Shotts, Station Road, Shotts Ironworks

(Location cited as NS 879 598). Shotts Iron Works, founded 1802. An interesting group of structures, dominated by a long L-plan rubble furnace bank, with a partly buried ironstone calcining kiln and a tall brick water-tower used to provide cooling water for the furnace. There are the remains of an engine house, probably of the 1830s or 1840s, and behind that the remains of an earlier engine house, with a D-shaped wrought-iron roof tank. The principal surviving building is a tall single-storey, corrugated-iron-clad steel foundry, dating from c 1900, but retaining the cupola arches from an earlier building (1828). Behind this are single-storey pattern stores and a brass foundry, probably mid 19th century in origin. One of the two small curved gatehouses also survives. Now the most important monument of the Scottish coke-smelting iron industry.

J R Hume 1976.

FURNACE BANK: Tall masonry retaining wall, snecked cream sandstone rubble, with evidence of heightening and lengthening since first built in 1801. 2 round-headed arched recesses at northern end, and 5 small rectangular iron-lined openings in centre, with iron pipe projecting at southern end. Present form of bank dates from site improvement by Scottish Development Agengy in 1980s. HOT BLAST TOWER: Red brick 7-storey campanile, with small round-headed windows in inset panels, and machiculated and castellated parapet. Window voussoirs in white brick.

Surviving remains of iron-smelting works, founded 1802. Shotts was one of the early iron-smelting works in Central Scotland, and one of the last to remain in operation. It closed in 1947 as a result of coal nationalisation. The furnace bank is one of three surviving in Scotland, the others being at Dalmellington and Summerlee, Coatbridge. The tower, which contained a water tank to give enough head of water to cool the nozzles (tuyeres) through which air was blown into the furnaces, appears to have been unique to Shotts, and is a remarkable survival. The ironworks supplied much of the iron used for architectural work in the development of the New Town of Edinburgh. (Historic Scotland)