Coatbridge in the past.

 Glasgow is awesome. I say that as a Glaswegian, and as a historian. Glasgow has had a decades-long belief in council-funded museums and arts, so that entrance is free. Now, I know that Coatbridge isn't Glasgow, but it's about five miles outside of Glasgow, and it has an excellent free museum.

 It's the Summerlee Heritage Musuem. I used to go there as a kid, and what's astonishing that - despite cosmetic changes - a lot of the original exhibits from the 1980s are still there! Coatbridge is an ex-mining and steel-making town, that contributed significantly to empire, and in the 19th century saw a massive influx of immigrants looking for work in the mines and steel-mills. It's one of those places where you just know it did a lot of mining - everywhere seems to be built on a hill. Coatbridge suffered heavily from the loss of mining, and the twentieth century saw Coatbridge go into serious decline. But, there are still marks and memorials to its robust past, and this museum is one that's been going for decades.


This is next to the tram stop. Yes, trams! They are so cool. This was taken during a beautiful summer day, when they have the double-decker 1930s tram out. As you can see, it's not 100% authentic - there isn't a smog so bad that you can't see 10 feet in front of you. But it's like a gentrified vrsion of being in the past.








 There are a row of houses, each one showing what a working-class house was like at different periods in history. This is Scotland in the 1960s. The TV is showing an old b/w advert for a washing spin-drier. It was intensely patronising to all women everywhere!





 Scotland in the 1940s. The radio was playing the songs that would've been on in the 1940s, some Judy Garland and Sing Sing Sing, when I was there. No Kenneth Horne, I'm afraid.









 I really like this kind of history, it's a history that is as remote as the famous stuff that happened in the same period, but it feels connected and approachable. It's the history of people who would've laughed that their way of life was of any interest to the people of the future, and it's this lack of inhibition about having an eye on the future that makes their lives and their motivations all the more fascinating. Also, these two houses were from the 1940s and the 1960s, two decades that the British have mythologised, which is why we find things like this quite charming.

 Oh, and two more things about Coatbridge..Madeline Smith's lover Emile L'Angelier spent his last day having a pub lunch in Coatbridge, in an area of Coatbridge called Whifflet. And, in Drumpellier, remains of stone-age settlements were found.