In 1882-4, Frances Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland described Oakley like this:
Oakley, a village at the mutual border of Carnock parish, Fife, and Culross parish, Perthshire, with a station on the Stirling and Dunfermline branch of the North British railway, 4 3/8 miles W by N of Dunfermline. Built in connection with the Forth or Oakley Iron-works (1846), it chiefly consists of stone, one-story, slated dwelling-houses, disposed in rows, with intervening spaces more than double the breadth of the streets of the New Town of Edinburgh; and has a post office under Dunfermline, St Margaret's Roman Catholic church (1843), and a public school. ...
The iron-works, now stopped, had six furnaces, with stalks 180 feet high; and the engine-house was built of a very beautiful sandstone, with walls so deeply founded and so massive as to comprise 60, 000 cubic feet of stone below the surface of the ground. Pop. (1861) 1817, (1871) 1127, (1881) 3l2, of whom 92 were in Culross.—Ord. Sur., sh. 40, 1867.
Oakley through time
Oakley is now part of Fife district. Click here for graphs and data of how Fife has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Oakley itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Oakley in Fife | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/22241
Date accessed: 24th April 2024
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