Field Visit

Date October 1994

Event ID 756960

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/756960

RCAHMS Afforestable Land Survey, Central Scottish Woodland

NS95SE 11.04 9513 5491

This row of stone-built workers' cottages (CSW 1027) has been reduced to grassed-over footings measuring overall 176m in length from NNE to SSW by 6m in breadth. It is divided into sixteen compartments, each of which has been subdivided into two rooms, and enough fireplaces survive to suggest that there was one in each room. The entrances all open to the WSW. To the E of the row, towards its NNW end at NS 9513 5506, there is the remains of a small communal wash-house. The 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Lanarkshire 1897, sheet xx.2) depicts another three of these structures, disposed in a line behind the cottages and about 20m from them, but these could not be found in dense forestry.

Quality Row was built in 1808 to house workers at Wilsontown Ironworks, and, according to Smith (1985), it had about 180 inhabitants. Ritchie (1938) records that it was occupied until 1936. Photographs (reproduced by Ritchie and by Smith) show a two storeyed row, with external stairs on the E side leading to the upper apartments.

About 6m beyond the N end of the row there is another building (CSW 7036, NS 9510 5509), which measures 10.9m in length from NNW to SSE by 5.4m transversely over mortared-rubble walls 0.65m thick and 0.5m high. It is depicted on an 1826 map of Wilsontown Estate (National Library of Scotland, Map Library), but it was roofless by the 1st edition of the OS 25-inch map (Lanarkshire 1864, sheet xx.2). That map shows the building to be joined to another at its NNW end, but there is no trace of the second building, nor of the yard depicted on their E side. These buildings may have been houses, perhaps detached from the row to the S because they were inhabited by workers of higher status.

(CSW 1027, 7036)

Visited by RCAHMS (SDB) October 1994