Cuckoo Strip

Derelict and vandalised, this was once a Lanarkshire NHS facility, a 19thC psychiatric hospital but it was closed in 1998. It was purpose-built and construction began in 1890; it had 6 wards and accommodation for 500 patients. see also NS8458 : Hartwood Hospital.

Derelict and vandalised, this was once a Lanarkshire NHS facility, a 19thC psychiatric hospital but it was closed in 1998. It was purpose-built and construction began in 1890; it had 6 wards and accommodation for 500 patients. See also NS8458 : Hartwood Hospital.

Derelict and vandalised, this was once a Lanarkshire NHS facility, a 19thC psychiatric hospital, but it was closed in 1998. It was purpose-built and construction began in 1890; it had 6 wards and accommodation for 500 patients. See also NS8458 : Hartwood Hospital.

I don't know if this was a gate house or a toll house

At Bonkle in North Lanarkshire.

Nearing Newmains.

At the side of the A73.

A minor road through farmland in Lanarkshire.

This driveway appears to be missing a house. It has the perfect curve for leading to a well-appointed country home, but instead just leads to a square of tarmac. There is no obvious sign of anything having burned down, and the mystery dead end is on the paper map. It could of course just be some hardstanding for shipping containers or similar to get plonked on, but people rarely go the trouble of making things this professionally for the likes of that.

This large sewage plant must have been here to deal with the waste from the still-standing nearby mental hospital, which was in use from the 1890s to the 1990s, and at one time was the largest in Western Europe, housing over 2,500 patients. It isn't surprising therefore, to discover it was the first place in the country to perform lobotomies. Old OS maps show that there were three filter beds situated at this spot once - the tall thing in the background obviously once had four sprinkler pipes attached to the short crosspiece that sits just above its bottom cylinder. Two other identical constructions are situated nearby. The large wheel in the foreground controlled a sluice gate. The directional arrows are there to show that the wheel has to be turned the opposite way to how you'd expect. 'Adams Hydraulics Ltd' is marked on the wheel - it seems reasonable to assume that it was made by a company still operating today, based in York. Their website mentions them having been a supplier of wastewater treatment equipment for over 100 years.

I'm pretty sure that the bridge nameplate wrongly calls the bridge 'Fullburn', but the nameplate is too far away to tell, and my efforts to find an online exhaustive listing of railway bridge numbers and names have been unsuccessful. I did, however, stumble across the Railway Data Centre website. I imagine trainspotters have known about it for ages, but if anyone hasn't come across it, it's quite the thing. It turns out that all railway bridges are numbered sequentially - obviously a fair proportion of the original bridges have been demolished since, leading to gaps between numbers - between railway junctions. In other words, each stand-alone section of track has its own bridge numbers. The easiest way to find out the ELR (Engineer's Line Reference) code for a certain section of track is to type in the nearest railway station. These codes almost always appear on the bridge's nameplates too. Once armed with the ELR you can look at a table of bridges along that section of track. Distances from the datum junction are given along with the type of bridge (beam / underline), its construction material (early steel), and a grading of its condition (58%) recorded at the date of its last official inspection (2012) Mostly, but not in this case, the bridge name is given, and occasionally, as in this case, the date of construction is given (1869). The gradient of the track between points along the section is also given, along with a chart - it is remarkable how flat the railways actually are. On top of this, station details are included, along with those of tunnels and level crossings, though EGS2 - the ELR code for this track section (Edinburgh to Glasgow via Shotts) - has neither. Foulburn was a farm, situated to the left of the picture, on this side of the railway. A few traces remain but the site is now in the later stages of being turned into an official gypsy site - accordingly there are plenty of horses grazing in subdivided fields directly behind the new development. Although an unnamed drain or burn ran South into the old farm area, there is no Foul Burn marked on any maps here past or present. Since Foul Burn - of which there are a few in Scotland - seems to have always referred to a foul smelling burn, it seems odd that people would name anything after it. But maybe back then house names were like personal names and you just had to go with the name you were given!