Nursery Buildings, New Lanark Road, New Lanark, Lanark, South Lanarkshire

Entry Name: Nursery Buildings, New Lanark Road, New Lanark

Listing Name: New Lanark, 1-11 (Inclusive Nos) Nursery Buildings

Listing Date: 12 January 1971

Category: A

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 382017

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB37046

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200382017

Location: Lanark

County: South Lanarkshire

Town: Lanark

Electoral Ward: Clydesdale North

Traditional County: Lanarkshire

Description

1809 with 1850 additions. Terrace of mill workers' tenements with village bakery at E set against steeply sloping ground and comprising 3 parts. Sandstone rubble with stugged and droved ashlar dressings. Generally regular fenestration with tabbed margins.

NOS 1-7: 4-storey, 9-bay, symmetrical tenement to W with central round-arched principal doorway and turnpike stair at rear.

NOS 8-9: 3-storey, 7-bay tenement with village store at ground floor; steps up to central door with fanlight flanked by 2 pairs of shallow bow shop windows with relieving arches.

NO 10: 1850. Single storey, 3-bay former village bakery with central door and bipartite window; 2-bay block to left.

12-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Ashlar-coped ridge stacks with small black cans. Ashlar-coped skews; flat-topped skewputts to bakery section. Grey slates.

INTERIOR (WORKERS' TENEMENTS): curved stone stair to upper floors of tenement.

Statement of Interest

The Nursery Buildings are an important component of the village, adjoining the New Buildings and running in a straight line from the main approach into New Lanark. They were constructed by Robert Owen to house several hundred pauper apprentices who would normally have lived in the mills; it was a part of Owen's philanthropic policy to improve the situation of these apprentices. The rear turnpike stair is unique in New Lanark, all other stairs being in the body of the buildings, and reflects the original use of the building as it allowed access to the apprentices' dormitories. The buildings were altered for family accommodation soon after their construction.

The village bakery, which is an important part of the continued development of New Lanark during the 19th century, was added to the south end of the tenements blocks in 1850. It later served as the post office. The village store in the central block was established by Robert Owen about 1810 and was run by the company until 1933 when it was leased to the Lanark Provident Co-operative society. The shop tearoom and post office continued to trade until 1990.

New Lanark was a pioneering cotton-spinning village, which became a model for industrial communities that was to spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries and is recognised as being of outstanding importance historically and in visual terms because of its completeness and its physical form. Elements of sophisticated early town planning are evidenced in the orchestration of the various components in the village, from the mill weir, its lade and tunnel to south, to the tunnels and sluices leading off to the individual mills, the crucially generous circulation spaces, gardens, tailored walks and viewing points realised from the start. It is surrounded by an incomparable natural and designed landscape, the mill buildings sitting on the natural terrace to the east of the River Clyde in this deeply incised, wooded river valley.

Built to exploit the water power offered by the Falls of Clyde, the mills were in operation from 1786 to 1968. The mill village is made up of industrial, residential and community buildings, dating predominantly from between 1786 and the 1820s. It was founded by David Dale, a Glasgow merchant, in conjunction with Richard Arkwright, a trailblazing inventor of the cotton spinning industry whose patents enabled operation on a considerable scale. Dale's humane philosophy, realised from the start in the buildings of New Lanark, was expanded by Robert Owen, who took over management of the mill village in partnership from 1799. Owen created an environment where child labour and corporal punishment were abolished, and provided workers with good homes, education and free health care as well as affordable food. He had a profound influence on social developments such as factory reform throughout the 19th century.

Within World Heritage Site inscribed 2001.

List description updated 2010.

External Links

Historic Environment Scotland Listing

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