Coatbridge (; ) is a town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, about east of Glasgow city centre, set in the central Lowlands. It had a population of 42,264 in 2022. Along with neighbouring town Airdrie, Coatbridge forms the area known as the Monklands (population approximately 90,000 including outlying settlements), often considered to be part of the Greater Glasgow urban area – although officially they have not been included in population figures since 2016 due to small gaps between the Monklands and Glasgow built-up areas.
In the last years of the 18th century, the area developed from a loose collection of hamlets into the town of Coatbridge. The town's development and growth have been intimately connected with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, and in particular with the hot blast process. Coatbridge was a major Scottish centre for iron works and coal mining during the 19th century and was then described as 'the industrial heartland of Scotland'Coatbridge (Images of Scotland) By Helen Moir. The History Press (2001). and the 'Iron Burgh'.
Coatbridge also had a notorious reputation for air pollution and the worst excesses of industry. However, by the 1920s, coal seams were exhausted and the iron industry in Coatbridge was in rapid decline. After the Great Depression, the Gartsherrie ironwork was the last remaining iron works in the town. One publication has commented that in modern-day Coatbridge "coal, iron and steel have all been consigned to the heritage scrap heap".Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (1994) Eds. J & J Keay, HarperCollins Publishers, p.175
History
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.The Raddle – Journal of Monklands Historical Society; Volume 10, September 2005. A number of other Bronze Age urns and relics have been found in Coatbridge.Lanarkshire – An Inventory Of The Prehistoric And Roman Monuments – Royal Commission On The Ancient And Historical Monuments Of Scotland. HMSO – RCHMS, Edinburgh. 1978. pp. 40, 71, 75 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.Helen Moir, Coatbridge (Images of Scotland) The History Press (2001) ; pg. 7
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
The Monklands area inherited its name after the area was granted to the Cistercian monks of Newbattle AbbeyScottish Burgh and County Heraldry – RM Urqhuart. Heraldry Today (1973); pg. 188 by King Malcolm IV in 1162. In 1323, the Monklands name appeared for the first time on Stewards' charter.Helen Moir: Coatbridge (Images of Scotland), The History Press (2001) ; pg. 7 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).Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (1994) Eds. J & J Keay, HarperCollinsPublishers, pg. 175 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.Drummond, Peter and James Smith (1982). Coatbridge: Three Centuries of Change. Monkland Library Services; pg. 15 The new advances meant that iron could be produced with two-thirds less fuel.Miller, Thomas Roland (1958) The Monkland Tradition; Thomas Nelson and Sons, pg. 26 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.Miller, Thomas Roland (1958) The Monkland Tradition; Thomas Nelson and Sons, pg. 36
Over the course of the following forty years, the population of Coatbridge grew by 600%.Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland (1994) Eds. J & J Keay, Harper Collins Publishers, pg. 175 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".Historical, Biographical and Literary Sketches of Glasgow and Lanarkshire, Part 1&2. Hamilton Herald Printing and Publishing. 1904. p26
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.Peden, Allan (1992) The Monklands: Illustrated Architectural Guide, Edinburgh: RIAS; pg. 38
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. Among the most notable success stories were the six sons of Coatbridge farmer Alexander Baird. The Baird family had become involved in coal mining but opened an iron foundry in order to exploit the new hot blast process of iron smelting invented by James Beaumont Neilson. The Bairds subsequently constructed numerous iron foundries in Coatbridge including the famous Gartsherrie iron works.Coatbridge: Three Centuries of Change – Peter Drummond and James Smith, Monkland Library Services, 1982 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.
The town was vividly described by Robert Baird in 1845:
In the 19th century, the Baird family wielded a pervasive influence over Coatbridge. They were responsible for the design of the lay out of present-day Coatbridge town centre. The land for the Town Hall and the land which later came to form Dunbeth Park was given to the town by the Bairds. Gartsherrie church was built by the Baird family, the oldest and most significant landmark in the town. Despite being Protestant, the Bairds donated the site on the Main Street for the erection of St Patrick's Catholic Church.
Daniel (Dane) Sinclair, an engineer with the National Telephone Company, based in Glasgow, patented the automatic telephone switchboard. This system was installed in Coatbridge in 1886 and became the world's first automatic telephone exchange.
20th and 21st centuries By 1885, the once plentiful Monklands ironstone deposits had been largely exhausted. It became increasingly expensive to produce iron in Coatbridge as raw materials had to be imported from as far afield as Spain. The growth of the steel industry (in nearby Motherwell) had also led to a start of a decline in demand for the pig iron Coatbridge produced. Living conditions remained grim. In the 1920s, Lloyd George's "Coal and Power" report described the living conditions in the Rosehall area of Coatbridge:
George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier was illustrated by a photograph of homes in the Rosehall area of Coatbridge.Coatbridge: Three Centuries of Change – Peter Drummond and James Smith, Monkland Library Services, 1982; p.39 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'The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, Michael Lynch (ed.) OUP Oxford (2007); pg. 394 unemployment, appalling housing conditions and some of the worst overcrowding in Scotland left its stamp on the Coatbridge of the early 1930s.The Monklands: Illustrated Architectural Guide by Peden, Allan (pg. 38), RIAS, Edinburgh; 1992 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.Coatbridge: Three Centuries of Change – Peter Drummond and James Smith, Monkland Library Services, 1982; pg. 42
The last of the blast furnaces, William Baird's famous Gartsherrie works, closed in 1967.
Since the 1970s, there have been various initiatives to attempt to regenerate Coatbridge. Urban Aid grants, European Union grants and, more recently, Social Inclusion Partnerships have attempted to breathe new life into Coatbridge. Despite these efforts the town's population has continued to fall and, in recent years, the town has been dubbed the "most dismal in Scotland".
Geography
At (55.861°, -4.047°), Coatbridge is situated in Scotland's Central Lowlands. The town lies above sea level, east of Glasgow, south of Cumbernauld and west of Airdrie. Although Coatbridge has no major river running through it, the North Calder Water runs east–west to the south and the now defunct Monkland Canal used to run straight through the centre of the town toward Glasgow. The canal route through Coatbridge can still be seen today. Several smaller burns run through Coatbridge, most of which drain into the North Calder Water. Coatbridge has four significant public parks: Dunbeth Park, West End Park, Whifflet park and Drumpellier Country Park. Lochend Loch (locally known as Drumpellier Loch) and Woodend Loch are situated on the north-west edge of Coatbridge.
Topography