New Lanark
Date: 20 May 2012
New Lanark, just about 40 minutes southeast of Glasgow (by car) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site commemorating Robert Owen, who provided hundreds of his cotton mill workers with decent living accommodations, free health care, free education and night classes, affordable food, no child labor or corporal punishment, and this was all in 1825 when he took over ownership of the mill from his father-in-law! (To put that in perspective, the United States didn't pass its first child-labor laws until 1916, has some of the highest education costs, no universal health care, and the cheap food is always the worst quality.)
It was Sunday morning and my friend Euan texted me to see if I wanted to take the drive out there. It was sunny, and I figured it was better than reading for Uni at home. You park up above the River Clyde valley and walk down a path into the mill and village below. The buildings are beautifully built, carved out of the ever noticeable sandstone that pervades Glasgow architecture, and many of the buildings are still lived in! Part of the mill burned down, but blueprints were found and it was reconstructed and now houses a fancy hotel in one of the most picturesque bits of Scotland I've seen (I mean, it's no highlands, but still beautiful). It actually reminded me a lot of Vermont and parts of the Winooski River valley.
We weren't planning on spending too much time at the site. Euan had been a few times before since he grew up nearby, and since it cost £8.50 to get into the Visitor Center and museum, I thought I'd wait until next time when the weather would likely not be as nice. So we walked around the grounds and the mills, past the gigantic waterwheel which ran the mill, the mill race that turned the wheel, the mill dam which fed the mill race with water, and then took a wee hike upstream along the river.
The land surrounding New Lanark is densely wooded, but there are plenty of trails for visitors to explore including one that goes up to a hydroelectric dam that Scottish Power uses for clean, green energy. Along the way, though, we passed Cora Linn, a beautiful cascade of waterfalls, as well as a second series of falls a little farther upstream. In recent geological history (we're talking 10,000 years ago!) this part of Scotland was covered by an ice sheet, or glaciers coming down off the highlands. The massive amounts of ice acted as a dam in the river valley, causing a glacial meltwater lake to form. Eventually, this dam burst, as so many of them do (thank you Vermont Geology!), sending water down the river valley and over cliffs. Since then, the falls have eroded back up the valley a bit such that the water flows over a series of smaller knickpoints rather than over one giant cliff.
Overall, we probably spent a little over two hours at the site, but since we didn't pay for anything, I didn't mind not being there longer, but I will go back at some point to learn more of the Mill's history.
The Tenement House
Date: 26 May 2012
Saturday was yet another beautiful day in Glasgow and as the afternoon wore on, I decided to head to a tiny museum in town that I've heard so much about called the Tenement House (part of the National Trust for Scotland). They don't allow the taking of photographs, so I'll do my best to describe bits of the house. Its premise is pretty simple: a woman by the name of Mrs. Toward, owned the property from the 1890s through at least 1960 (sorry, I didn't catch exact dates!). Mrs. Toward was a seamstress who disliked change and lived by herself, so after her death the flat was considered to be in spectacular period condition, much as it was in the 1890s, apart from the new-fangled electric lights which Mrs. Toward had installed in 1960!
The development of housing in Glasgow's history really shaped it into its present state, and many museums around the city spend some amount of time on the subject (like at the Peoples' Palace on Glasgow Green). Tenement housing was Glasgow's response to a quickly growing population in the 1800s as millions of people moved here to take on work in mills, factories, and other industries. With such a large population living in squalid conditions, public health took a turn for the worst. In the US, we tend to think of Tenements as slums and housing of poor conditions, which, frankly, they did here in Scotland as well. But in the later 1800s the city council of Glasgow decided to take charge of these terrible housing slums by demolishing them and then building new blocks of stone buildings in which an entry way (a close) leads to 3-5 floors of houses, each floor having three doors off of a landing. Essentially, Tenements in Glasgow are like Boston Brownstone houses; however, instead of individual, multi-level, houses being built next to each other, the houses are one level (which is why I live in a flat and not an apartment), and stacked on top of each other.
The newer tenements were a step above the older slums, but since there were public spaces, shared by all tenants - such as the close, the stairs, the back yard - strict rules were enforced regarding their cleanliness. If your close was not kept clean, everyone living off of it would be fined, for example.
Mrs. Toward's flat was simple, with four rooms: a bathroom, kitchen, dining/family room, and a bedroom, all leading off of the entry way. Everything in the flat is as much as it would have been when Mrs. Toward lived there and most of the belongings are hers. It's a very neat place to go to see an old, coal-fired range which was never updated, a deep laundry tub with a mangle attached to it, an old fireplace and wood-carved mantle with knick-knacks that reminded me of my grandparents' houses, and large closets in which a mattress was placed. The dining/living room was rarely used except on special occasions. When I asked why, I was told that the door usually remained shut otherwise soot from all of the coal burning, both inside the flat and literally all over Glasgow, would ruin the nice furnishings. But I imagine it must have been used somewhat as one of Mrs. Toward's sewing machines, a piano, and one of the bed-closests were in there.
Otherwise, everything else in the flat was fairly sparse and used-looking. But why shouldn't it be? People weren't able to go out and buy something new when theirs broke, so they had to fix it, or figure out a way to get the job done without it! Everything in the house had a purpose like kitchen utensils, or toiletries, or medicines, or cleaning agents. The only real personal effects I noticed were some paintings and the knick-knacks in the living room with a nice set of china, used only for special occasions, I presume. You just didn't have the money to be filling your house with useless clutter!
It's too bad they didn't allow photos inside, the Tenement House, because I know I didn't do it justice! I was able to snag some photos of plaques placed in the close leading up to the house, just to prove I was actually there!
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