New Lanark is a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Clyde Valley of Scotland. Its mills were built to process cotton using the water power of the Clyde. The village used to have 2,000 residents, now it has about 150. This website has been created to provide information and a forum for residents and anybody else interested in the village. It is independent of both the New Lanark Trust and the New Lanark Village Group.
The New Lanark burial grounds are on the hillside above New Buildings. Some years ago Jim Arnold told the New Lanark Trust that it was thought that there are about 70 graves. Some are of the Highlanders who came to Caithness Row to work in the mills.
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The Trust decided not to carry out any restoration work in case it attracted vandelism. Some members thought that unlikely.
The New Lanark Village Group [NLVG] has risen from the dead. After being moribund for years it was reformed last week at a meeting of tenants and home owners at the hotel. A representative of the Trust was also present.
The NLVG intends to engage in both political and social activities. A numbers of bodies, including the Trust, local politicians, the council and funding bodies, affect village life. The outside bodies tend to assume that the Trust represents residents; but it does not. So they need to be aware that the NLVG exists and needs to be consulted.
The village used to have many social activities. Some of them are mentioned in other posts in this blog. They have all been lost and village life is now very dull. The NLVG group hopes to improve our social lives.
Let’s see how it goes.
House owners in New Lanark used to be able to insure their buildings thru the Trust’s insurance policy. The cost was £200+ for Braxfield Row houses.
When that arrangement was ended alternative insurers had to be found. The insurance brokers in Wellgate found me an insurer but the cost went up to £419.
For the year 2024-5 I was notified that the cost of my insurance would more than double to £864. No explanation was provided.
My insurance broker found an alternative insurer at a cost of £545.
I contacted Direct Line who quoted a cost of £200+ but claimed that because the insurance was for a listed building I would need to have its rebuilding cost estimated by a professional valuer. That would have cost £300 for an uncertain outcome.
A second approach to Direct Line provided a policy with a maximum cover of £1million for £202 and no requirement for a valuation. Different risks have different excesses. The largest is £1000.
"This shows the mill offices, probably built by Birkmyre & Somerville after 1880, with the steam engine house on the right. The office was demolished during the refurbishment of the village, to open up the centre. This photograph was taken after the Gourock Ropework Co Ltd, owners of the mills, had closed them, and dismantling of machinery had already begun." Canmore
There are now three bus services operating from New Lanark. One goes to the car park and the other two to Lanark.
Perhaps more visitors would use these services if there was a marked bus stop and posted timetables. At the moment visitors have to guess when and where buses will go.
Only 230 years after Rosedale Street was laid down it has been given a tar macadam surface. No more potholes or loose gravel. Kudos to the New Lanark Trust for organising the work. It will add to the value of the Long Row And Double Row houses and to the appearance of the village.
The road into New Lanark is an example of a Lanarkshire Red Road. It has a dense layer of red gravel chips from the quarry at Cloburn. Unfortunately, the top layer of the Rosedale tar macadam only has a thin covering of red chips and looks more black than red. Less than half the red chips needed have been used, though there are chips available on site. A red surface would have looked better and been more appropriate. There have been complaints that the surface is slippery when wet.
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| Stanley Mills |
New Lanark mills has a twin. A cotton mill built at the same time, by many of the same people and using the same Richard Arkwright water powered machines.
Arkwright was instrumental in the development of the spinning frame and the carding engine. These machines were highly productive but expensive and needed water power to operate. Arkwright moved cotton production out of the cottage and into his main invention, the cotton mill. He built the first one at Cromford in Derbyshire. This still exists but, despite its historic importance, is not a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In the early 1780s he came to Scotland to establish some new cotton mills in partnership with David Dale and others.
New Lanark was built to use the water power of the Clyde. On the other side of the country Stanley Mills were built eight miles north of Perth to use the water power of the Tay.
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| Stanley and the Tay. |
Arkwright was also involved in establishing the Woodside Mill in Aberdeen. That opened in 1785 and had 3000 employees at its peak. It closed in 1850. New Lanark operated from 1786 to 1968. Stanley from 1787 to 1989.
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| Stanley |
Stanley’s layout and buildings are very similar to New Lanark as can be seen from the images.
But New Lanark is a UNESCO World Heritage site and Stanley is not. What are the differences?
In Stanley the workers housing is further away from the mills than at New Lanark, in a separate village. Dale had to squeeze mills and housing into a very small site.
Stanley has been restored and is sustained in a very different way to New Lanark. One mill has been converted to an excellent museum. Two other mills have been turned into flats. At the time of writing a three bedroom flat was on the market for £210,000.
There are three important factors; architecture, history and community. Stanley and New Lanark have the same architecture. New Lanark is not unique. Comford was the start of the factory system and is more historically significant.
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| Cromford |
What made New Lanark worthy of World Heritage status is that it had Owen and his community experiments. A school, decent housing and care of orphans. Most importantly he demonstrated that you did not have to treat your workers badly to make a profit.
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| Owen used silent monitors to motivate workers | . |
Here is the village photograph from 1985.
We started a project to put names to faces. The first step was to copy the photograph and number everybody.
Then several people helped in the identification process. That produced the following list.
New Lanark was a very different place then.
The village still had a strong community spirit and villagers organised a range of activities. These included the annual games on the Caithness Row green, meals and dances in the church, coach trips, walks and many others. See this post.
Several of the 75 people in the photograph had worked in the mills until they closed in 1966.
Five of the people in the photograph still live in the village but most have gone to a better place, or Lanark.
Who is missing? Who lived in the village in 1985 but is not in the photograph?
I know of the following
Alveys - 1 Braxfield Row
Kellys - 2 Braxfield Row
Rances - Long Row [still in village]
Hardies - 4 Braxfield Row
Please leave a comment if you have any additions or corrections.
In 1985 the residents of New Lanark tried to form a cooperative to operate a small cafe for visitors. The cafe would have been in the two-storey building next to the Wildlife Trust premises. At the time the village did not have any catering facilities for visitors.
The scheme had the backing of fifty-nine residents and funding from Strathclyde Community Business. It would have created ten part time jobs and been under the control of the village community. It would also have created a healthy annual surplus for community projects.
The only suitable property [like almost all land and buildings in the village] is controlled by the New Lanark Conservation Trust and they refused to give a lease.
The scheme therefor failed.
The following article appeared in the Glasgow Herald on the 24th January 1985.
The article quoted Harry Smith saying the Trust would open a restaurant on the same common good basis as the cooperative. It certainly opened a restaurant but as a commercial operation with its profits going to the Trust. There was no “common good” element.
Scotland Direct did not open a “gourmet restaurant” and the company left the village years ago when it got cheaper premises elsewhere.
In 1993 the Trust was host to the Cooperative Movement on International CO-OP Day and a smirking Jim Arnold made much of New Lanark’s role in the founding of the cooperative movement.
Bill Hardie of 4 Braxfield Row died in hospital on Friday the 22nd January 2021.
Bill and Gillian Hardy came to New Lanark in 1979. They had probably lived in New Lanark longer than anyone currently resident.
Bill and his four brothers grew up in the west of Scotland. He became Deputy Director of Dundee Art Gallery. In 1977 he moved to become a director of Christies in Glasgow and set up their Scottish Picture Department.
He was an acknowledged expert on Scottish art and published 'Scottish Painting: 1837 to the Present' in 1994 [second edition 2010] and 'Glasgow Boys in Your Pocket' in 2010. In 1984 he started his own art gallery in Glasgow and organised many exhibitions.
Bill travelled extensively to promote Scottish art and claimed to have spent more than a year in Japan over the course of over 40 visits. He was well known in the national and international art world. In 2017 he published his autobiography; 'Gallery: A Life in Art'.
Bill and Gillie had two children. Andrew lives in Bristol and works as a teacher. Marion has lived in the village for several years with her daughter Evie and works as a nurse.
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| Water Row in 1903 |
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| External work on Double Row |
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| Ladies three legged race |
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| Ladies sack race |
