Lying 2½ miles (4 km) east of Dalkeith and 2 miles (3 km) west of Ormiston and just within the northern boundary of Midlothian, lies the village of Cousland. The name derives quite literally from the Scots for the 'land of cows'.
The ruined Cousland Castle dates from the 13th C. but was destroyed when the Duke of Somerset invaded in 1547. The smiddy, which has been in continuous use since it was built in the early 18th C., is preserved by the Cousland Smiddy Trust. Lime was worked on a significant scale just to the north of the village from Mediaeval times until the early 1970s. Commercial amounts of oil and gas were produced between 1937 and 1964 by drilling into a Carboniferous anticline between here and D'Arcy, to the southwest.
Today, the village benefits from a primary school (built in the late 1960s to replace the original of c.1850) and a post office. An active community association is based around the village hall, which was built in 1930 as the Miner's Institute.
