Gartsherrie, a suburban town and a quoad sacra parish in Old Monkland parish, Lanarkshire. The town is partly identical with the E side of Coatbridge, partly extends about a mile to the NNW; and, lying along the Monkland Canal and reaches of the Caledonian and North British railway systems, presents an urban aspect throughout its identity with Coatbridge, and a strictly suburban aspect in its north-westward extension. It contains, in its urban part, the parish church and a large academy,-in its suburban part, extensive iron - works and dwelling- houses for the operatives in these works, being collectively the most prominent of the seats of iron manufacture which give to Coatbridge district its characteristic aspect of flame and smoke and busy traffic. It has a station of its own name on the Caledonian railway, near the forking of the line towards respectively Glasgow and Stirling, 1¼ mile NNW of Coatbridge station. The church, crowning an eminence ¾ mile S of the iron-works, was built in 1839 at a cost of £3300, chiefly defrayed by Messrs Baird. A handsome edifice, with a spire 136 feet high, it figures in the general landscape as a striking feature of Coatbridge, and contains 1050 sittings. The academy, near the church, is also a handsome and prominent edifice, and supplies a liberal course of instruction, under a rector and three male and two female assistants. It and a school at the iron-works, with respective accommodation for 666 and 612 children, had (1881) an average attendance of 400 and 253, and grants of £417, 8s. and £188, 15s. The iron-works of Messrs Baird, first put in blast on 4 May 1830, are among the best organised 80 factories in Scotland, and have long had a wide and high reputation for producing iron of superior quality. The furnaces, fourteen in number, stand in two rows, one on each side of the canal, and about 40 yards distant from it. Built at different periods, in different patterns, they have generally a cylindrical shape, 22 feet in diameter and 60 high; are worked on the hot-blast system; and have four engines for generating the blast, three on one side of the canal, one on the other side, and the four with an aggregate power equal to 750 horse. There are 400 workmen's houses, each with two or three apartments, a small garden plot, and a cheap supply of gas and water. Gartsherrie House, near the station, is a modern mansion, a seat of George Frederick Russell Colt, Esq. (b. 1837; suc. 1862), who owns 1416 acres in Lanarkshire, valued at £6421 per annum, of which £4023 is for minerals. It was the residence and death-place of Alexander Whitelaw, Esq. (1823-79), Conservative member for Glasgow from 1874. The parish is in the presbytery of Hamilton and synod of Glasgow and Ayr, and was endowed entirely by the late James Baird, Esq. of Cambusdoon; its minister's stipend is £120. Pop. of parish (1871) 10, 041, (1881) 9070.—Ord. Sur., sh. 31, 1867. See Andrew Miller's Rise and Progress of Coatbridge and the Surrounding Neighbourhood (Glasg. 1864).
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