New Lanark is somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. When I found it was less than an hours drive away from where we we staying in Moffat it was an obvious place to add to our itinerary, so on the Monday morning we set off to drive up the A74(M).

New Lanark is a community on the River Clyde outside the old textile town of Lanark based around a collection of cotton mills. The reason I wanted to visit was its association with the utopian Socialist Robert Owen; so it was something of a pilgrimage for me. For many years I thought it had been established by Owen as a model Community but I discovered during our visit that this was not actually the case. It was actually established by Richard Arkwright (boo, hiss) and his business partner David Dale in 1785. Dale seems to have been a decent sort, at least for a manufacturer at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – it’s all relative of course – as he was an Abolitionist and provide night time classes for the “Pauper Apprentices who worked in the mills – after working an 11 hour day, mind. Arkwright baled out after a few years. Owen became involved in 1799 when he married Dales’ daughter.

Robert Owen was born in Newtown in Wales and after initially becoming an apprentice draper in London, he moved to the Cottonopolis of Manchester and after becoming involved in the textile industry became wealthy. During this time he started to develop Progressive views and attitudes, pressing for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers.

When he became Mill Manager at New Lanark the buildings and community had already existed for some 15 years, and Owen’s views and philosophy was still not fully developed, so the village was not a new “model village” as I initially thought. However, Owen introduced reforms based on his developing social and economic ideas. Workers were treated less harshly (again, that’s relative), expanded the free education of “apprentices” and other workers, provided access to health care and allowed “sick leave”, sold goods in the village shop at just above wholesale prices and started to introduce an 8 hour working day in the mills. So the life of workers here were certainly better than in other industrial towns at the time. Of course, some of his business partners weren’t some chuffed with these developments as they felt they were affecting their profits.

Owen’s ideas continued to develop and he eventually sold his interest in the operation in 1825 and went on to contribute to the establishment of a Utopian Community in the USA.

The mills continued operating under various owners until 1968. The New Lanark Conservation Trust (NLCT) was founded in 1974 (now known as the New Lanark Trust (NLT)) to prevent demolition of the village. Today the buildings have been restored and the village became a UNESCO World Heritage in 2001 and is now a major tourist attraction.

Reaching New Lanark we parked up and then made our way down the hill into the valley

It’s possible to wander around free of charge but we decided to support the venture, paying the fee to enter the New Lanark Visitor Experience in the mill buildings, the restored worker’s tenement rooms and “Robert Owen’s house”.

After passing a large steam engine, the main part of the exhibition is the Annie Mcleod Experience where visitors strap themselves into a carriage for a ride through a multimedia exhibition featuring a mill girl Annie who narrates the story of her life in the village and working in the mill. We then were able to look at some mill machinery (it was a spinning mill) and take in the views over the site from the roof garden.

Yarn is still spun in the mill, wool rather than cotton these days, though, by The New Lanark Spinning Company. It’s a small scale enterprise producing high quality yarn using 19th century equipment in the mill, the sales supporting the site.

Other enterprises supporting the site include an ice cream manufacturer and a hotel (in one of the former mill buildings). There are also 45 rented properties in the village in converted buildings, managed on a not-for-profit basis by New Lanark Homes with rental income reinvested into the maintenance of the properties. 

A replica of a typical room lived in by a worker’s family has been created in one of the former workers’ accommodation blocks. Originally, each family (normally with multiple children) would live in just one one room, with slide out beds, stored under the main beds, for the children.

The Mill manager’s house was a little more sumptuous.

After looking around we retreated to the large cafe for a bite to eat and then took a brief look inside the school building, before setting out for a walk along the Clyde Valley. More on that in the next post!