A look back at Lanark's Cartland Bridge Hotel

Built in 1889, this impressive pile became the Cartland Bridge Hotel where many local people tied the knot. Its future is not yet known but it is hoped it will re-open as a hotel once again.

It was an important venue for weddings as well as many other functions, including the Millennium dinner. However, all that has gone since the Cartland and its surrounding lands were sold to a developer.

What is going to happen to the Cartland is currently a mystery; there have been various rumours, including the building being subdivided into flats. This would be regrettable, leaving only the New Lanark Hotel locally as a hotel/wedding venue.

The Cartland was known for many years as Baronald. It first makes its appearance as a small estate in Major General Roy’s map of Scotland in 1756. It is referred to as Barronel and there are three enclosed fields by the house.

The house shown on Roy’s map would be the one that was owned by William Lockhart in 1793. It was to this estate that William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came along with their friend William Taylor Coleridge in 1806 when the three of them came to experience the echo down at the Cartland Crags.

The old house was lived in briefly by one of Scotland’s greatest botanists, John George Robertson who lived in both Tasmania and Australia from 1831 to 1854. He brought back an amazing collection of plants to the UK. Some of these specimens ended up at Kew Gardens. He made some changes to the old house and he built a number of glasshouses for his vines and his other plants. He did this in 1857 but unfortunately, he died in 1862.

The Farie family purchased the estate and, with the profits from their coal mines around Paisley, decided to build a new house. The work was undertaken by Sir John Burnett, a well known Victorian architect. He also constructed the stables and other outbuildings, which were demolished recently.

They were used to store the correspondence of the Farie family. In the mid 1970s people helped themselves to the letters, some of which bore Penny Blacks. Recently some of these were sold in Glasgow. It is a pity that this archive disappeared.

In 1963 Baronald became the Cartland Bridge Hotel. Hopefully it will become a hotel again.