Administrative Boundary of West Lothian

About West Lothian

West Lothian is a council area in central Scotland, between Edinburgh and Falkirk. Covering approximately 427 square kilometres of the Bathgate Hills and the plain along the Firth of Forth, West Lothian had a population of approximately 185,000 at the 2022 Census. Linlithgow Palace and Royal Births Linlithgow Palace, on the shore of Linlithgow Loch, is a ruined royal residence that was the birthplace of James V in 1512 and of his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1542; a favoured retreat of Scottish monarchs from the 15th century until the palace was gutted by fire in 1746 while housing Hanoverian troops, it remains one of the most evocative royal ruins in Scotland. St Michael's Parish Church stands immediately beside the palace, together forming an ensemble that has changed little in outline since medieval times. Shale Oil and the Union Canal West Lothian was the birthplace of the world's first commercial oil industry: in the 1850s, the chemist James "Paraffin" Young pioneered the extraction of oil from the region's oil shale at Bathgate, refining paraffin and other products decades before the first conventional oil wells were drilled elsewhere in the world; distinctive red-orange shale bings (spoil heaps left by the industry) still punctuate the landscape, with several now protected as nature reserves, and the Almond Valley Heritage Centre preserves this industrial history. The Union Canal, opened in 1822 to link Edinburgh with the Forth and Clyde Canal at Falkirk, runs through the county and connects to the Falkirk Wheel; Livingston, designated a new town in 1962, has grown into West Lothian's largest settlement. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of West Lothian 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 industrial heritage mapping, royal history research, canal and transport planning, and demographic analysis across the West Lothian council area.

📍 Administrative boundary of West Lothian county