Administrative Boundary of Midlothian

About Midlothian

Midlothian is a council area in south-east Scotland, immediately south of the city of Edinburgh. Covering approximately 354 square kilometres between the southern edge of Edinburgh and the Moorfoot and Pentland Hills, Midlothian had a population of approximately 95,000 at the 2022 Census, and is one of the fastest-growing council areas in Scotland owing to its proximity to the capital. Rosslyn Chapel Rosslyn Chapel, in the village of Roslin, was founded in 1446 by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, and is renowned for its extraordinarily dense and enigmatic stone carving — including the celebrated "Apprentice Pillar" and hundreds of carved figures, foliage, and symbols whose meaning has generated centuries of speculation. The chapel became a global tourist destination after its central role in Dan Brown's 2003 novel "The Da Vinci Code" and its 2006 film adaptation, with visitor numbers rising more than tenfold in the years that followed. Mining Heritage and the National Mining Museum Midlothian was historically one of Scotland's principal coal-mining districts, with pits at Newtongrange, Bonnyrigg, Loanhead, and Gorebridge employing thousands of miners through the 19th and 20th centuries. The National Mining Museum Scotland, housed at the former Lady Victoria Colliery in Newtongrange — one of the best-preserved Victorian colliery sites in Europe, sunk in 1890 — preserves this heritage, with former miners providing guided tours of the winding engine house and pithead baths. Dalkeith, the council area's largest town, grew around Dalkeith Palace and Dalkeith Country Park, while Penicuik is known for its paper-making history and the Penicuik House estate. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Midlothian Council is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the OS Open Geography portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports mining heritage research, ecclesiastical architecture study, commuter demographic analysis, and planning across the Midlothian council area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Midlothian county