Pumpherston
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Pumpherston is a small dormitory village in West Lothian, Scotland. Originally a small industrial village to the nearby shale mine and works, it now adjoins the new town of Livingston, which was constructed alongside Pumpherston in the late 1960s and quickly grew much larger than its neighbours.
Pumperston still has its own primary school, which is shared with near neighbour Uphall Station. For secondary education pupils travel to one of the high schools in Broxburn or West Calder.
Pumpherston has a variety of sporting amenities including Pumpherston Golf Club, Pumpherston Bowling Club and Recreation Park, the home of Pumpherston Juniors.
The Famous "Dukla Pumpherston" football team is, in fact, purely fictional - having been coined by the comedian Tony Roper, sometime in the 1980s for the Naked Radio show - a sophisticated European-sounding name for a small Scottish football team. The radio show called the team "Dukla Pumpherston Sawmill and Tannery".
There are many theories around how Pumpherston became so-called. It was rumoured that the "pump" or "pumper" came from the shale works, that would have pumped the shale oil into tanks to be delivered to factories and homes. That theory falls apart as Pumpherston Castle existed some 250 years before the shale industry was started (by James "Paraffin" Young, in the late 19th century). A better theory is that the castle was built by someone called "Humphrey" and passed to his son. In late 17th century Scotland, "son of Humphrey" would have been known as "ap Humphrey", which sounds like "pumphrey" hence Pumphreys-ton or Pumpherston.
THere is evidence of the Roman Occupation approximately two miles north east of Pumpherston - at Roman Camp, near Broxburn, and at a carved stone just half a mile north of the town centre - the Krazy Cuts cross. Krazy Cuts was the first true supermarket in West Lothian, a branch of the then largest cooperative society in Scotland, West Calder Cooperative Society. Krazy Cuts was opened in 1967.
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