Stankards Bing

The larger of a pair of pink-coloured oil shale bings which lie between Broxburn and the M8 Motorway, Stankards Bing is located a quarter-mile (0.4 km) west of Green Bing in West Lothian. The bing has a footprint of 10 ha (24.7 acres) and rises to 61m (200 feet) above the surrounding countryside, or 160m (525 feet) above sea level, although may have been lowered through management efforts. Abandoned since 1921 when the Uphall Oil Works closed, these bings represent monuments to an industry which extract oil from shale by heating in a retort, an industry pioneered in 1858 in West Lothian by James 'Paraffin' Young (1811-83), which soon comprised 120 oil works and employed around 40,000 people.


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