Scottish Shale

Scottish Shale is an on-line encyclopedia of the Scottish shale oil industry and the communities that served it. The website provides a comprehensive gazetteer of the oil works, shale mines, and worker’s villages that were once scattered across the landscape of West Lothian, linking these places to information about the companies behind the industry and the people who promoted them.

There’s online access to the collections of the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry, which are recognised as being of National importance to Scotland, and opportunity to virtually flick through many of the surviving official records of the shale oil companies. Some of these provide information on the individuals who worked in the industry, and the jobs that they carried out.

Supporting this wealth of information there’s a huge collection of old photos and postcard images from throughout West Lothian, all handily indexed by map.

It’s a brilliant resource for the armchair historian, those with an interest in family history, or those planning to visit west Lothian in search of their roots