This rare early photo is amongst the earliest ever taken in Blantyre.

Taken 143 years ago in 1875, it shows Blantyre Works Mill, on the edge of the River Clyde. You can see how tall at 5 or 6 storeys the mill was and one can only imagine how many hundreds of people would work here each day. An important building for Blantyre, even more so that the whole area of the ‘village’ had its humble beginnings in housing everybody who worked there.

Some of the windows are broken and even by this time the mills were in trouble, the weaving industry, no longer at its peak.

Featuring Blantyre Project Social Media with permission. Strictly not for use by others on or offline, our visitors said,

Blantyre Project It would have been great for these buildings to be saved, rather than demolished in 1903. We could have had our very own “new Lanark” , a heritage site combined with David Livingstone Centre and massive tourist attraction. Blantyre’s authorities , councils and private owners made a LOT of mistakes in demolition of properties in the 20th Century.