Coatbridge Municipal Buildings | |
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![]() Coatbridge Municipal Buildings | |
Location | Dunbeth Road, Coatbridge |
Coordinates | 55°51′49″N4°01′18″W / 55.8637°N 4.0217°W |
Built | 1894 |
Architect | Alexander McGregor Mitchell |
Architectural style(s) | Renaissance style |
Listed Building – Category B | |
Official name | Dunbeth Road, Municipal Buildings, Including Boundary Walls, Railings, Gatepiers And Gates |
Designated | 19 April 1993 |
Reference no. | LB23016 |
Coatbridge Municipal Buildings, formerly Coatbridge Town Hall, is a municipal building in Dunbeth Road, Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The building, which was the headquarters of Coatbridge Burgh Council, is a Category B listed building. [1]
Following significant population growth in the late 19th century, particularly in the iron trade, [2] the burgh council decided to procure a town hall: the site they selected had formed part of the grounds of Dunbeth House, [3] the residence of William Weir, a close relative of the descendants of Alexander Baird who had founded William Baird & Co Ltd, iron founders, in Gartsherrie. [4] Weir donated the land for the town hall to the burgh council. [5]
The new building was designed by Alexander McGregor Mitchell in the Renaissance style, built in red sandstone ashlar and completed in 1894. [1] [6] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage with nine bays facing onto Dunbeth Road with the last three bays at each end slightly project forward; the left section, which was more elaborate than the other sections, originally featured a large portico with two pairs of Corinthian order columns supporting an entablature, a balustrade and two statues of lions; there was a bay window on the first floor and a pediment containing fine carvings in the tympanum. [7] [8] The centre section featured a tall three-light window on the first floor and a shaped gable above. [1] The right hand section featured a doorway flanked by pilasters in the first bay and a bay window flanked by statues in niches on the second floor with a shaped gable above. [1] The statues, which depicted Justice and Vulcan, were sculpted by James Alexander Ewing [9] and James Charles Young respectively. [10] Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber and the main assembly hall, which contained an organ with four manuals and 55 stops, the latter of which had been designed and manufactured by Henry Willis & Sons. [11] [12]
The main assembly hall hosted many concerts by leading performers including the Bee Gees on 28 October 1967. [13] However, the building was badly damaged in a fire later that year. [14] [15] The centre and right sections of the front elevation survived the fire unscathed but the more elaborate left hand section was completely destroyed: it was replaced in a sympathetic style to a design by Launcelot H. Ross & Lindsay [6] with stonework which broadly mirrored the right hand section but without the doorway. [1] On the Kildonan Street elevation, rather than replicating the original stonework, a modern structure was constructed with a new main entrance. [1]
The building continued to serve as the headquarters of Coatbridge Burgh Council for much of the 20th century and, as Coatbridge Municipal Buildings, remained the local seat of government after the enlarged Monklands District Council was formed in 1975. [16] However, it ceased that role when North Lanarkshire Council was formed, with its headquarters at Motherwell, in 1996. [17] North Lanarkshire Council continued to use the building for workspace for various departments including education [18] and social services. [19] In March 2019 the council announced its intention, as part of a savings plan, to close the building and, in June 2020, it announced proposals to convert the building into 49 apartments at a cost of £11 million. [20] Detailed design work was authorised in February 2021. [21]
Airdrie is a town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It lies on a plateau roughly 400 ft above sea level, and is approximately 12 miles (19 km) east of Glasgow city centre. As of 2012, the town had a population of around 37,130. Historically part of Lanarkshire, Airdrie forms part of a conurbation with its neighbour Coatbridge, in what is commonly known as the Monklands, formerly a district..
North Lanarkshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the north-east of the Glasgow City council area and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs, commuter towns, and villages. It also borders East Dunbartonshire, Falkirk, Stirling, South Lanarkshire, and West Lothian. The council area covers parts of the historic counties of Dunbartonshire, Lanarkshire, and Stirlingshire. The council is based in Motherwell.
Coatbridge is a town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, about 8+1⁄2 miles east of Glasgow city centre, set in the central Lowlands. Along with neighbouring town Airdrie, Coatbridge forms the area known as the Monklands, often considered to be part of the Greater Glasgow urban area – although officially they have not been included in population figures since 2016 due to small gaps between the Monklands and Glasgow built-up areas.
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Though Coatbridge is a most interesting seat of industry, it is anything but beautiful. Dense clouds of smoke roll over it incessantly, and impart to all the buildings a peculiarly dingy aspect. A coat of black dust overlies everything, and in a few hours the visitor finds his complexion considerably deteriorated by the flakes of soot which fill the air, and settle on his face. To experience Coatbridge it must be visited at night when it presents a most extraordinary spectacle.... From the steeple of the parish church the flames of no fewer than fifty blast furnaces may be seen.... The flames have a positively fascinating effect. Now they shoot far upward, and breaking off short, expire among the smoke; again spreading outward, they curl over the lips of the furnace, and dart through the doorways, as if determined to annihilate the bounds within which they are confined; then they sink low into the crater, and come forth with renewed strength in the shape of great tongues of fire, which sway backward and forward, as if seeking with a fierce eagerness something to devour. The Scotsman, 1869
Coatbridge is a town which grew out of a series of 18th-century hamlets on the road between Airdrie and Glasgow. During the 19th century these hamlets grew into the modern-day town of Coatbridge. A number of these hamlets constitute the neighbourhoods of Coatbridge. Overlaid on the older hamlets are modern-day council estates built as a part of programme of social housing construction in the 1930s and 1950s.
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