There were no healthcare facilities in the parish; residents went to Dunbar for doctor and dental services. Concern has been expressed from time to time about a possible radiation hazard from Torness, and the effects of carcinogenic dust from the Blue Circle cement works near Dunbar. Late in the 1990s, residents were outraged when a plague of bluebottles invaded their homes; suspicion of the source rested with the Viridor landfill site. It was later said that fly eggs on the rubbish had not been killed off prior to dumping the waste. This incident was early in the site’s history when there were teething troubles; improved procedures are now in place.
In the 1950s, families became smaller and some children were born in the Vert Hospital in Haddington. These trends continued in the 1960s, and presumably birth control was being used; earlier it was neither popular nor readily available. With the closure of the Vert maternity unit in 1973, children were either born at home or in Edinburgh. In the 1980s families became smaller still. This was probably the result of the control given to women by the pill.
Stephen Bunyan