Summerlee Heritage Park

 Summerlee Heritage Park re-opened on Friday 26th Sept (September weekend).

The Scottish museum of industrial life reopened on 26th  September 2008, following a major £10 million redevelopment. Funding for the redevelopment has come from a number of sources, including nearly £5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund and contributions from the Scottish Museums Council, the European Regional Development Fund, North Lanarkshire Council and a number of charitable trusts and private individuals.

The museum, graded as a 4-star attraction by VisitScotland, is currently closed while the main hall is being rebuilt and new landscaping and car parking works undertaken.
The main exhibition hall has been completely stripped out and a ground-up refurbishment is now underway. The original hall, created in the late 1980s out of the site of the former Hydrocon Crane works, provided a superb space for the museum's collection of industrial machinery, much of which could be seen in working condition. However, over the past 20 years, the displays and general visitor experience had become in need of a thorough upgrade.
On re-opening, Summerlee will be set to take its place as a landmark heritage facility for the 21st Century. The new hall will provide a modern and environmentally sustainable setting for some of Scotland's most important displays of social and industrial history, including many 'star' items from the collection hitherto hidden from view in the stores.
The new setting will also provide the visitor with a much more logical flow through the displays, moving from the pre-historical period to the dawn and rise of the industrial era and into Lanarkshire's massive contribution to Scottish - and world - engineering. Interactive displays will explain the iron-making process and a kid's Discovery Zone will allow youngsters to explore the world of science through hands-on activities and simple experiments. There will also be a new shop, cafe and exhibition area.
Summerlee will be open as follows:
Monday - Sunday 10am - 5pm (4pm November - March)
Admission is Free

In the meantime why not visit the Trams on line? See them AND hear them MOVE.  Click below

Summerlee Transport Group
(The Trams)

The Summerlee Heritage park is a museum of social and Industrial history.

 "The aim of the Museum is to preserve and interpret the history of the local Iron, Steel, Coal and engineering industries and of the communities that depended on them for a living"

• Summerlee Heritage Park  The Future - Press Release

• Summerlee Heritage Park has been allocated £4.78M  - Press Release

• Brick Collection  - Just a small part of the Summerlee Collection managed by Matthew Hulme

• Summerlee and the Hydracon - Childhood memories by Bob McMillan

As the history of the Monklands is inextricably linked with the Industrial Revolution, it was deemed appropriate that the heart of Coatbridge, "The Iron Burgh" should be the site of Scotland's most exciting museum project. Summerlee Heritage Trust is a major museum on a once derelict 25-acre site on the banks of the Monkland Canal, centred on the archaeological excavations of the Summerlee Iron Works.

The park is designed around the archaeological remains of the Summerlee Ironworks which emerged from under six metres of slag and industrial waste.
Summerlee Ironworks was put into blast in 1835.  It was served by a branch of the Monklands canal which has now been restored.  Howes Basin - built for shipping coal from the railway to the canal - has been uncovered. Part of the site had been used since the 1950s by a crane manufacturer - Hyrocon Cranes -the framework of their factory was stripped, repaired and reclad to form the Museum's impressive Exhibition Hall. 

Summerlee has been described as "Scotland's Noisiest Museum" and the massive exhibition hall houses a large collection of historic machinery operating daily!.  Whenever possible, Summerlee's engineers provide public demonstrations of machinery and traditional skills whilst making parts for other restoration projects.  Permanent exhibitions include reconstructed working environments such as a Tinsmiths Shop, a Brass Foundry, Brassfinishers Shop, Spade Forge.   Other exhibits include a Co-op Shop, a Bicycle and Radio Shop,  a Photographers Studio.  Summerlee Ironworks in the 1880s is reconstructed to scale - showing the blast furnace structure with a viewing balcony. 
The most interesting part of the Museum is the excavated "remains" of the Ironworks - its all outdoors and shows the foundations of the furnaces and the heating kilns. The Ironworks was demolished in the late 1930's and some six feet of soil had to be removed to find the old iron workings.

Tramway
Summerlee operates an electric tramway on over half a kilometre of track..  A number of trams are operational on a daily basis including one from Austria and one from Belgium.  An open topped Lanarkshire Tram was first unveiled to the general public in 1995. Many of the trams are both driven and restored by the Summerlee Transport Group.   The only reconstruction that is missing is the 1950's conductress shouting "Come oan - Git aff".

Historic Vehicles
Dotted around the museum are a number of stationery vehicles including three steam railway locomotives, two steam cranes and a bulldozer c1930. There are some vintage or classic cars including a Model T van and an Austin A40 pickup van.

Mines and Miners Row
Local mines once fired the furnaces of ironworks such as Summerlee.  A small mine has been re-created where you can experience the miner's dark, damo and cramped  working conditions as they battled to win a day's pay for their families.  The nearby row of miners cottages shows a little of how they lived.  They take you from the basic living conditions of the 1860's to the relative comforts of the 1960's.

ALL ENQUIRIES to:

Summerlee Heritage Park
Heritage Way
Coatbridge ML5 1QD
Tel :  01236 638460

Click on Summerlee Heritage Park for a local map

We have also added directions from Glasgow and Stirling - 

ALL ENQUIRIES to:  Summerlee Heritage Park   01236 638460