A coat of black dust overlies everything, and in a few hours the visitor finds his complexion considerably deteriorated by the flakes of soot which fill the air, and settle on his face.
To experience Coatbridge it must be visited at night when it presents a most extraordinary spectacle.... From the steeple of the parish church the flames of no fewer than fifty blast furnaces may be seen....
Now they shoot far upward, and breaking off short, expire among the smoke; again spreading outward, they curl over the lips of the furnace, and dart through the doorways, as if determined to annihilate the bounds within which they are confined; then they sink low into the crater, and come forth with renewed strength in the shape of great tongues of fire, which sway backward and forward, as if seeking with a fierce eagerness something to devour.
[5] Gillpatrice Mackerran owned the area of Coatbridge prior to the Newbattle abbey Monklands being granted the land.
The local tracks established by the monks were used as part of the main road between Edinburgh and Glasgow until the early 19th century [7] The town was on the stage coach route between the two cities [9] In 1602, Sir Thomas Hamilton of Binning took possession.
However, the construction of the Monkland Canal to transport coal from deposits in Coatbridge to Glasgow proved to be the spark which set fire to the town's population explosion.
The invention of the hot blast furnace in 1828 by James Beaumont Neilson meant that Coatbridge's rich ironstone deposits could be fully exploited by the canal link.
In this period fortunes could be quickly made “with a rapidity only equalled by the princely gains of some of the adventurers who accompanied Pizarro to Peru”, noted one observer.
Ruthlessly exploiting James Beaumont Neilson's invention of the [17] furnace process to produce iron they were forced to pay substantial damages in a court action.
The modern day car parks skirting both sides of the South Circular Road are so undermined that no sizable buildings can be built.
Dick's Pond in Carnbroe (labelled Orchard Farm Pool by Google Maps but never called that locally) consists of the hollow left by an ironstone working.
Population growth strained every natural resource in the town and the canal's stagnant waters were a breeding ground for disease.
[25] (In later years, during the 20th century, it was noted that the residents of Gartcosh did not suffer such problems, but that was attributed to the largely English immigrant population who preferred to drink beer rather than water!)
[28] By 1901, the percentage of Irish born people in Coatbridge had fallen to around 15%, but remained the highest of all the major towns in Scotland.
[29] By end of World War I only five ironworks were left in Coatbridge – Langloan, Calder, Carnbroe, Summerlee and Gartsherrie.
[30] In the 1920s-1930s Coatbridge Town Council constructed new housing estates at Cliftonville, Cliftonhall, Rosehall, Barrowfield and Espieside.
Urban Aid, European Union grants and most recently Social Inclusion Partnerships have attempted to breathe new life into Coatbridge.