Publication Account

Date 1986

Event ID 1017646

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017646

Monuments of Industry - an illustrated historical record

The importance of New Lanark as a pioneering enterprise of industrial and social organisation is well known. Founded in 1785 by David Dale in association with Richard Arkwright, and profoundly influenced by the social and educational ideals of Dale's son-in-law Robert Owen, by 1825 it had become a model industrial village complete with mills, church, school, community buildings, including shop and bake-house and workers' dwellings. The site occupies a narrow stretch of ground beside the River Clyde, just below Corra Linn Falls, and the close inter-relationship between the mills, community buildings and lade system is best appreciated from the illustrations and site plans. Although the mills themselves have been subjected to alteration and reconstruction, the whole complex apart from No. 4 mill, which was burnt down in 1883, remains much as Dale and Owen planned it. A current programme of restoration by the New Lanark Conservation Trust in association with the Scottish Development Department, has been accompanied by a series of measured surveys undertaken by the Commission, which have included Owen's New Institution, erected between 1813 and 1816, and his School c.1819. The two principal floors of the institute, each 140 ft (42.67m) long by 19 ft (5.79m) wide, were designed for educational and recreational purposes, the 21 ft-high (6.40m) upper floor being formerly divided into two apartments with side-galleries; the 150ft by 42ft (45.72m by 12.80m) first and second floors of the school were each divided into two large rooms and furnished at their inner ends with a musicians' gallery enclosed by delicate iron balustrades.

The terraced rows of workers' tenements provide a remarkable insight into the living standards of the times. Apart from Braxfield Row, which is stepped along the descent of the approach road, the remainder of those here illustrated are built into the sloping hillside, and consequently the rear of the terraces usually incorporate one or more floors below street level with independent access. Flatted throughout and approached by communal stairs, the buildings fall into two main categories, the central blocks of New Buildings and Double Row/Water Row being of double-room depth, often allowing a four-square arrangement on each floor, and the remainder of single room depth. Each dwelling incorporated from one to four rooms, the principal elements being the fireplace, scullery and box-beds, the last especially affording a flexible unit for several permutations of house-layout. Flagged floors and a more limited window area made the basements less suited for habitation, and they appear to have been soon relegated to the function of wash-houses and possibly latrines, although the existence of no fewer than eight box-beds in two rooms in the basement of Water Row point to their possible use as pauper dormitories. The original domestic fittings were of a fairly standard character: the fireplaces had plain stone surrounds and latterly an iron range equipped with swey and smoke-board; another universal feature was the hurley-bed (Scots), or truckle-bed-a wooden drawer or box mounted on wheels capable of accommodating two persons, and low enough to be slipped under the fixed bed when not in use.

Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’, (1986).