“Know ye the land where the dark herbless whinstone
In hillocks, not hills, rears it’s desolate head?
Where poverty chains down the nose to the grindstone,
Till the heart and the soul are as heavy as lead?
Where the crops never ripen, the roses cannot blow,
And the sunshine of summer scarce melteth the snow?
Cannot bless with his beams; which he hates to shine on”
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Shotts Iron Works
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Covenanter's Grave 1666
Kirk o' Shotts graveyard
(this is not an original stone,
we believe it has been replaced by ancestors
of William Smith)
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Some cheerless poet of long ago wailed this dreary dirge over the place
where we were born. And indeed ”The Shotts” has been called many hard names
in its day. Cold bleak, and damp; ugly and dreary; rough and backward;
asthmatic and bing-y. Such are the typical slanders cast at our home town;
and naturally we rebel at such libelous labels for “Shotts with all thy
faults, we love thee still!” Away in the wilds we may be, and lacking the
airs and graces of some pretentious towns; but it is noticeable that incomers
soon take to the warm-hearted people of Shotts and to their children also;
and more than one visitor has been heard to exclaim:- “For a town of its size,
Shotts has more life and activities than most of her neighbors, burghs
though they be” (John Loudon, printed circa1949)
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