Livingston at 60: A New Town forged in ambition and hopes for a better life

Rhona Gordon remembers crying when she heard Livingston was going to be built on the fields where she roamed free as a child.

Mrs Gordon was brought up in Livingston Station, one of three villages merged into the New Town, which was incorporated on April 16, 1966 – 60 years ago today.

Her mum and dad, an engineer, lived in an attic of a miner’s cottage and as a young girl she felt safe and surrounded by kind people and countryside.

Mrs Gordon, now of West Calder, said: "There was freedom, fresh area, we were wild and free, everyone knew you and there was never any bother. When they announced Livingston was going to be built, I cried. I didn’t want it at all. I just loved the village the way it was. I didn't want it to upset this idyllic life that we had.”

Livingston at 60: View from the Mall to Craigshill High School. The development of the New Town was designed to bring together modern housing, jobs opportunities and green space in one place. PIC: West Lothian Council

Livingston was Scotland’s fourth post war New Town - after Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Glenrothes. It was designed in optimism and sold on the promise of a better life half way down the M8, where new housing, safe streets, jobs and green spaces would meet. It would house the Glasgow ‘overspill’ in better homes and meet the demands of a projected baby boom.

After Livingston was incorporated in 1962, things started to take shape quickly. The country road that led down a track and into the glen where children played on rope swings became a main road. New roads and paths to seemingly nowhere were laid, their destination as yet unknown.

The first houses at Craigshill, next to Livingston Station, quickly appeared with construction workers and employees of the Livingston Development Corporation, the quango set up to deliver the New Town, the first to move in.

Livingston Station, one of the three villages absorbed into the New Town, pictured on the right, with the new houses pictured on the left.. PIC: West Lothian Council.

Among the first residents was Gillian Tuffield, then eight, who moved from Penicuik with her mother and father after he got a job as an electrician in Pumpherston, with his firm contracted to work on the New Town development.

Ms Tuffield, now 64, recalled an almost “pioneering” spirit among the first arrivals, who lived in the first few rows of housing at Craigshill along with the headmaster, the janitor and the doctor.

She said: “It felt exciting. I remember thinking it was really quite posh because we had central heating instead of a coal fire.”

But there was very little else to show for the New Town in the early days.

Gillian Tuffield, left, was one of the first residents of Livingston, who moved to Craigshill in the New Town aged eight. Rhona Gordon (right) was raised in Livingston Station village and watched the houses of Craigshill being built. PIC: Contributed.