Stewartfield
Rows
coordinates:
55°56'18.56"N,
3°27'43.97"W
location: within the
town of Broxburn, West Lothian
former parish: Uphall
current
status:
site cleared c.1960?, some new housing on site, other ground
used as playing fields.
date
constructed: c.1883
owner/builder: Broxburn
Oil Co.
"The
Broxburn Oil Company are gradually substituting water-closets
and sculleries for the present privies, but at a rate which
is too slow, considering the existing conditions. At Stewartfield
Rows this Company have just built water-closets, but the
method taken ought to be condemned. There are eighteen closets
facing each other, nine on each side of the gables of two
blocks of houses. Each closet serves two households, thus
you have the occupiers, of all ages and sexes, from thirty-six
houses, compelled to come in contact. Such affords neither
privacy nor decency. Water-closets should be provided in
each house."
Theodore
K. Irvine, Report on the Housing Conditions in the Scottish
Shale Field, 1914.
Stewartfield Rows c.1960. Image courtesy of West Lothian Council
libraries.
Stewartfield Rows from the air, c.1959.
Site of Stewartfield rows, looking North towards Broxburn
bing. October 2009.
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