View from N of lade emerging from tunnel at S end of the village

Description View from N of lade emerging from tunnel at S end of the village

Date 13/6/2002

Catalogue Number SC 754963

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 32508

Scope and Content Tunnel entrance, Lade, New Lanark, South Lanarkshire, from north This shows the north end of the 300m-long rock-cut tunnel with the lade in the foreground. The arch of the tunnel is formed with wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs). The cast-iron railings are modern replicas of original railings already at the village. The doorway on the right has semicircular steps which are also late 20th-century additions. Water which had been diverted from the River Clyde by a weir to the south of the village passed through a 300m-long tunnel to the lade. The water in the lade was used to power up to ten waterwheels on the site. The walls of the lade have been restored with blue engineering bricks for the lower part and stone for the upper part. New Lanark was founded c.1785 by David Dale (1739-1806), a Glasgow merchant, and Richard Arkwright (1732-92), inventor of a water-frame for cotton spinning. Powered by water flowing from the Falls of Clyde the first cotton mill opened in 1786 and by 1799 the complex was the largest of its kind in Scotland. Robert Owen (1771-1858), who was married to David Dale's daughter, was one of a group who bought the mills in 1800. He transformed them into a model industrial community with good working conditions, houses, a non-profit store, a school and an institute for workers. Owen's partners bought the mills in 1828 and operated them until 1881 when another partnership took over. The Gourock Ropework Company ran the site until 1968 which is now mainly under the care of the New Lanark Conservation Trust (founded 1974-5). New Lanark was designated a World Heritage Site in 2001. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

External Reference Original: E32508

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/754963

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap