Cranston

Monumental inscriptions for Cranston can be found at the Local Studies Centre in Loanhead.

Cranston Church contains a small war memorial plaque "in ever lasting memory of the men from Ford U.F. (United Free) Church who laid down their lives in the Great War 1914 - 1919".
The following 10 names are listed:
James Barbour, William Binnie, Andrew Durward, Alexander Fisher, Thomas Fisher, James Gardiner, David Gillies, Archibald McKinlay, David McKinlay, Edward Reid

The parish church has records for births dating from 1682, for marriages from 1784 and for deaths from 1738. These are held in the General Register Office for Scotland in Edinburgh and copies on microfilm may be consulted in the Midlothian Studies Centre in Loanhead and also in LDS Family History Centres around the world.

• Geograph
• Flickr

The transcription of the section for Cranston from the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson.

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Cranston to another place.

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference NT390654 (Lat/Lon: 55.877544, -2.976316), Cranston which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.

The Cranston war memorial lists the names of 30 people:

1914 - 1918

• William Binnie
• James Cowan
• James Crawford
• George Douglas
• Alex Drysdale
• Thomas Drysdale
• George Duncan
• James Gardiner
• David Gillies
• David Hadden
• Andrew Hogarth
• William Houston
• Alexander Jeffrey
• Thomas Kinghorn
• Neil Simpson
• George Philip
• John A Todd
• George Young

1939 - 1945

• W Archibald Callander
• Angus Hogarth
• Thomas Hogg
• T Campbell Hogg
• Alexander Mercer
• James Buchanan
• T Elliot McVitie
• Robert D Smith
• Andrew Turner
• James B Weir
• James C Walker
• Lucy Walker

Following the Poor Law Act of 1843, the parish joined the Dalkeith Combination to provide poor relief in the Dalkeith Poorhouse.

According to Rev John Dickson's 1907 Parish History the population of the parish has varied thus:
 

For a social and economic record of the parishes of Mid Lothian together with considerable statistical material, see Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, which was compiled in the 1790s. Follow-up works to this were the New Statistical Account (also known as the Second Statistical Account) which was prepared in the 1830s and 1840s; and more recently the Third Statistical Account which has been prepared since the Second World War.

Thanks to a joint venture between the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh the First and Second Statistical Accounts can now be accessed on-line at The Statistical Accounts of Scotland, 1791-1799 and 1845.