New Lanark

Brief Description

New Lanark © RCAHMS

Justification for Inscription

Criterion ii When Richard Arkwright’s new factory system for textile production was brought to New Lanark the need to provide housing and other facilities to the workers and managers was recognized. It was there that Robert Owen created a model for industrial communities that was to spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Criterion iv New Lanark saw the construction not only of well designed and equipped workers’ housing but also public buildings designed to improve their spiritual as well as their physical needs. Criterion vi The name of New Lanark is synonymous with that of Robert Owen and his social philosophy in matters such as progressive education, factory reform, humane working practices, international cooperation, and garden cities, which was to have a profound influence on social developments throughout the 19th century and beyond.

Long Description

When Richard Arkwright's new factory system for textile production was brought to New Lanark the need to provide housing and other facilities for the workers and managers was recognized. It was there that Robert Owen created a model for industrial communities that was to spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. New Lanark saw the construction not only of well designed and equipped workers' housing but also public buildings designed to improve their spiritual as well as their physical needs. It has the most complete integration of architectural design of all the early cotton mill settlements, a type illustrating the most revolutionary element of the Industrial Revolution. The buildings and water-power system express the extension to the outermost limits of the application of materials and techniques to the new industrial age.

The name of New Lanark is synonymous with Owen and his social philosophy in matters such as progressive education, factory reform, humane working practices, international cooperation, and garden cities, which was to have a profound influence on social developments throughout the 19th century and beyond. Owenism, utopianism, philanthropy, cooperation, communitarianism, industrial capitalism, concepts of the sublime landscape, and models for modern conservation partnerships were all shaped at New Lanark.

New Lanark is a small village in a beautiful Scottish landscape. In 1783 Richard Arkwright came to Scotland and met David Dale a leading West of Scotland linen yarn merchant and Glasgow agent of the Royal Bank of Scotland. In 1785, to take advantage of the cotton-spinning patents secured, Arkwright founded New Lanark, which allowed yarn to be spun in water-powered mills on an unprecedented scale.

The first mill at New Lanark went into production in 1786. Housing had to be provided for the workers. Owing to the restricted site in the gorge of the River Clyde, this was built in the form of blocks three or four storeys in height. The houses were superior in quality to those general occupied by working people at that time. Dale was a humane employer, who treated his workers well, and he established also a school 10 years later.

In 1799 a partnership was formed by Robert Owen, a Welsh cotton spinner, who had married Dale's daughter. Owen tightened up the management of the mill. He began to remodel the village around 1809. Owen's philanthropic and idealistic vision of a society without crime, poverty, and misery had a wide appeal in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. Owen left it in 1828, although he continued to develop and promote his ideas until his death in 1858.

Between 1785 and 1968, new buildings were constructed, others were demolished or destroyed by fire, and many underwent radical changes in use, but the appearance of the village is now very close to that of its heyday, the first half of the 19th century.

The model industrial settlement is a phenomenon of the Enlightenment: consideration must also be given to the influence of Owen on later industrialists and planners in the United Kingdom. The nature and layout of New Lanark inspired other benevolent industrialists to follow his example, and this movement laid the foundations for the work of Ebenezer Howard in creating the concept of the Garden City.

Today the village provides physical evidence of Robert Owen's model for a New Moral World. New Lanark is a great landscape modified, through the medium of architecture, to meet the needs and vision of a pioneer working community. Contrast and variety are given by individual buildings, but the theme remains good proportion, good masonry, and simplicity of detail. This common building language produces a monumental unity of character remarkably suited to convey today the idealistic message of Dale and Owen.

Historical Description

New Lanark was founded in 1785 to take advantage of the cotton-spinning patents secured by Richard Arkwright, which allowed yarn to be spun in water-powered mills on an unprecedented scale. Arkwright came to Scotland in 1783 and met David Dale, a leading West of Scotland linen yarn merchant and Glasgow agent of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The splendid latent water power at New Lanark led to Dale to undertake development on his own, and with the quashing of Arkwright's patents in 1785 his involvement ceased.

The first mill at New Lanark went into production in 1786 and was soon followed by another. Dale continued to build, the third and fourth mills being designed for Samuel Crompton's mule, which was capable of spinning finer yarn than Arkwright's frame. The fourth mill was not used for spinning in Dale's time, housing instead child apprentices and a mechanics' shop.

Housing had to be provided for the workers. Owing to the restricted site in the gorge of the river Clyde, this was built in the form of blocks three or four storeys in height rather than the two-storey buildings favoured at other Scottish cotton mills. The houses were superior in quality to those general occupied by working people at that time. Rapid technical changes led to increases in the workforce and so new houses were added, the last in 1798 (known as "New Buildings").

Dale was a humane employer, who treated his workers well. He established a school in New Lanark which by 1796 had eighteen teachers for 510 pupils. As the most successful cotton spinner in Scotland his was an important example.

In 1799 a partnership was formed by Robert Owen, a Welsh cotton spinner, who had married Dale's daughter. Owen tightened up the management of the mill, introducing new standards of book-keeping and factory discipline. He began to remodel the village around 1809. The fourth mill was brought into production, a house being built for the apprentices as well as a foundry and machine shops.

Owen became convinced that by treating his workers as being responsible for their actions and by encouraging them to realize their mutual dependence productivity would rise and a community spirit would develop. He also realized that an educated workforce was more likely to achieve his objectives, and so in 1809 he began the construction of his "New Institution for the Formation of Character." He failed to get the support of his partners for this project, but after several changes in the partnership the building was finally opened in 1816; a school was added in the following year.

Because of its location, on the route from Lanark to the famous Falls of Clyde, the mills became one of the features of a tour of Scotland. Contact with distinguished visitor and a high level of public consciousness widened Owen's ideas. His vision of a society without crime, poverty, and misery had a wide appeal in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, and he was encouraged by this to write and to travel widely to promote his views. In 1824 a bitter quarrel with his partners over his educational methods led him to leave New Lanark to develop a community at New Harmony, Indiana (USA), on the cooperative lines that he had described in his influential Report to the County of Lanark (1820). This community failed because it lacked the central focus provided by a disciplined factory and Owen left it in 1828, though he continued to develop and promote his ideas until his death in 1858.

The mill was sold by the surviving partners to the Walker brothers in 1828 and they continued to spin cotton until they sold it in 1881 to a partnership which introduced net-making and canvas weaving. From them it passed to the Gourock Ropework Company, the world's largest rope and net producers, who made cotton canvas and nets there until 1968.