The mill company built housing for its workforce beside the works. Rev A. Mackenzie's 1952 account says that most of the company village had disappeared by then, with the surviving block of tenements including the house in which David Livingstone and Blantyre was born. That later account is valuable testimony on the landscape's transformation; the industrial complex and village require further map-led building research. Third Statistical Account, 1952

Low Blantyre's industrial story includes the spinning and weaving works, worker housing and the development of transport along the river corridor. It should be read alongside Blantyre Cotton Works and Works Village, Blantyre Cotton Works and Works Village and the contrast with High Blantyre.

Housing across the mill and mining eras

The later history of Low Blantyre includes workforces beyond cotton manufacture. Local research identifies Cross, Waterloo and Fore Rows as part of the older works village, and suggests that miners occupied some houses after the mills declined. Nearby miners’ settlements such as Merry’s Rows also connected Low Blantyre and Stonefield to the coalfield; a local transcription reports a 1892 collapse of six houses occupied by miners, attributed at the time to mineral workings and a sewer near their foundations. Miners’ housing and rows in Blantyre Blantyre Project, Cross Rows · Merry’s Rows

The mill village in 1846

Lewis’s village statistics assign 1,464 inhabitants to Blantyre Works, compared with 264 at Kirkton/Blantyre. The difference reflects the size of the industrial village at that date, not a modern ward or locality comparison. His account links the mill settlement’s growth to spinning, weaving and Turkey-red dyeing, and records company provision of water, sanitation, washing facilities and a library. Its claims are developed in Blantyre Cotton Works and Works Village; the 1846 population is a contemporary gazetteer figure rather than a separately checked census-table transcription. lewis topographical dictionary blantyre 1846 Blantyre population, 1755–1951

Merry’s Rows are situated in the Low Blantyre/Stonefield industrial landscape in the local history account; its attributed 1910 and 1913 reports give a detail-rich but not yet primary-verified picture of housing services and fabric. blantyre project merrys rows housing Miners’ housing and rows in Blantyre