Undiscovered Scotland

 

Their are a range of visitor attractions on offer at New Lanark. At their core is the main Visitor Centre which links through to the New Millennium Experience and the cotton spinning and other displays housed in Mill 3, plus a cafeteria and shops. A separate page covers other attractions in the village.

Dotted around New Lanark are a series of buildings housing exhibits that elsewhere would be well worth visiting in their own right. The most significant collection is housed in Robert Owen's School for Children. Here you find a recreation of a classroom from Robert Owen's day, together with a room containing an exhibition about the restoration of New Lanark. The slide show contains startling images demonstrating the remarkable transformation that had taken place in recent years. Downstairs is an audio-visual presentation of the story of Annie McLeod, a typical 1800s child resident of New Lanark. Here, too, you find an interactive exhibition.

The Village Store contains an interesting mix. In part it is a recreation of the store in its days as a pioneer of the ideas on which the cooperative movement was later founded. In part it is also a real shop offering a range of unusual gifts and memorabilia of your visit.

Along from the Village Store is the Millworkers' House, in effect a museum offering a range of recreated rooms and other exhibits demonstrating the everyday lives of the people who lived and worked in New Lanark. Highlights include a typical single room dwelling with set-in beds. As you look at this small space, bear in mind that in 1861 one room like this in New Buildings was home to a couple, their four children, a sister-in-law, and two lodgers.

Equally atmospheric is the laundry room, complete with its dark painted lower walls and dim lighting. And keep a lookout for the slight surprise as you tour the exhibition: though remember that communal external toilets were the norm until 1933, and even then residents had to make do with "stairheid cludgies" on landings.

Robert Owen's House, one of only two detached houses in the village, contains a range of displays showing how it would have looked during Owen's time in the village. These include a recreation of Owen's study and a collection of "understairs" rooms such as the kitchens and a servant's room. Again, you emerge feeling much closer to the people who spent their lives in New Lanark.

The village is also a great launch-pad for exploration of the spectacular stretch of the River Clyde on which it is built. A path leads upstream through the Falls of Clyde Scottish Wildlife Trust Reserve. Here you can enjoy the three waterfalls that demonstrate so visibly the power of the river that led to the establishment of New Lanark in the first place.

The most impressive of these, Corra Linn, is 27m high and described as Britain's largest waterfall, presumably in terms of volume of water: the highest in the country remains Eas-Coul-Aulin near Kylesku at just over 200m.