. October 2009.
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