page_title: Cumbernauld
section_title: Post-Industrial Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Cumbernauld / History / Post-Industrial Revolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Glencryan Mine Entrance (adit) to disused fireclay mine.
context_page_description: Cumbernauld is a large town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is the ninth most-populous locality in Scotland and the most populated town in north Lanarkshire, positioned in the centre of Scotland's Central Belt. Geographically, Cumbernauld sits between east and west, being on the Scottish watershed between the Forth and the Clyde; however, it is culturally far more weighted towards Glasgow and the New Town's planners thought to fill 80% of its houses from Scotland's largest city to reduce housing pressure there.
  Cumbernauld was marked by the Romans in antiquity. Traces of this are still visible today for example at Westerwood and, less conspicuously, north of the M80 where the legionaries surfaced what would later be called the Auld Cley Road. This is acknowledged in Cumbernauld Community Park, also site of Scotland's only visible open-air Roman altar, in the shadow of the imposing Carrickstone Water Tower.
  For many years Cumbernauld was chiefly populated around what is now called The Village with the medieval castle a short walk away surrounded by its own park grounds.
context_section_description: Workers laboured on about 40–50 farms and details from 1839 have been recorded for both arable and livestock farming. Some of them were said to make a "very considerable income" for their owners. Weaving was an important part of the town's industry particularly during the Industrial Revolution. Irvine records that in 1841 a fifth of the whole population of 4501 people worked on about 600 hand looms.  Cotton weaving was not a lucrative profession; in fact cottage workers struggled to make ends meet especially when competing with ongoing industrialisation. In October 1878, this was compounded by the failure of the Bank of Glasgow in which much of the village's money was invested. Many lowland workers migrated and Groome's Gazetteer 1896 records a dwindling population and states "Handloom weaving of checks and other striped fabrics is still carried on, but mining and quarrying are the staple industry." There tended to be plenty of work but even for skilled labourers like the nearby Calton weavers, times were very hard. 
  The mining and quarrying industries flourished after the completion of the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1790. Quarrying of limestone, coal and clay took place in Cumbernauld, for example at Glencryan, where adits to the old fireclay mines are still clearly visible. Groome's Gazetteer (1882–86) states: "A colliery is at Netherwood [just north of the airport]; ironstone has been mined to a small extent by the Carron Company [at Westerwood farm]; and limestone, brick-clay, sandstone, and trap are all of them largely worked, the sandstone for building, the trap for road-metal, paving, and rough masonry." The mine at Netherwood was hand-pumped, although other mines in Cumbernauld had machine pumps to clear them of water. There was a fire clay works at Cumbernauld owned by the Glenboig Union Fireclay Company Limited. Cumbernauld railway station was built by the Caledonian Railway and opened in August 1848 on their line from Gartsherrie (on the former Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway) to Greenhill on the Scottish Central Railway. It closed within a year but re-opened in the 1870s.
  
  Parish records give a snapshot of heads of family's occupations in 1835 and 1839 including several bakers, servants, shoemakers and wrights. The Ordnance Survey Name Books of 1860 provide land-use information from around the same period. 
  Cumbernauld was long a staging-post for changing horses between Glasgow and Edinburgh and there were several inns and a smiddy as well as half a dozen coaches a day to various towns. Old maps like the 1899 O.S. map show other employment like a gas works and a stocking factory in The Village and a corn mill at Lenziemill close to the old brick and pipe works. Three schools were run but the teachers were not always paid by the heritors. There were several church ministers and the Established church paid, out of collections, about 25 poor people a week who couldn't support themselves. Groome also records clerical work as there was a post office, two banks (held two days a week in a room in the inn) and a library with a newsroom.
  Towards the end of the 1890s, Jane Lindsay (also called Luggie Jean on account of having three ears according to Millar) was murdered in a pool of water on the edge of Fannyside Moor. The forensic experts, professors at Glasgow and Edinburgh, appeared as witnesses on opposing sides and a not proven verdict was returned.
  Historically Cumbernauld has variously been in several administrative jurisdictions including Stirlingshire, Dunbartonshire (sometimes spelled Dumbartonshire), and the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth District of Strathclyde region. Since 1995 it has been part of North Lanarkshire. The arms of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth District Council featured the white cattle and the Vulcan sounding motto of "Daur and Prosper" boldly asserting Dare and Prosper. However the open Bible and the miner's lamp were the only symbols which were carried on to the North Lanarkshire coat of arms.
caption: Entrance to disused fireclay mine at Glencryan
exif: {}