Coatbridge

Coatbridge owes its name to a bridge that carried the old Edinburgh-Glasgow road over the Gartsherrie Burn, at what is now Coatbridge Cross. This first appears on Roy's survey of 1755 as Cottbrig, one of a number of places on the wider Coats estate. The name Coats most likely comes from the Scots word cot(t), meaning "cottage", although an alternative theory links it to the name of the Colt family, who owned land here as early as the 13th century. Early history: Bronze to Middle Ages Settlement of the Coatbridge area dates back 3000 years to the Mesolithic Age. A circle of Bronze Age stone coffins was found on the Drumpellier estate in 1852. A number of other Bronze Age urns and relics have been found in Coatbridge. An Iron Age wood and thatch crannog dwelling was sited in the loch at the present day Drumpellier Country Park. Dependent upon the water level in the loch, the remains can still be seen. Roman coins have been unearthed in Coatbridge, and there are the remains of a Roman road on the fringes of the town near the M8 motorway. Middle Ages to late 18th century "Nether Warde of Clyds-dail" map which depicts the hamlets of Kirkwood, Dunpelder, Wheatflet, Dunbath, Gartshary in the modern day Coatbridge area The Monklands area inherited its name after the area was granted to the Cistercian monks of Newbattle Abbey by King Malcolm IV in 1162. In 1323, the Monklands name appeared for the first time on Stewards' charter. The monks mined coal and farmed the land until the time of the reformation when the land was taken from them and given to private landowners. In 1641, the parish of Monklands was divided between New Monkland (present day Airdrie) and Old Monkland (present day Coatbridge). Old Monkland was described in the 1799 Statistical Account as an "immense garden" with "extensive orchards" and "luxurious crops", where "rivers abound with salmon". 19th century The Monkland Canal was constructed at the end of the 18th century initially to transport coal to Glasgow from the rich local deposits. The invention of the hot blast furnace process in 1828 meant that Coatbridge's ironstone deposits could be exploited to the maximum by the canal link and hot blast process. The new advances meant that iron could be produced with two-thirds less fuel. Summerlee Iron Works was one of the first iron works to use this technology. By the mid 19th century there were numerous hot blast furnaces in operation in Coatbridge. The prosperous industry which had sprung up around the new iron industry required vast numbers of largely unskilled workers to mine ironstone and work in the blast furnace plants. Coatbridge therefore became a popular destination for vast numbers of Irish (especially from County Donegal in Ulster) arriving in Scotland. The iron bars and plates produced in Coatbridge iron works were the raw materials needed throughout the British Empire for railways, construction, bridge building and shipbuilding. One example of uses Coatbridge iron was put to included armour plating for British ships fighting in the Crimean War. Over the course of the following forty years, the population of Coatbridge grew by 600%. The character of the Coatbridge area changed from a rural, Presbyterian landscape of small hamlets and farmhouses into a crowded, polluted, Irish Catholic industrial town. In 1840, Rev William Park wrote that: One contemporary observer at this time noted that Coatbridge is "not famous for its sylvan beauties of its charming scenery" and "offers the visitor no inducements to loiter long". However, "a visit to the large Gartsherrie works is one of the sights of a lifetime". Most of the town's population lived in tight rows of terraced houses built under the shadow of the iron works. These homes were often owned by their employers. Living conditions for most were appalling and tuberculosis was rife. For a fortunate few though, fortunes could be won "with a rapidity only equalled by the princely gains of some of the adventurers who accompanied Pizarro to Peru", noted one observer. The waste heap or 'bing' from the Baird's Gartsherrie works was said to be as large as the great pyramid in Egypt. One son, James Baird, was responsible for erecting 16 blast-furnaces in Coatbridge between 1830 and 1842. Each of the six sons of Alexander Baird was reputed to have become a millionaire. 20th and 21st centuries By 1885, the once plentiful Monklands ironstone deposits had been largely exhausted. In 1934, there was an exodus to Corby in England when the local Union Plant relocated. This had the effect of a hammer blow impact on the town's iron industry and ushered in the end of serious iron production. The decline of the Clydeside shipbuilding industry in the 1950s meant the demand for iron finally collapsed. A legacy of 'devastating' unemployment, appalling housing conditions and some of the worst overcrowding in Scotland left its stamp on the Coatbridge of the early 1930s. As late as 1936, Coatbridge was the most overcrowded place in Scotland. In the 1930s and 1950s, however, massive state-sponsored programmes saw thousands of new homes built in Coatbridge and some of the worst examples of slum housing were cleared away. By the early 1980s, 85% of homes in Coatbridge were part of local authority housing stock. The last of the blast furnaces, William Baird's famous Gartsherrie works, closed in 1967. ==Geography==