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Bargeddie developed as part of a mining community in the western part of the Old Monkland Parish and other local industries followed such as a brickworks, opened in 1900, which at one time produced 4'/2 million bricks per year.
Roy's map of 1750 shows a village named "Bargeddy" and Forrest's map of 1801 has a hamlet name "Balgedy". This suggests that the original name comes from "Bal" - gaelic for a settlement and possibly from the gaelic word 'geadaibh' meaning a ploughed field!
The 1801 map shows "Balgedy" surrounded by a large number of thin strips of fields, alternatively owned by Messrs Wark and Muirhead. These narrow fields, without hedge or tree boundaries, were the last remains of the traditional "runrig" pattern of field management. By 1817 Forrest discovered that Bargeddie House was in the hands of Mr Wark who had replaced the runrig pattern with a modern large field pattern.
It has been said that Bargeddie was at the cutting edge of Victorian technology - albeit briefly! In 1864 the Lochwood Pit at Cuilhill, owned by the Bairds, saw the operation of the first chain-driven coal cutting machine in Scotland. It was known as "The Gartsherrie" and though it was plagued with unreliability, it became the prototype for mechanical coal-cutting machines right up to the 20th century.
In 1864 Bargeddie was chosen by the Baird Trust as the site for a new church schools to service the nearby mining villages of Cuilhill and Langmuir. It was chosen because of its central position and its location on the main road. The original school building is now disused.
The three villages
flourished in the early days of coal.
Coals from Bargeddie and Langmuir were
transported by rail (remember that
trains were the main medium for cargo
transport) to the Monkland
Canal at Cuilhill Gullet for onward
shipment to Glasgow. The Gullet was a
transhipment terminal for the Drumpelier
Railway which was built in 1847 and by
1849 it was sending 900 boat loads of
coal per year to Glasgow. As well as the
Bargeddie pits it serviced other pits
such as Braehead and Bredisholm. This
line continued until 1896. Cuilhill also
had a small boatyard for repairing the
Bargeddie School House
Bargeddie School was built in 1894. Drumpark Special School was built in 1929 and continues to fulfil an important role, providing an education for handicapped children.. Bargeddie expanded in the 1930's and after the Second World War with the creation of a major housing estate. Most of it's 3000 inhabitants came from Glasgow and other parts of the Lanarkshire County Council area rather than from Coatbridge. Cuilhill and Langmuir have disappeared along with the pits and miners rows. The name of Langmuir was absorbed into Bargeddie. The population of Bargeddie in 1981 was 2,624.
Newlands Rows, Bargeddie
These are owned by the United Collieries Company, and are rented at 1s. 7d. per week for a single house, and 2s. per week for a room and kitchen. The sanitary conveniences here consist of open closets and ash-pits. In No. 3 house a sewage drain has been led through below the beds, and throws off a horrible smell. The houses are infested with rats. [Royal Commission, 25th March 1914]
row consists of several rows of houses,
brick built and slated roofs, and
contains twenty-six single-apartment
houses (rental 1s. 7d. per week),
twenty-three room and kitchen houses
(rental 2s. per week), one large room
and kitchen house (rental 2s. 6d. per
week), and one three-room and kitchen
house (rental 3s. 9d. per week) ; these
rents include taxes.
It was in 1975 when Monklands District was created, that Bargeddie housing, leisure and cleansing were brought together with Coatbridge. Bargeddie is now part of North Lanarkshire.
years has seen the upsurge in private
housing developments and in one area
alone there will be over 1000 "executive