Summerlee Heritage Park

Summerlee Heritage Park will be closed from September 2006 for a major Heritage Lottery Fund supported redevelopment until further notice.

Summerlee Heritage Park is a VisitScotland '4 Star' attraction and 'Best Working Attraction' award winner. Its 22 acres are based around the site of the 19th Century Summerlee Ironworks, a fore-runner in the use of what was at the time the ground-breaking hot blast iron smelting process that led Coatbridge to become known as the 'Iron Burgh'.

The works closed in the 1930's and the site levelled. Excavated in 1985 as part of the heritage park's development, the site of the original ironworks can now be viewed from a special walkway.

Summerlee also has Scotland's only electric tramway, offering rides on modern and Edwardian open-topped trams. There is a huge under-cover exhibition hall with working machinery and period room settings. Also a fine Compton cinema organ which is played at concerts, recitals and other special events by members of the Scottish Cinema Organ Trust.

There is a re-created addit mine and miners cottages where you can experience the miners' cramped working conditions and then see how mining folk lived from the 1860s to the 1960s in the cottages' recreated room settings.

General Information: