The village clustered around the church and the village Square for centuries, slowly expanding northwards, a process accelerated by the creation of the James Wood Park in 1922 and of the building of council houses from 1945 in Greenside and Bowyett. In the mid-1950s, council housing was built in Priorscroft in the north and in St. John's Place in the south of the village. At that time, the village included a branch of Bathgate Co-op Society, a miners' welfare (reflecting locally resident miners rather than any substantial colliery) and a residents parish council.