Place:Calderbank, Lanarkshire, Scotland

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Calderbank is a village outside the town of Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The village lies 13 miles east of Glasgow city centre and around 34 miles west of Edinburgh. Other major towns include Airdrie 2.5 miles, Coatbridge 4 miles, Bellshill 4 miles and Motherwell 5 miles.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The village is famous for being the birthplace of the Vulcan, the world's first iron boat, which sailed from Calderbanks Iron Works to the River Clyde and plied the Scottish canals first with passengers and then with cargoes of iron and coal.

Iron from the Calderbanks works was used to build the Queen Mary cruise liner. The Monkland Canal was extended to the west of the village in the late 18th century and was used as a route to transport coal to Port Dundas in Glasgow away. This part of the canal has been preserved between the village and Sikeside on the outskirts of Coatbridge. And other parts of the canal can be seen in Coatbridge town centre and Drumpelier country park, however much of the canal was covered in the 1950s and 1960s by the M8 motorway which actually runs with the meanders of what was the canal (yet under the motorway large pipes still run water which feed the Forth and Clyde canal today).

Calderbank was the site of early Christian settlement, by monks from Newbattle Abbey in the Borders. This gave the local area the name of Monklands.

Research Tips

Sources for Old Parish Registers Records, Vital Records and Censuses

For vital records, consult the holdings for the Parish of New Monkland.

• FamilySearch (Indexes only)
• Scotland's People This is a pay website providing vital statistics and census data for all of Scotland with original images. There is a description at Scotland under Genealogical Resources.

Further Sources of Reference

Please note and respect the copyright warnings on these websites.

• GENUKI article on the parish of New Monkland
• Scottish Places article on Calderbank--more information may be found by following the tabs on the right. The maps in this series are very useful.
• The maps website of the National Library of Scotland allows comparisons of modern-day and old maps of the same place. From the home page click on "Find by place" and then follow the instructions on the next page. Once you are viewing the place you want, use the slider <----> at the top of the map to compare the layout of roads and the place names of smaller areas, perhaps even farms, with the landscape today. The website takes some getting used to.
• The Statistical Accounts for Scotland In the 1790s and again in the 1830s, the ministers of the all the parishes of the Church of Scotland were asked to provide a description of their parish to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The original account request included 160 questions to be answered. These accounts are available in print in 20 volumes and are also online where it is freely available to browse. The browsing portal is below the viewing area of most computer screens. Scroll down to "For non-subscribers" and click on "Browse scanned pages". This brings you to another page on which one can enter the name of the parish in which you are interested.