COATBRIDGE
North Lanarkshire
Originally a mining town situated between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The name is either derived from the Middle English 'cote' meaning 'cottage' or from the Old Welsh 'coed' meaning 'wood'. Therefore 'wood' or 'cottage by a bridge'. In 1745 it was the scene of the 'Canter of Coatbridge' when the Jacobite army advanced on fleeing Government forces.
The coming of the Industrial Revolution and the building of the Monklands Canal in 1790 provided its coal and ironstone trade with direct access to the Glasgow market, that by 1840 had sparked a profusion of hot blast furnaces with which the town excelled, until the exhaustion of local supplies and competition from England in 1900 sounded the death knell for the iron trade. Its end was delayed only by the discovery of processes for the extraction of by-products like sulphate, ammonia and tar.
Started in 1844 by William Baker (patentee of lapwelding process), The Caledonian Tube Works made tube making the principal industry here and was later controlled by A.J Stewart and The Scottish Tube Co.
The removal of the Union plant to Corby in England (1955) robbed the town of its heartbeat that is increasingly given over to more leisurely pursuits as the age of heavy industry passes.
Airdrie
Glasgow
Motherwell