Have you ever walked through a completely empty field and just felt something? Like you were standing on a ghost? well, here we are gonna take a look at a place that just vanished. A whole community just swallowed by time. we’re on the hunt for the lost village of the Hermand Oil Works.

So, Picture this; You go for a walk on the Hermand estate in West Lothian. All you see are green fields and maybe some sheep. all in all, it’s peaceful because It’s rural. But what if I told you that just over a Hundred years ago, that exact same spot was a noisy bustling Industrial site for a village full of families.

So, where did it all go? Thats the Big mystery we’re about to Unravel here. Well the answer, you may find unbelievable. The entre site, the workers houses and the whole shebang was just erased. the official records state that the land was ‘returned to agriculture..”, leaving little trace. An Entire Community , just gone. To understand how that can even happen, we First need to go back to the beginning.

West Lothian’s Shale Boom

Okay, so throughout te Nineteenth century, West Lothian was gong through what we nowadays call ‘the Shale Boom’. It wasn’t Gold or coal, but Oil.