Carefully Selected Scottish Holiday Homes in Beautiful Locations
Lanark and New Lanark
The neat little market town of LANARK is an old and distinguished burgh, sitting in the purple hills high above the River Clyde, its rooftops and spires visible for miles around. Beyond the world's oldest bell, cast in 1130 and visible in the Georgian Church of St Nicholas, there's little to see in town unless you around during the lively Lanimer celebrations in early June, one of Scotland's oldest ceremonies of riding the marches or boundaries, which goes back to 1140. Most people head straight on to the village of NEW LANARK (www.newlanark.org), a mile below the main town on Braxfield Road, whose importance as a centre of social and industrial innovation has recently been recognized by UNESCO, who included it on their list of World Heritage Sites.
Although New Lanark is served by an hourly bus from Lanark train station, it's well worth the steep downhill walk to get there. The first sight of the village, hidden away down in the gorge, is unforgettable: large broken curving walls of honeyed warehouses and tenements, built in Palladian style, are lined up along the turbulent river's edge. The community was founded by David Dale and Richard Arkwright in 1785 to harness the power of the Clyde waterfalls in their cotton-spinning industry, but it was Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, who revolutionized the social side of the experiment in 1798, creating a "village of unity". Believing the welfare of the workers to be crucial to industrial success, Owen built adult educational facilities, the world's first day nursery and playground, and schools in which dancing and music were obligatory and there was no punishment or reward.
While you're free to wander around the village, which rather unexpectedly for such a historical site is still partially residential, to get into any of the exhibitions (all daily 11am-5pm) you need to buy a passport ticket (£4.75; various discount tickets are available, including an all-in ticket covering admission and the return train and bus trip from Glasgow). Of the three vast old mill buildings open to visitors, one houses the New Millennium Experience, where a chair lift whisks visitors through a social history of the village, conveying Robert Owen's vision not just for the idealized life at New Lanark, but also what he predicted for the year 2000. New Lanark village itself is just as fascinating: everything, from the co-operative store to the workers' tenements and workshops, was built in an attempt to prove that industrialism need not be unaesthetic. In the School for Children there's a clever cinematic show giving an unsentimental picture of village life through the imaginary perspective of a young mill girl. Situated in the Old Dyeworks, the Scottish Wildlife Trust Visitor Centre (April-Sept Mon-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat & Sun 1-5pm; Feb, March & Oct-Dec Sat & Sun 1-5pm; £1) provides information about the history and wildlife of the area. Beyond the visitor centre, a riverside path leads you the mile or so to the major Falls of the Clyde, where at the stunning tree-fringed Cora Linn, the river plunges 90ft in three tumultuous stages.
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