Bathgate Procession & Community Festival

03/09/2026

📢Bathgate Procession Committee AGM 📢

📅 Thursday 17th September
⏰ 7.15pm
📍 Room 11, Jim Walker Partnership Centre, Bathgate

Committee meetings run approximately once monthly in the Autumn/Winter months and become more frequent as Procession day approaches. We welcome anyone to join and it is not necessary to be present at every meeting 😊

There are many different ‘teams’ within the committee you can be involved in helping:

Arch - coordinate activities to decorate and install the arch for Procession
Entertainment - including arranging park entertainment and performers
Festival Fortnight - coordinating and running the Festival Fortnight events
Fundraising - help with ideas and planning for the many fundraising events needed to help fund the procession
Media - working across areas such as the Facebook and Instagram, Website and Programme creation

If you would like to learn more or are interested in joining the committee, please come along to our AGM which will be held in Room 11, Jim Walker Partnership Centre at 7.15pm on Thursday 17th September.

Hip Hip 🎉

29/06/2026

❗️Can You Help Us Find Images of Bathgate Arches and their Builders? 📸

Between 1852 and 2026, 637 arches have been erected in Bathgate to celebrate Bathgate Procession and other events. We have identified photographs and images of over 100 individual arches, these can be viewed here along with a history of the arches - https://bathgateprocession.com/bathgate-procession-arch/

There are several known arch locations for which no photographs have yet been identified. In particular, we would love to find images of arches at:

• Paulville
• Academy Street
• Easton Rows
• Brown Square
• Engine Street (outside the present-day Dreadnought Rock, formerly the Commercial Hotel)
At present, we have only three photographs that can be confidently dated to before 1900, can you be the person to find any more?!

Before the First World War, local photographers such as Robert Braid produced and sold postcards featuring the arches each year. Do you have an old postcard album or family collection tucked away that might contain examples?

We are also searching for photographs from more recent decades. Arches were erected in North Bridge Street in 1966 and 1967. While the archive contains a few poor-quality newspaper images, the only good-quality photograph we have found appears in a 1974 edition of The Scots Magazine and is credited to “E. Wallace”. Does anyone know who E. Wallace was, or have photographs of either arch?

Photographs of the Cochrane Street arches from the 1960s and the Main Street arch of 1971 are also particularly scarce, and we would be delighted to see any additional images.

Boghall Gala Day featured a number of impressive arches between the 1960s and 1980s. One was a remarkable 25-foot arch designed in the shape of a rocket ship. Surely a photograph exists somewhere—do you have one, or know someone who might?

If you have any photographs, postcards, memories of where arches were built, names of the arch builders or any information that could help, please get in touch. Even seemingly small clues could prove invaluable in preserving this part of our local history. We would love to have images and info shared here but can also arrange to have photos and postcards digitally scanned. Please contact us on [email protected] or message the Procession page.

27/06/2026

Hope everyone has a brilliant day today. Especially our awesome friends at whitburn who help us out every year. We will see you soon to repay the favour 🥰

20/06/2026

Good luck to all the committees and hope you all have the best day

16/06/2026

Hope everyone at Linlithgow Marches has a brilliant time today

14/06/2026

Hope Ecclesmachan & Threemiletown Gala Day have a brilliant day

13/06/2026

Hope all the local galas have an amazing time today 🎉 hip hip

11/06/2026

11/06/2026

11/06/2026

❗️LOST PROPERTY ❗️

A wine coloured Arnhem umbrella was believed to be left beside a chair at the Old Academy Pageant on procession day. If you have the umbrella can you please message the page