North Lanarkshire Council
Museums and Heritage
From the 1820s the Coatbridge area was the 'iron heart of Scotland', producing most of the pig iron needed for the expanding industries of the country and exporting iron all over the world.
In the 1870s steel production began in Motherwell. For well over a century until the closure of Ravenscraig, the area produced steel used in shipbuilding and engineering in Scotland and elsewhere.
We represent this heritage through the excavated remains of Summerlee Iron Works in Coatbridge, the only excavated first-generation hot-blast ironworks and now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, along with important artefacts relating to iron and steel production in Scotland.
Mechanical and electrical engineering are well represented through large collections of machine and hand tools, while the museum also holds a substantial body of material relating to woodworking, including a large collection of patterns. A collection of boiler making plant and associated archive, from Thomas Hudson and Co of Coatbridge, is unique in Britain.
The majority of the industrial history collections are displayed in Summerlee Museum, Coatbridge, which reopened in 2008 after a £10 million pound refurbishment. The 22 acre site includes the remains of the Summerlee Iron Works, Scotland's only working tramway and the sole surviving rotative Newcomen engine in Europe, dating from 1810. Other exhibits include rare reform and trades union banners, industrial locomotives and a working sawmill.
The Museums and Heritage service covers museums, archives and local studies centres. In addition to Summerlee, it is responsible for a further five sites around the Council area in Motherwell, Shotts, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth.