East Kilbride
East Kilbride, often referred to as EK, is the largest town in South Lanarkshire in Scotland, and the country's sixth-largest locality by population. Historically a small village, it was designated Scotland's first "new town" on 6 May 1947, and thereafter widely expanded. The area lies on a raised plateau to the south of the Cathkin Braes, about southeast of Glasgow and close to the boundary with East Renfrewshire.
The town ends close to the White Cart Water to the west and is bounded by the Rotten Calder Water to the east. Immediately to the north of the modern town centre is The Village, the part of East Kilbride that existed before its post-war development into a New Town. East Kilbride is twinned with the town of Ballerup, in Denmark.
History
Prehistory
The earliest-known evidence of occupation in the area dates as far back as the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, as archaeological investigation has demonstrated that burial cairns in the district began as ceremonial or ritual sites of burial during the Neolithic, with the use of cup-marked, and other inscribed stones at key elevated sites, only to be later built upon with earth and re-used for burial into the Bronze Age.These findings have found further support through ongoing research indicating that many East Kilbride Cairns first noticed by the Reverend David Ure in his History of Rutherglen and East Kilbride, are embedded, alongside other monuments, into a ritual landscape related to ancestor cults and relationships with key topographical features and annual solar events. A flint arrow head was discovered by Allan Forrest, a then child resident whilst groundworks were taking place in his family's garden at Glen Bervie, St Leonards in 1970 which later was identified as dating to 1500 BC.
Prehistoric – possibly Roman – graves have also been found near the Kype Water close to town of Strathaven, some distance from East Kilbride but suggesting a Roman context for the wider area. Roman coins, footwear, and a Romano-British oil lamp have also been found in the area.
History
East Kilbride traditionally takes its name from an Irish saint named St Bride, who may have founded a monastery for nuns and monks in Kildare in Leinster, Ireland, in the 6th century. Dál Riatan monks afterwards introduced her order to parts of Scotland, although the origins of the East Kilbride example - situated in the West of Scotland, is less certain due to a lack of early historical or linguistic involvement with Dalriada.The Scots anglicisation kil takes its root from the Gaelic cille, borrowed from the Latin for cell or chapel, of St Brigit. the use of cille to mark a probable dedication to an Irish saint in this part of Scotland is problematic due to linguistic dating issues, but some analysis suggests that churches with cille place-names in the south west represent an early and short-lived influx of Irish church influence in or before the eighth century, which may or may not have involved the Céilí Dé who were monastics. However, it has been suggested by Prof. T. O. Clancy and others that cille place-names in the region, including the East Kilbride example, may instead relate to the main period of Gaelic cultural influx in the period post 900 AD.
The original parish church was located on what may have been a site of a pre-Christian significance, and tentatively the origin of the association with St Brigit, since the site may be dedicated to the Celtic goddess Brigid, whose traditions have been continued through the reverence of St Brigit brought on by the Celtic Church. However, this view is unpopular amongst academic audiences due to a complete lack of evidence supporting such earlier origins, thus making it an unfalsifiable concept.
Alternatively, the later dedication may commemorate the Scottish St Bryde, who is alleged to have been born in 451 AD and died at Abernethy 74 years later. However, this is also the same year Brigit is supposed to have been born, and the same year of her death.
Culdee-type Christian settlements were essential to the spread of the Celtic church in Scotland, with small pagan sites being converted and chapels or cells forming little more than crude shelters, or timber and turf buildings with crude circular enclosures. Additionally, the number of place-name dedications to St. Brigit in Scotland is further evidence of the possibility of Culdee activity in the southwest, if extrapolations are allowed from known areas of culdee activity. How this possibility relates to the relatively late dating-periods in the British kingdom of Strathclyde has not been explored owing to a lack of surviving written sources to provide insights for this geographical area.
Contemporary history
In the early 18th century, the word 'East' was added to the name of East Kilbride, and 'West' to West Kilbride to distinguish the towns from each other.East Kilbride grew from a small village of around 900 inhabitants in 1930 to become a large burgh in 1967. The rapid industrialisation of the 20th century underpins this growth and left much of the working population throughout Scotland's Central Belt, from Glasgow to Edinburgh, living in the housing stock built at the end of the previous century. The Great War postponed any housing improvements, as did the Treaty of Versailles and the period of post-war settlement it created. In turn, this was followed by the Great Depression. After the Second World War, Glasgow, already suffering from chronic housing shortages, incurred bomb damage from the war. In 1946, the Clyde Valley Regional Plan allocated sites where overspill satellite "new towns" could be constructed to help alleviate the housing shortage. Glasgow would also undertake the development of its peripheral housing estates. East Kilbride was the first of six new towns in Scotland to be designated, in 1947, followed by Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Livingston, Irvine and Stonehouse, although Stonehouse new town was never built.
The planned town has been subdivided into residential precincts, each with its own local shops, primary schools and community facilities. The housing precincts surround the shopping centre, which is bound by a ring road. Industrial estates were concentrated on the outskirts of the town in northern, western and south-eastern directions.
The Calderglen gorge bordering the eastern fringe of East Kilbride, was celebrated in a high number of printed works as a picturesque forest and 'magnificent in its grouping of craggy heights, sprinkled with trees and the richly wooded and festooned valley', and with 'delightful cascades', and described as indescribable, or as 'the GRAND, the ROMANTIC, and BEAUTIFUL' –- the latter being the only part of David Ure's book where he emphasised the descriptive characteristics of a place in bold characters. The northern part of the gorge and adjoining Calderwood, the gorge's namesake, was the home of an ancient family known as the 'Maxwells of Calderwood' who resided in Calderwood Castle, and were the oldest branch of the Maxwells of Pollok. The remnants of Calderwood Castle were demolished in 1951 and only a few parts of the structure remain. Calderglen Heritage formally constituted in early 2017 as a body to protect, record, and restore local and national interest in the areas of the former Calderwood and Torrance estates of Calderglen.
The story of how workers at the Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride prevented engines for military jets being serviced and supplied between 1974 until 1978 to the Chilean military dictatorship is told in the 2018-released documentary, Nae Pasaran. The factory was scheduled for closure in 2017 and was subsequently demolished and the land used for housing; a monument consisting of one of the unrepaired engines was installed at the town's South Lanarkshire College in 2019.
Geography
, the administrative headquarters for South Lanarkshire Council, is about east of East Kilbride. The A725 road linking the towns also passes Blantyre and one of the University of the West of Scotland campuses, with links to Bothwell, Motherwell and ultimately to the M74 and M8 motorways.The nearest Glasgow district of Castlemilk is about northwest, with the Cathkin Braes, farmland and the village of Carmunnock in between; a bypass was built in 1988 to remove Glasgow traffic from Carmunnock. Rutherglen and Cambuslang lie about the same distance to the north-east and are linked to East Kilbride via the dual carriageway A749 road which continues into Glasgow.
Clarkston and Busby are also about northwest via the A727 road, with Thorntonhall much closer. Eaglesham lies about west of East Kilbride centre; the Glasgow Southern Orbital, another modern bypass which is part of the A726 road, keeps East Kilbride traffic heading for the M77 motorway away from Eaglesham and Newton Mearns.
The closest town to the south of East Kilbride is Strathaven, about away via another section of the A726. The majority of land in the area in between is taken up by Whitelee Wind Farm on the moorland hills to the southwest, including Elrig close to where one of the principal feeder burns of the Calder Water originates. The Calder itself flows northwards past East Kilbride adjacent to Blantyre, before joining the River Clyde opposite Daldowie near Newton.
East Kilbride is often considered to form part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. However, the urban area is not directly connected to any other, being designed from the outset to serve as a self-contained town with some commute requirements to Glasgow. The hamlets of Nerston, Kittochside, Auldhouse and Jackton which were once separate settlements are now on the periphery of the expanding town. Statistically, as of 2020 it is the sixth-largest locality in Scotland with a population of, but only the tenth-largest settlement, as these are formed by connected clusters of localities: for example neighbouring Hamilton's settlement – – is combined with Blantyre, Bothwell and Uddingston to exceed the population of isolated East Kilbride, with neither counted as part of Greater Glasgow under this definition.
East Kilbride is divided into a number of smaller neighbourhoods bordered by main through-roads. Part of the new town design was that each of these would be a self-contained entity, with a variety of housing types, local shops and primary schools, and accessed safely for pedestrians via paths and underpasses separate from main roads. This is true for the original areas of the new town while newer developments, such as Stewartfield, Lindsayfield, Gardenhall/Mossneuk and more recently Jackton do not adhere as closely to this model and have a more generic suburban layout of low-density private housing, arranged mainly in cul-de-sacs fed by distributor roads.