LANARK LANIMER DAY
An ancient celebration held within the Royal Burgh of Lanark on the Thursday between the Sixth and Twelfth days of June annually since the year 1140.
 

Lanark 1968

by Dorothy K. Gray

Lanark is a mediaeval town fighting to hold on to its identity. Drive in by road, and the approaches are pleasant and dignified. The town centre looks prosperous, the High Street broad and clean, the shops modern. It is a town to be proud of, a town to enjoy living in.

People have enjoyed living in it for a long time. As every Lanarkian knows, it became a Royal Burgh around 1140. Over the centuries, the town expanded, but kept its character. A distant view would have shown it slanting downhill, from east to west, with Tinto in the background, and church steeples strung along its length. The view today is the same, except that great housing schemes have spread like a stain into the surrounding fields.

The unchanging contours of the countryside give a sense of continuity. Tinto will not be moved, and the Clyde flows on the same course as it did in the Roman's day. Lanark looks over the Clyde, envying sometimes its sheltered valley. "One thing aboot Lanark," say the optimists, chittering in its frequent breezes, "it'll maybe be blawn doon, but no' flooded. If Lanark goes, Kirkfieldbank will go first."

So far, on its windy height, Lanark has survived very well (and so has Kirkfieldbank); but growth and modernisation, however much they may add to a town's prestige, can often lead to standardisation. It is an insidious process, the product of complacency, but recently it has been speeded up so much that Lanarkians are beginning to wake up and realise, with a start, that if they aren't careful a lot of the old landmarks are going to disappear while they watch.

Some of the landmarks were eyesores, though so familiar that we didn't see them as such. But there are others which may be either restored or demolished in the next few years, so it is perhaps time to take a nostalgic look at Lanark to fix it in our minds before it is too late.

We pay a price for everything. In the days of guttering gaslight, with old John Prosser going his rounds as lamplighter, the Falls of Clyde were splendid spectacles for visitors from all over Britain. Now they have dwindled to a summer trickle, but our streets are bright, and we don't need a leerie any more.

Lanark is a market town, but you would hardly know if you didn't live practically next door. Market days used to be lively affairs, with everyone crowding to their shop doors to see flocks of sheep and herds of cattle driven up the High Street. Now only a few horns or fleeces peeping from a cattle float at the traffic lights show that the mart is busier than ever. Where cattle grazed in fields by the Loch Road, there are now rows of agricultural machinery, as bright as toys.

Less picturesque, perhaps, but more efficient; and a town which does not move with the times tends to lack amenities. Lanark can hold up its head in this respect. Its parks are prettier than most, it has a boating loch (with curling in winter), a first class golf course, a race course, a swimming pool (how did we manage without it?) and a housing programme which is putting the fear of death into those who have to pay for it. It has its share of leisure time organisations. If youth complains that there is "nothing for the young folk" in Lanark, I feel that the fault must lie with youth itself.

One amenity we are short of is industry. A great deal of the Lanark wage earners' money goes in commuting, and the position hasn't been helped by closures of factories and mines, and various spectacular blazes which have delighted small boys but played havoc with peoples' jobs. These fires have also played their part in changing the landscape. Everyone remembers the wooden tannery in the Vennel. The youngsters may not remember so well the old Rio picture house with its Venetian type frontage, or the now demolished Electric Theatre in the Westport. They couldn't compete with a modern cinema; but it was sad to see them go.

There are many things which are typically Lanarkian; the Lanimers; Whuppittie Scoorie; the eight o'clock bell, and the Town Officer - are other Town Officers so perpetually on the go as Willie Davie? The orchards, the fresh Lanark tomatoes, the old ruined church of St. Kentigern—all these are of the essence of Lanark. Even the angel on the mortuary is part of the scene. Somehow the cemetery looked unguarded without it.

It does not do to be bogged down in irrelevancies and sentiment. It is easy to look back and lament the "characters" who used to hang about the streets, forgetting that most of these characters were poor souls, crippled or mentally defective and that much of the fun they engendered was based on thoughtlessness. We look after our casualties better these days. The beggars playing the accordian in the gutter are no longer with us, but there are others whose name is pride to the town—William Smellie, Robert Owen, and William Wallace, who is one of the latest in line for debunking, but to whom Lanarkians are incapable of attributing any wrong.

It is hard to get away from the past in a Royal and Ancient Burgh. The street names perpetuate it, Friars' Lane, Catlegate, Market End .... Some people still talk of getting a bus "at the Horsemarket" and anyone who wants to test the tenacity of family life in Lanark has only to look at the Martyrs' stone in the graveyard. The names are familiar today.

Stand in the doorway of St. Nicholas Church, and the curve of the street will be close to the curve that Wallace saw. The split level and fluorescent lights would startle him. They startled us, too, when they came in, but we have grown used to them, and admire them now that they have mellowed. But there is a limit to the change a town can assimilate. We are a Royal Burgh, not a housing scheme with a shopping centre. What we are has taken us hundreds of years to accomplish. It is now time to treasure what we may not appreciate enough, the quaint corners, the cottages, the wynds and vennels and the old walls and picturesque places which, if flattened, would make yet another car park. As Lanimer Day comes round again, it is the old image of the town which comes back to every exile. It is an image worth preserving.