Bathgate Place Names
Guildiehaugh
From History of Bathgate and District by Alex. M. Bisset:
‘Haugh’ in Scots is low-lying ground, generally by a burn or river; ‘guild’ is the old Scots name for a corn marigold. So we have ‘the meadow of the corn marigold. It was once the custom in Scotland, by Act of Parliament, for the authorities to go ‘guild riding’ through the parish, and where proper measures had not been taken to keep down the obnoxious weed, fines were imposed – a sheep being forfeited for every plant found.
Alternatively, Jamieson’s Dictionary of the Scottish Language gives:
Guilder-faugh: Old lea-land, once ploughed and allowed to lie fallow.
Lea: adj, Not ploughed
Faugh, fauch: adj. Fallow, not sowed. verb To fallow ground.
It was conjectured by the late Sir Alexander Boswell, Bart. Of Auchinleck that the term might refer to some mode of fallowing introduced from Guelderland.
Since the Bog Burn does not have much of a haugh, I prefer ‘guilder-faugh’ as the derivation of ‘Guildiehaugh’.
Galabraes
Bisset:
Gaelic, geal abh braigh, ‘the slope of the clear water’. In building reservoirs here the civic fathers of Bathgate are but acknowledging the good judgement of the primitive inhabitants of the district to whom the springs on the hills suggested the name.
The Bathgate Book:
Gallows’ Hill – former place of execution by hanging.
Sunnyside
Jamieson:
A description of the position of land; denoting its southern exposure, as contradistinguished from that which lies in the shade.
Perhaps from the Scandinavian method of dividing up farmland depending on how sunlight fell on the land.
Balbardie
Bisset:
Until 1830 written Balbairdie, and still so pronounced. Gaelic baile, ‘a hamlet’, bearrta ‘shorn, clipped’. May possibly mean ‘the house of the shorn one’, i.e. ‘a priest’.
The Bathgate Book:
Farmtown of the bards
Ballencrieff
Bisset:
1673 Ballangreife; 1677 Ballancreife; 1684 Ballincrief; 1696 Ballancrieff. Gaelic
baile-na-crubha ‘The hamlet on the shoulder of the hill’.
The Bathgate Book:
Settlement of trees.
Gaelic Place-names of Scotland:
Baile na craoibhe ‘The settlement (at) the tree)’.
Bathgate Old Times 