About Carluke

Feb 19 2008 by Judith Tonner

Carluke is a thriving community and home to a population of 13,500, located at the very heart of Lanarkshire’s picturesque Clyde Valley.

 It has recently benefited from a £2.35 million redevelopment of its main shopping precinct and the complete rebuilding of its secondary school.

Day trippers can enjoy a pleasant drive around the town and the many nearby garden centres, orchards and nurseries; Carluke’s proximity to the area’s numerous fruit growers means that it is known for the production of jam at the local Renshaw Scott plant.

The town’s earliest settlers were monks who knew the town as Kirkstyle. It became a royal burgh in 1662 and was a stopping point for Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army in 1746 during their retreat from Derby.

It was with the arrival of roads and railways that Carluke really began to expand in the following centuries, with the traditional industries of agriculture and weaving being supplemented by mining, corn milling and various manufacturing businesses.

Carluke is the proud home of no fewer than three Victoria Cross winners, First World War heroes Lance-Corporal William Angus and Sergeant Thomas Caldwell, and Second World War hero Lieutenant Donald Cameron.

The town’s famous sons include pioneering cartographer and surveyor General William Roy, stonemason Robert Forrest, whose work tops the Melville Monument in Edinburgh, and celebrated doctor and geologist Daniel Reid Rankin.

More recent heroes include footballer Dougie Arnott, who found fame as a member of Motherwell FC’s Scottish Cup-winning side of 1991 and who now runs a local pub; the town has its own football team, Carluke Rovers, who compete in the Second Division of the junior game’s west regional set-up.

A significant piece of Carluke can even be found on the other side of the world — the remains of Milton Lockhart House, the home of Sir Walter Scott’s biographer John Lockhart, was transported to Japan in 1987, painstakingly re-erected at Takaya-mura in the country’s Gunma-Ken region, and renamed Lockheart Castle.