Coatbridge

Coatbridge in Lanarkshire was soaked in heavy industry, mainly iron works, a place where you could read a newpaper at night by the glow from all the blast furnaces. That's all gone, except for Summerlee as shown on the front cover, now the site of an excellent museum. Unsurprisingly then, this selection of photos comparing the Coatbridge of those industrial times with how it is today is quite dramatic. Tall industrial chimneys have gone, sometimes a building or a church or the remnants of a building survive so there's just enough to go oh that's where it is, but other views are unrecognisable from how they used to be. Coatbridge Then & Now ties the present to the past is the ideal book to begin to understand the huge changes wrought in Coatbridge over the last hundred years.