Bathgate

Bathgate, a municipal and police burgh of Linlithgowshire, Scotland, 19 m. W. by S. of Edinburgh by the North British railway. Pop. (1901) 7549. The district is rich in limestone, coal, ironstone, shale and fireclay, all of which are worked. Silver also was once mined. The manufactures include paraffin, paper, glass, chemicals, flour and whisky, and freestone is quarried. The burgh is a considerable centre for agricultural produce. Bathgate became a burgh of barony in 1824 and a police burgh in 1865. Although it was not until the development of its mineral wealth that it attained to commercial importance, it is a place of some antiquity, and formed the dowry of Marjory, Robert Bruce’s daughter, who married Walter, the hereditary steward of Scotland, in 1315.