Blackness, a seaport village in the E of Carriden parish, Linlithgowshire, on a small bay of its own name on the Firth of Forth, 3½ miles ESE of Borrowstounness, and 3¾ NE of Linlithgow station. Anciently the port of Linlithgow, and a place of extensive commerce, it also took consequence from a castle near it. which is supposed by some antiquaries to mark the eastern extremity of Antoinnus' Wall, and was long one of the most important fortresses in the S of Scotland; it was, in main degree, superseded as a port, in 1680, by Borrowstounness, which, on account of possessing higher advantages of situation, was then made the port for Linlithgow; and since that time, it has sunk into almost total decadence, insomuch that its harbour went to ruin, its custom house was converted into lodgings, and its only commerce became a trivial exportation of bricks and tiles, and as trivial an importation of lime and manure. Blackness House, formerly a seat of the baronet family of Wedderburn, stands adjacent to the W side of the village. Blackness Burn runs about 1½ mile on the boundary between Carriden and Abercorn to the Firth, and passes the eastern vicinity of the village- Blackness Castle stands on a rocky promontory between the bay and the burn's mouth, in the north-eastern vicinity of the village; dates from some remote period unknown to record; was burned in 1443-44, amid the conflicts of the Douglases, Livingstons, Crichtons, and Forresters; was burned again, in 148l, by an English fleet; was the meeting place, in 1488, of James IN- and his rebellions nobles for effecting a pacification; witnessed, in 1547, the burning or capture, by an English admiral, of ten vessels which had anchored near it for protection; was garrisoned, in 1548, during the regency of the Earl of Arran, by a French force under D'Esse; underwent repeated vicissitudes of occupancy till 1572; served, like the Bass, as a State prison for confining distinguished Covenanters in the time of the persecution; was one of the chief forts of Scotland guaranteed by the Act of Union to be maintained permanently as a national strength; is, nevertheless, a structure more characteristic of the warfare of rude ages than adapted to the modern improvements in the military art; became eventually of no practical use whatever, held, as a fort, by only one man; and in 1870-74, was transmuted into the nucleus of extensive works to serve as the central ammunition depot of Scotland. These works were constructed at a cost of considerably more than £10,000, and they comprise a powder magazine, with two compartments, each about 42 feet by 18, a light iron-girder pier, a sea wall 1000 feet long, storage places for heavy guns and other munitions of war, barracks 124 feet long, for 30 soldiers, and a two-story building in the Scottish Baronial style for military officers.

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)