A Question Of Balance

Nick Drainey finds nature among the industrial past at Falls of Clyde

- Nick Drainey

NEW LANARK wouldn’t happen today. We now appreciate the importance of nature and the need to protect it from intrusion. To build a complex of mills next to a beautiful stretch of water would be ruled out under a whole raft of environmental legislation.

The stunning Falls of Clyde would have been protected from all the building just downstream and the reforms of Robert Owen, who ran the mills at the beginning of the 19th century, would have been lost from this area.

Owen recognised a number of things we now take for granted, such as the need for education and the right of workers to have leisure time. So you could argue that without the industry of New Lanark, many wouldn’t have the time to appreciate nature anyway.