Despite its title of a New Town, Cumbernauld can trace its history back two centuries and more, having been built around an old estate and an 18th century laird's house complete with picturesque park.
The last 200 years have seen a steady growth in that original estate and today Cumbernauld is a significant community acting as an overspill for people living in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Cumbernauld Village
The original settlement here may have taken place in Roman times under the shelter of the Antonine Wall. By the early Middle Ages the settlement must have grown to a respectable size to warrant the Comyns placing their chapel here. With the Flemings' decision to build their castle and make Cumbernauld their principal seat, the place would assume its present form which is the classical layout of a medieval Scottish town, with its principal street running from castle to church. Cumbernauld Old Parish Church
This ancient building owes its foundations to the early chapel built by the Comyns at the end of the twelfth century. A brief notice appears on record in 1500 when Cumbernauld like other places in Britain at this time, was badly hit by the plague - the notorious Black Death. The Village population was so decimated that the surviving inhabitants had great difficulty in carrying the bodies for burial to the parish cemetery at the old kirk of St Ninian's in Kirkintilloch, so a successful application was made to the See of Glasgow for permission to open a new burial ground "at the Chapel in Cumbernauld".
In the churchyard, the oldest visible headstone is dated 1654.
This fine building is an excellent example of the neo-classical type of architecture as practised by the fashionable architect, William Adam, in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The primary building is a great rectangular block, having a central main portion projecting both frontally and to the rear; the frontal portion is surmounted by a classical triangular pediment containing the Fleming coat-of-arms, the rear portion takes the form of a bay carrying pedimented windows. The central window pediment on the first floor carries the completion date - 1731.
This district of the New Town is based on a much older village dating from at least the 17th Century and is part of the Parish of Cumbernauld. By the nineteenth century, it had grown to a sufficient size to warrant the establishment of its own church manse, founded in 1875, and still in use. Like Cumbernauld, it was a weaving community and there still exists a number of late 18th and early 19th century, single-storey, weavers' houses such as those in the row known as Braehead Cottages.
At the West end of the village is Dalshannon Farm. This farmhouse is the best example in the District of a "longhouse", of 17th century date.
The development of the village of Dullatur was due to the Glasgow to Edinburgh Railway which, in 1876, opened a station to encourage Glasgow commuters to move to the district. Prior to the station there had been a small group of houses and two examples of the older dwellings are Dullatur House, of 18th century origin and East Dullatur House, which was built around the 1800's. The commuters caused the 'Dullatur Villas' to be constructed and, along with the land on which they were built, the village was designated a Conservation Area. Two of these villas, Dunluce and Woodend in Prospect Road, are of particular interest since both were designed by Alexander 'Greek' Thomson, who has many other examples of classic Greek styling in the Glasgow area.
Dullatur, 'Dubh Leitir' or 'Dark Hill Slope', has long been associated with local history, especially the Antonine Wall. Built by Lullius Urbicus, The Governor of Britain in AD 142 on the orders of Emperor Antonius Pius, it passed to the north of the present Cumbernauld on the north slope of the ridge at Dullatur. A Roman camp at Dullatur, actually under Dullatur House, one of the primary forts at Castlecary and the secondary forts at Westerwood and Croy Hill were all occupied by the 2nd and 6th Legions. The legionnaires kept guard at these far-flung and most northerly outposts of the Roman Empire, scanning northwards across the Kelvin Valley to the Kilsyth Hills and beyond, ever watchful and aware of possible surprise attacks from the wild northern Picts.
Cumbernauld is one of the New Towns built in Britain after World War Two, intended as a solution to the country's chronic housing problem. Situated around a hilltop ridge thirteen miles east of Glasgow, it is Britain's most concrete example of a modernist utopian town.
In 1945, the newly-elected Labour government set up The New Towns Committee, which was tasked with planning a solution to urban congestion and squalid inner-city housing conditions. Each of the New Towns was to be an independent community with the population drawn from the overcrowded and unhealthy cities.
In the Committee's first report to the Government, the scale of their vision for the future is clear; "It is not enough in our handiwork to avoid the mistakes and omissions of the past. Our responsibility, as we see it, is rather to conduct an essay on civilisation, by seizing an opportunity to design, evolve and carry into execution for the benefit of coming generations the means for a happy and gracious way of life."
The New Town of Cumbernauld was designated on December 9th 1955. The original plan called for the creation of a town capable of accommodating 50,000- 80,000 people, the majority of whom would come from Glasgow. It was one of the last New Towns designated in Britain, and the one in which modernist theories of town-planning are most obvious.
The site for Cumbernauld was relatively small, meaning that population density would be higher than in other New Towns. The town's planners were keen to give their creation a more 'urban' feel than its predecessors, so this was not considered a hindrance.
The first Chief Architect Hugh Wilson assembled a team of planners and designers from all corners of the world. They considered themselves to be part of a pioneering experiment in urban planning, and for years their fellow architects and planners travelled to Cumbernauld to study this bold utopia on a windy hilltop in central Scotland.
The original Plan for Cumbernauld envisaged a single multi-purpose town centre surrounded by high-density neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods would not have their own retail centres (as in other New Towns), but would instead be connected to the main centre by pedestrian footpaths.
Residents would be able to walk safely to and from the centre without ever coming across a car: a giant motorway system catered for those who wanted to drive through the town or to the centre. This revolutionary concept was designed with the safety of pedestrians and children in mind, and required the construction of a giant road system the like of which had never been seen in Britain.
But Cumbernauld was not anti-car: on the contrary, the huge, wide roads made driving easy, and the town's residential areas were planned with 100% car ownership in mind: garages were everywhere.
But it is the town centre which is the most remarkable feature of Cumbernauld. Conceived as a giant megastructure which would accommodate all the retail, municipal, and leisure needs of a town of 50,000 people, and topped off by penthouse 'executive' apartments, the multi-layered centre straddled the main dual carriageway below, dominating its surroundings.
With the completion of the first phase in 1967, the town centre's architect, Geoffrey Copcutt, had given Cumbernauld Britain's first indoor shopping mall.
But, despite the heroic vision, Cumbernauld was not without its problems. The centre's brutal concrete exterior was grim, and was eventually painted white to brighten it up; its malls and pedestrian walkways became wind tunnels; major retailers stayed away, and financial problems meant that the original Plan was never completely fulfilled.
The penthouses emptied as residents moved to more traditional executive accommodation on the outskirts of the town.
Today, the town struggles against its image of a soulless concrete carbuncle surrounded by roundabouts, a strange tribute to a moment when it was thought that old cities, with their narrow streets, haphazard layout, and confused, illogical centres were a thing of the past.
Despite this, much of Cumbernauld's housing remains a success: its landscaping is considered a triumph, and its population hovers around the 50,000 mark. Visitors still come from around the world to see this grand experiment in modern living. But today Cumbernauld is as much a cautionary tale of the dangers of trying to plan every element of urban life, as it is a successful realisation of a Modernist utopia.
