New Lanark - world heritage site

Live the past with the Annie McLeod experience of living and working in the model cotton village of New Lanark. Step over the threshold of the village shop and step back in time. See a cotton mill in operation.

Visit the waterfall of Corra Linn, the Scottish Wildlife Visitor Centre. Ideal for school parties. Further afield there''s the town of Biggar, the David Livingstone Centre, Strathclyde Park and the Time Capsule. An ideal base for groups visiting Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Quick Tips:

Many good walks so take a stout pair of shoes.

Best Way To Get Around:

Can fly into Glasgow, Prestwick or Edinburgh airports. The area is also easily reached from a variety of rail, road and ferry routes.

By car or coach: New Lanark is 25 miles/40 kms from Glasgow and 35 miles/56 kms from Edinburgh and is well sign-posted from all major routes.

By Train: Trains leave from Glasgow Central or Motherwell every hour to Lanark railway station. Buses and taxis at the bus stance, adjacent to Lanark Railway station and Tourist Information Centre will take you the 1.5 miles/2.5 km to New Lanark.

On foot: New Lanark lies on an attractive section of the River Clyde Walkway, close to the Falls of Clyde. For more details, contact the Clyde and Avon Valleys project, tel: 01555 665244, or Lanark Tourist Information Centre Tel: 01555 661661 or fax: 01555 666143.

When I see Cora Linn, one of the waterfalls of the River Clyde in full spate, the force of natural power takes my breath away. The waterfalls are among the most impressive I have seen. Even in ordinary weather they are inspiring; water cascading down rocky gorges overhung with trees, masses of ferns and mossy vegetation. In spate their grandeur is magnified. The roar of water becomes hypnotic after a few minutes, and the cascading sheets and folds of white water mesmerizing.

The waterfall Cora Linn consists of two drops, with a calmer interlude between them. Majestic rocks enclose the basin below the fall. Trees, chiefly hazels, birch, and ash, grow out of the rocky sides wherever they can sink a root. The upper of the falls, the Boninton Linn, has a solemn grandeur … the river descends through a long gorge of steep and threatening rocks. The roaring of the water falling is thunderous.

Poets, artists, and tourists in search of the awe-inspiring have visited the falls. Two visitors in 1783 cast a different eye over the falls. David Dale, son of a grocer, and prosperous cloth merchant Richard Arkwright debated if the falls could power cotton-spinning machines. Arkwright had invented one called "the water-frame". This was too large and needed too much power for use by individual households - spinning machines and looms at the time were small affairs normally situated in people's homes. They wanted to incorporate hundreds of these machines in mills in one location and employ thousands of workers. The result was New Lanark on the River Clyde.

The Falls of Clyde, as well as yielding, beauty, majesty, and power, are also a wildlife habitat. The Scottish Wildlife Trust manages the ancient woodlands and riverbanks with nature conservation in mind, and is gradually replacing recent conifer plantations with deciduous trees such as birch, oak, and ash. Their Wildlife Reserve covers 59 hectares - areas of ancient woodland along both sides of the River Clyde gorge. The reserve takes its name. 'Corra Linn', from the waterfall. Its 84 feet drop impressed the poet William Wordsworth during a visit in 1802 so much he described it as "…the Clyde's most majestic daughter".

The reserve contains a diversity of wildlife. The woodland is filled with the songs of warblers, tits, and wrens, while the open glades and pathways are haunts for badgers, foxes, and roe deer.

The area is full of wildflowers, fungi, and a huge variety of invertebrates. Otters, dippers, herons, and kingfishers live along the river, while several birds of prey, including peregrine falcons, tawny owl, barn owl, and sparrow hawk, make the reserve their home.

In an age when children worked as chimney sweeps, labored down the mines, or worked in mills and received little education, New Lanark was heaven. David Owen introduced free education for everybody. Just how enlightened he was is shown in various exhibits at the New Lanark, World Heritage Site.

In 1809 he set up Nursery Buildings, the first nursery school in the world, to improve living conditions of children and apprentices, and in 1816 The Institute for the Formation of Character. It was the centerpiece of his model town New Lanark. It was a non-sectarian educational, social, and recreational center. It provided free full-time education for young people aged two to fourteen, a setting for adult classes, public lectures, dances (three evenings a week in winter months alternating with evening classes), and meetings. The curriculum ensured a balance between vocational knowledge and enjoying 'agreeable recreation'.

Full-time education varied according to age: children between two and six years attended the infant school; those from six to fourteen the day school, and older children and the adults went to evening classes. The system applied to them was similar to that followed in the day school. However, David Owen was proudest of the day school - and with some reason.

The revolutionary school's ethic based on Owen's philosophy of "rational approach" disallowed punishment and allowed only encouragement and kindness. Teaching aids such as large colored canvases and singing and dancing complemented reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the children assembled every working day in cotton Highland or Roman dress. Twelve teachers taught 194 children in Elementary school, and seven taught 80 in the Infant School - a good teacher/pupil ratio by today's standards.

In his autobiography Owen listed the qualities of the school as follows. There was no corporal punishment; kindness by teachers; instruction in realities by conversation; answering questions in a 'kind and rational manner'; abolishing fixed hours and alternating lessons and play; introducing music, dancing, and drill into the curriculum; excursions into the countryside; trying to train children to think and act rationally; and placing children in superior surroundings.

Even by modern standards it was progressive and enlightened. There was some distance from the vision to the reality - but there is no doubting the vision.

The Robert Owen's School for Children is full of exciting attractions such as the Annie McLeod Story, Historic Classroom, and an Interactive Gallery. Annie McLeod is a mill girl from the year 1820. Her ghost appears on center stage through the use of some clever technology while a 3D film of her schooldays and life in New Lanark is shown behind her. She lived in the house in New Buildings that has been restored to its 1820s style.

Annie proves to be an able guide and paints an intimate picture of what life was like in New Lanark in the days of Robert Owen. For instance, in the mills above each work place is a silent monitor. It has four sides, which are painted different colors. A poor performance means that the black side is turned outwards. No punishment is given, but the look on David Owen’s face when he sees it is enough to discourage it from happening again. Annie is an attractive ghost and I wondered if she would let me take her photograph – she didn’t seem to mind so perhaps I have the world’s first photo of a ghost.

The Interactive Gallery, in the same building, is great fun for children and quite amusing for adults as well. You have to remove your shoes and move around. Computers monitor your position. As you move you trigger various actions – lights and sounds will change. At times it is like walking in the Nature Reserve along the Falls of Clyde. Bird song fills the air as they change while you move. At another point the sound of rushing water fills the air, and foil positioned on a wall makes a wave pattern.

In the Visitor Center there is a magical ride called the 'New Millennium Experience'. A girl called Harmony from the year 2200 takes you on a journey to discover the amazing story of New Lanark and Robert Owen! Seats similar to a chair lift move through dark corridors, and as it does so the past unfolds. David Owen is sitting at his desk; the children are dancing in the school and the textile workers meet the constant demands of the textile machinery. It is warm and moist in the mills and the girls work in bare feet to try and keep cool. Children who have entered employment crawl under the machinery scavenging for cotton that has fallen down.

The social experiments that took place in New Lanark were of worldwide importance, and that is why New Lanark occupies an important place in the history books of 2200. Harmony also told us a bit about what was going to happen in the future. In doing this she was risking losing her time travel license, so I have to keep quiet about the details.

One floor of a mill still includes the working textile machinery talked about by Harmony. It was idle on this visit, but I have seen it working on a previous visit. Continual films are projected on the walls, which show the various stages of making cotton cloth. The films start in America with the cotton being grown and loaded onto ships, and continue all the way through to New Lanark. New Lanark cloth was suitable for making sails and tents. It was known as picture cotton because when shipped, the wrapping had a picture of New Lanark on the wrapping. Each week New Lanark produced enough cotton thread to go several times around the world. It was the biggest producer in Britain.

The hustle and bustle of New Lanark as a working town of 2,500 people has gone. The movement to and from work, the barefoot children, the horses and carts, the washing lines, the gossip, the roar of machinery, the clang of the bell regulating the working day, and the constant hustle and bustle has all disappeared. The houses and ghosts remain, but their way of life has been recreated.

At New Buildings, below the bell-tower, a 1820s and a 1930s home are open to visitors. The tenement housing is three floors high with stonewalls, slate roofs, and wooden stairs. Each house consisted of a single room in which an entire family lived and slept. "Hurley" beds dragged out from beneath the built in box beds squeezed everybody in. Spring water came from public wells. Sewage went on public dung heaps and was removed by horse and cart. Owen introduced inspections of houses to ensure cleanness and expanded the living accommodation for large families.

Every single room had a large open fire, and it was around this that family life revolved. On the fire, water heated and food bought from the company store cooked in pots suspended over the flame. The fire needed constant attention to keep the room warm and pots hot. The range itself sparkled from frequent painting and polishing.

David Owen, the mill owner, developed a co-operative store - good quality goods bought in bulk and sold to the work people at near cost. The profits reinvested in the village benefited everybody. In 1923 the profit of £8,000 covered the cost of the new school. New Lanark’s store was an inspiring example of the success of the early co-operative movement.

In the far corner of the Village Square is the Village Store, which Robert Owen set up as part of his plan to improve the standard of living for his workers. Visitors can buy traditional goods and gifts within the store. The store was the inspiration for the famous Co-operative Movement. He also introduced a health fund – one sixtieth of the workers wages. For this they were entitled to the services of a doctor.

Overlooking the gardens in the center of the village is Robert Owen's House - a house with more rooms than people! It is partly furnished in the period of the day to show the home life of the mill owner.

Within one of the four original mills is a massive working 19th century spinning mule and other textile machinery showing the working place for the people of New Lanark. Work started at 6 a.m. and continued through to 6:30 p.m. The workers went home at meal times for something to eat.

In 1898 gas lighting used from 1851 gave way to hydroelectricity, one of the first public electricity lighting systems. Flushing water closets improved living and hygiene standards.

Around 180 people still live in the village in refurbished houses. Some historic buildings now serve as craft workshops. There is also a mill converted into the Mill Hotel and there is a Youth Hostel.