Biggar is a town and former burgh in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is situated in the Southern Uplands, near the River Clyde, around 30 miles from Edinburgh along the A702. The closest towns are Lanark and Peebles, and as such Biggar serves a wide rural area.
The population of the town is 2,301.
The town was once served by the Symington, Biggar and Broughton Railway, which ran from the Caledonian Railway (now the West Coast Main Line) at Symington to join the Peebles Railway at Peebles. The station and signal box are still standing but housing has been built on the line running west from the station and the railway running east from the station is a public footpath to Broughton, part of the Biggar Country Path network.
Biggar has several museums, including the Moat Park Heritage Centre, Gladstone Court Museum, Greenhill Covenanters Museum, and the Biggar Gasworks Museum, the only preserved gas works in Scotland. Many of the museums are run by the Biggar Museum Trust. Additionally, Biggar has Scotland's only permanent puppet theatre, Biggar Puppet Theatre, which is run by the well known Purves Puppets family.
Hugh MacDiarmid spent his later years at Brownsbank, near the town. Ian Hamilton Finlay's home and garden at Little Sparta is nearby in the Pentland Hills. The fictional Midculter, which features in Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles novels, is set here. The town hosts an annual arts festival, the Biggar Little Festival. The town has traditionally held a huge bonfire at Hogmanay.
In 2007 a group of Biggar residents launched the Carbon Neutral Biggar project, with the stated aim of becoming the first carbon neutral town in Scotland. The launch of the project, covered in both local and national media, took place at the town's annual eco forum in May 2007. The group has formed links with the town of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire, who have a similar group working toward carbon neutral status for their town.
This town has two schools, one primary, and one secondary. The secondary school, Biggar High School, takes in pupils from surrounding small towns and villages. Many of these pupils (roughly 30 to 40) are from Carnwath Primary School. Biggar Primary is a small school on the same road, Johns Loan, as Biggar High. Because the primary is so small and the high school is so close, the primary pupils have lunch and some lessons at the high school.
