Bringing the material together
The idea was to build something you could use whether you were looking up a place you pass every day, following a family connection or planning a walk. A railway station can lead you to the story of a former line. An old photograph can help you recognise a street that has changed. The site is arranged like a wiki, so you can follow those connections at your own pace.
We gathered and checked material by hand and used AI to help organise research notes and draft parts of the text. The research register contains more than 400 records, from historical maps and parish accounts to council documents, museum collections and local histories. Some records are leads for further research. The articles point readers to the sources behind the text, and where accounts disagree, we explain the difference where it matters.
The collection opens with our feature on Blantyre railway station and 73 other articles. They cover places such as Shuttle Row and the Rotten Calder, alongside the mines, schools, clubs and transport routes that shaped everyday life in the town.
What we hope to add
The sponsors who helped us get started made this first collection possible. If readers find the site useful or new sponsors come on board, we’ll use that support to add more articles, track down further sources and improve the pages already here. That could mean finding an earlier map, following up a date that remains uncertain or adding a photograph that shows how a familiar place used to look.