Why did your Ancestors settle in Armadale
Old Parish Records
OPR's began in Armadale in 1643. Armadale is in the parish of Bathgate and is Parish no 662 in the County of Linlithgow.
The Name
Armadale, formerly called Barbauchlaw, got its name from Sir William Honeyman who named it Armadale after a town on his Sutherland estates.
The Early Years
The estate of Barbauchlaw was originally granted by the Crown to a scion of the House of Dundonald, whose family name is Cochrane. This estate was used manly as hunting grounds for kings and courtiers and was mainly forest.
The 1700 and 1800s
The great road was opened in 1786 from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The following century was to see Armadale changing from a beautiful country village into an industrial town with varied industries.
In the nineteenth century, the hamlet became a popular industrial area because of its brick-clay, coal, ironstone and limestone deposits. After the arrival of the railway in 1855, and the extension of the Edinburgh-Bathgate line to Airdrie in 1861, Armadale became a burgh (1864). Its brickyards, quarries and steelworks provided work for its inhabitants until the industrial decline of the 1970s.