Hillend Loch
Hillend Loch or Hillend Reservoir is an artificial lake located to the east of Caldercruix in North Lanarkshire, Scotland owned by Scottish Canals. It is bordered on its south shore by the A89 road.
Location
Hillend Loch sits immediately to the East of Caldercruix, near the town of Airdrie, in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The loch has a large catchment area in the hills which surround it and six feeder stream drain these hills and their moorland. It has a surface area of and its surface is above sea level. The railway line between Airdrie and Bathgate runs along the southern shore of Hillend Loch. National Cycle Route 75 runs alongside the railway on the southern shore, having been rebuilt as part of the re-opening of the Airdrie–Bathgate rail link.History
Hillend Loch is a naturalised reservoir established between 1797 and 1799 when the North Calder Water was dammed to supply water for the Monkland Canal, an enterprise which employed up to 1,500 people at one time. It was, at the time the dam was constructed, the largest man-made reservoir in the world. It still supplies water to the Forth & Clyde Canal and the remains of the Monkland Canal. As well as the storage of water for the canals, the loch was used to supply water to the steel and paper mills in the new industrial towns of Airdrie and Coatbridge.In 1867 the reservoir passed into the ownership of the Caledonian Railway, and when the railways were nationalised in 1948 became publicly owned as part of British Waterways.