Project delivered by University of Strathclyde
The ‘Row Villages’ in the East Ayrshire coalfields are a remarkable and distinctive man-made feature in the landscape and transformed the upland areas where they were set. When they were built they played a vital role but could not survive the exhaustion of the mineral resources they were built to exploit.
Although deindustrialisation, depopulation and open-cast mining has destroyed much of the surviving evidence of these places, there are still surviving traces of them and they are of real importance not only to the Cumnock and Doon Valley area, but to the industrial history and heritage of Scotland as a whole.
This oral history project aims to capture the ‘intangible history’ of life in the Row Villages and the impact of deindustrialisation by exploring in depth the so called lost villages of Lethanhill, Burnfoot and Benwhat (Benquhat) in the Doon Valley and Commondyke and Darnconner in the Lugar Valley. Former residents of Glenbuck will also be interviewed as part of the project.
Find out more on their website.
