I once got lost in the Centre, looking for the exit to the bus station. I asked two men, who laughed and said 'hen, we've lived here for thirty years and we can't find our way around'😂.
@@De5O54 presumably the centre, based on the description of the guys being lost in there for over 30 years. If he’s seen daylight then he’s probably heading in the right direction.
Sounds like me in this giant shopping mall here in Australia. All looks the same so I bought up google maps to work out how to get out to get to my car
I remember the Cumbernauld centre being built in 1965. I think it opened a couple of years later. As a young lad, growing up in the space-race era, it seemed like a vision of the future. Roads going underneath it and porthole windows, it was like a set from a Gerry Anderson animation.
I've never actually been inside it. I've only seen it from the bus centre side while on the bus going to Glasgow. I grew up in Glenrothes, this type of architecture was popular here too. It's quite sad to see the bulk of the old building knocked down.
The Gerry Anderson future that was taken from us. The Osaka Monorail in Japan is very Gerry Anderson too. It was built for Expo '70, it's like what 1970 thought the year 2000 was going to be like. The trains are still the same, and you can see into the cabs with their CRT monitors and two brown corded phones.
Cumbernauld was so futuristic when I was a little kid. I was allowed to stay with relatives as a special little holiday, and found it exciting. Their 'lounge' was a lot like the one near the start of the video, with the modernist furniture etc. I saw the 1st UK airing of Star Trek in it. I loved that centre and remember it thriving. There was a record shop. There was a giant clock in the foyer, as shown in the film Gregory's Girl, at the end of the 70s. Looking back, it might all seem like a film set for A Clockwork Orange, but I was too young to understand what a future dystopia was. It was all beautiful to me. I also remember parklands, on the edge of town, with a mini zoo, more of a shed really, filled with ferrets, weasels, and a tiny stoat, launching at me like a bullet, with murder in its eyes, and ricocheting off the mesh
I still find this kind of thing beautiful. Needs to be repainted white every few years, though! Once it gets grey it just looks like, well, a big lump of concrete.
I used to work with one of the architects who had been an architect working for the Development Corporation for Cumbernauld. I'm sure he told me that the key design 'concept' was that of an Italian Hill Village for the 20th Century. It's a pity they didn't seem to know that the climate of central Scotland at 500 feet above sea level is a bit different to that of Tuscany...........
8:23 Thanks for a wee trip down memory lane..grew up there, and as a kid it was brilliant..the Brutalist architecture was over shadowed by the endless fields quarrys and river meadows which were😮 utopia for a kid.....moved to Ireland in the 80s but have a strange nostagia for the old place.. great families, neighbours .....pity the city planners and investor's let it turn to dust great wee vlog..excellent footage cheers 🍻
Glad you enjoyed it - and that you had a good time growing up in Cumbernauld. There are still some very lovely parts to it today, but I'm sure it's not like it was a few decades back
About 25 years ago I spent a day at the centre. It as the most depressing, oppressive place I’ve ever been in. I can see aesthetic value in some brutalist structures, walked around this place for hours and found nothing, no single square meter of any value to humanity. Thank you for the making the video though 😊
I’m from Cumbernauld, it’s so strange hearing an outsider’s perspective on TH-cam. The last line “a haunting monument to a future that never came” gave me fucking chills. When the Cumbernauld development corporation were running the town it had limitless potential and optimism was high, when the CDC was dissolved and incorporated into North Lanarkshire Council, not only Cumbernauld but every town new and old within the newly created council areas became run down and neglected. Public funds were diverted from commerce and industry, stopped from being reinvested in the town and essentially became the victims of mass corruption. Councillors fill their own pockets while the town crumbles around us. Which leads to a loss of hope/optimism, increased levels of poverty, drug use and violent crime, which leads to the place being vandalised and destroyed by its own inhabitants while still being neglected by the local authorities. There’s a list of people a mile long that should be in jail for what they’ve done to this town over the years.
Ive visited Cumbernauld a lot in the past decade as the company I work for had offices in the now demolished Fleming House right next to the Centre. If you get over the dated architecture it’s a lovely place! People were really friendly and welcoming and the whole place is walkable which was lovely on my lunch breaks. The people of Cumbernauld deserve better than this rotting relic. If a downsized, accessible and less car centric town centre can be built then I’m all for it!
Now if they painted the walls yellow, darkened one or two of the corridors, it could be taken as a real life ‘Back Rooms’ - perhaps it could be a money-spinner ! Excellent quality of video production, keep up the good work
2:47 - “Cars would never encounter pedestrians, and pedestrians would never encounter cars.” I still managed to get knocked down! I grew up in Cumbernauld. I remember the Center as bustling and full of shops… Gateway became Asda, it had the Red Balloon crèche which I was JUST too old to go in. There was the Tryst Swimming Pool. What Everyone Wants. Beatties. I remember also the huge clock they had. Certainly felt like an experience to go there. Haven’t been there in ages, but the video sure brings back a lot of memories. A lot of the walkways and odd corridors were sometimes weirdly alien to explore as a kid. Loved to have seen what the penthouses looked like on the inside...
Loved going there for a day out with my much loved, beautiful Gran. If I was a good boy, she would take me to Wimpy for my lunch, where we were treated like royalty, with food to match. Great times, never forgotten. Love you Gran. RIP ❤
My wife is from Glenrothes, another Scottish New Town. Their equivalent is the Kingdom Centre (also, like many retail centres, is struggling I think) but it's nowhere near as avant garde as Cumbernauld's. My wife's family have the original brochure given out by the town planners when they were trying to attract residents from Edinburgh and Glasgow tenements, must have seemed like paradise at the time. I like Glenrothes and would like to visit Cumbernauld. As someone who lives in an historic English town and constantly reminded about 'heritage,' New Towns are a complete contrast and rather refreshing.
I’ve worked in for about 15 years and still need a satnav to find streets , and when you think you’ve found it it takes an age to actually find the house you’re actually looking for
I worked in Cumbernauld about a decade ago. The town itself was ok - it got talked down a lot by people who never went there but enjoyed sneering at it. But the town centre was horrific, even before all the shops closed. It was a maze of brutal concrete tunnels that didn't quite line up either physically or stylistically. I always felt that i was playing a post apocalyptical video game like Doom or Duke Nukem when I was walking round it. It was awful. It's staggering that it won awards.
Living nearby, not far from Stirling, I had to go to the Argos in Cumbernauld recently to get something. I'd never actually been in Cumbernauld town centre before but had always heard about it. Christ, it didn't disappoint its reputation. The only thing i could think of that could have completed the look would have been a few derelict Mi-8 helicopters and maybe half an Ekranoplan.
I worked and lived in Cumbernauld during the late 90's and it was a strange kind of place. I agree the surrounding countryside and even some of the residential spaces were lovely but the centre I never really understood. It reminded me of another 'new town' built after the war and that was Basildon. A lifeless soulless place that didn't have the benefit of the unique countryside on its door step as a redeeming feature. These kind of places become magnets for all sorts of destructive malevolent influences and they are not in short supply around some parts of Scotland as they were in south Essex. It was always a strange experience travelling to work through the beautiful green countryside pockmarked by battle grey housing estates which seemed bleak and marauding. But as someone mentions below it did feature in Gregory's Girl and that did to a degree showcase the positive side of things and the lovely countryside to boot.
Lived in Cumbernauld since 1975 until i was 30 best years of my life where Cumbernauld house is was our makeshift golf course , football field anything really
Reminds me of Crystal City in Virginia. At one time, could walk underground from one end to the other, with shopping, movie theater, offices, banks, doctors offices, and other services. Everything in one place. On week days it was bustling. Now, dated and comparatively dead.
I grew up in Cumbernauld in the 00s and this was a wonderful time capsule to stumble across! I have very happy memories in the shopping centre, and I love how strange and eerie it seems now. I'm so used to it being known as the ugliest town in Scotland - thank you for the very fair and interesting video!
Good video. I grew up in Cumbernauld and this structure was "The Toonie"- no one called it "The Centre, Cumbernauld" (invented by a marketing company no doubt). In the 60s and 70s there were lots of rat-runs for youngsters like us to escape authority and get up to mischief. The consortium closed off some of these rat-runs which is a shame as it was half the charm of the place.
@@ghostsoc I agree ... I'm a retired film-maker and I think this mini-doco is great. Good script, good voice-over, not too many digital tricks ... does the job! R (Australia)
The network of well planted, off-road paths made Cumbernauld a boon for flashers as well as random attacks by youths on guys walking home from the pub at night. True.
It's the same with all the new towns. People didn't feel safe walking along the paths because they were so secluded. So they ended up walking along the roads which of course have no pavements and high speed limits.
The designers could hardly have anticipated that the police would abrogate their responsibilities. Currently the police station has ACAB sprayed on it, shows how effective they are.
@@NiallWardropMuch like the high-rise "streets in the sky" which are now a "dated", "failed", "dystopian" idea. Which also works perfectly fine in Japan. You see big bricks of concrete in Japan with hundreds of flats, yet not one place is blasting too-loud music, not one stairway has had it's light smashed for concealment of muggers, and not one person has ever been stabbed there. Odd, isn't it?
@@michaelmartin9022 When I lived in Cumbernauld I tried to do something about the antisocial behaviour, and petty vandalism. I was quickly made aware that if the council, police etc. decide an area is "bad" you are expected to accept a certain standard as inevitable.
@@michaelmartin9022 It's because the Japanese have a more hivemind mentality and are extremely socially self-aware. Most neds don't even understand the concept that other people exist.
"ye gaun up the toonie" 😊 I grew up there, at the age of 7 I could skateboard (a new rhing back then) from the entrance to the town centre at the Seafar end, all the way down, without stopping to the bottom of MacGregor road and through the underpass going towards Our Ladies High, it was an awesome place to grow up in despite it's ugliness, concrete and white and grey roughcast housing. 🎶"Sunday, Monday, Happy Days"!, the soundtrack to "Grease", the theme from "Jaws" (when you went to the swimming baths), and long hot summers.
I'm one of the few who have lived in the town since birth now 57 years! I strongly believe we should keep the town centre and it should be repaired with all those horrible 70's extensions removed revealing the original mega structure. Love or Hate the design its different. With retail having changed so much there is now not a need for as you mention in the video Boots, McD's and the same shoe shop as every other town in the UK. We have something that is different and special. We wont be around for long but the Town Centre should be to celebrate the New Town Concept and how special and great a place Cumbernauld is to live.
I remember the day the Golden Eagle hotel partly collapsed and had to be pulled down. Outside the shops also at the Presto you could go hire wee bikes and go round a "mini town" at the rooftops to the side and drive around when you mum was in Presto. I absolutely loved it
I worked in presto for about 18 months till 1981 then it closed down like a week before Christmas.! We used to go to the town hall disco, and me and my mates were punks!
Cumbernauld is a pretty decent place. The houses tend to be very well designed. It has the odd rough area like any other town, but its generally an okay place to live. I remember the town centre in the 80's when it was still thriving with loads of great shops. Its mostly dominated by discount and charity shops these days. Much of the shopping is focused around satellite retail parks these days.
There are some really good design decisions in there. And I reckon if the Centre had been maintained and updated over the years it could well be thriving still!
The maze like interior of the old town centre is what made it so much fun. I grew up there in the 70s. Some of the accessable areas are truly bizzare, like a kid has gone crazy building in Minecraft They should run tours of the old town center, taking you into all the derilict areas, I would love that.
This is sad. From what I understand there is much division on whether it should remain purely because it's an architectural example of its time. It seems to me it's being kept just to stroke the egos of some architects who were probably not involved in its construction anyway.
@@kevinmaltby4202That's exactly it. The architects behind brutalism seemed to believe in concrete for the masses and something a tiny bit nicer for themselves.
@@Hartley_HareYes very true. I like Scotland but on the often grey, damp days really show green-algae streaked, cracked grey-concrete for the depressing sight that it is. The interiors in this video show what a cold, tired and soulless place it is. Jeez, I'm bringing myself down thinking about it! I know it's in commercial hands but if it were possible for the people of Cumbernauld to take a vote on whether it stays or goes I think that's the way to go. Not what some bunch of architects in London want.
@@kevinmaltby4202 I read an article, ages ago, that said it's about context. Concrete might make sense in a country where you get hours of sunlight throughout the year, or at least one where you don't get semi-permanent rain. But in Scotland, where you don't get hours of sunlight and have semi-permanent rain, a concrete building is a three dimensional depiction of grinding misery and unhappiness. And if the building isn't going to survive ageing - there are terraced houses on this street that are 150 years old and still function perfectly well - it's probably not very well-designed. Bah.
Kenny Dalglish spent a couple of seasons at Cumbernauld. I've got an old Celtic booklet with Kenny in flares picking up his new Vauxhall Cavalier! Luxury 🤣👍
I stayed in the hotel in 1980 and it was beyond belief. No natural fabrics or materials anywhere - plastic, nylon, neoprene, etc. I was a walking, talking, electrostatic monster. Tried to find a restaurant but was unsuccessful so I had to eat in the hotel. Disaster. I asked for a steak with salad and got a small piece of chewable meat with a couple of lettuce leaves and half a tomato. I remember driving up to the place late afternoon and I thought the Centre was a huge industrial complex. The whole place was dismal and had no character. I stayed one night and have never been back.
Thanks for this concise and informative piece of social history. I live in a (70s/80s era) New Town in England, so I was comparing and contrasting. Look forward to more videos.
Cumbernauld actually works very well, and that is the reason why it is hated, not by the residents but by the chatterati. The paths run as directly as possible, it is the roads that are circuitous, and every house has a parking space. The underpasses thing is just a symptom of the same lack of effective policing that blights all but the well off suburbs these days. The problem is that the pedestrian accident rate in Cumbernauld is something like a third of the average and the current anti car rhetoric is that this can't be done so they hate Cumbernauld for showing that it can. The shopping centre thing is just the same issue found all over, the failure to understand that there is a natural size for any particular town centre and building a new set of shops only empties the existing ones. Cumbernauld has now done this three times.
On my first visit to one of the housing 'estates' I was surprised about the parking - great that there were spaces, but as they weren't attached to the housing it was a pain to unload loads of stuff in the rain (or snow).
@@robertyork4041 Which is interesting for a place which is derided as too car centric. Compared to other places with a similar density of housing it's not too bad, many such there is difficulty in finding a legal parking space at all. It's obviously better to have your own driveway but that is unusual in high density housing.
Just watched this. What a brilliant looking place! The potential for this to become THE shopping centre to visit in the UK is fantastic!! Do it up, get good stores in there, advertise it's obvious quirkiness, love it!! ......'gift horse in the mouth', if only the local council can see it! Love it!!
I did an art project on Cumbernauld for GCSE art back in the day. Years later, I moved up to Scotland and met my now wife, who is from Glenrothes. I had to genuinely convince her that an ‘indoor town centre’ is weird. Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Livingston…..what is it with 1960s Scottish town planners mashing a bunch of buildings together to make a ‘megatron’ town centre?
Thanks for the laughs guys! Btw, all the people who say they'd love to visit my town i can give you the grand tour if you like. For a small fee i could show you where Alan Rough, Scotland goalkeeper stayed. I can also point out where the best takeaways are and which of the corner shops sells the cheapest buckfast. If you'd like to avoid the centre that'll be extra!
As a resident of the Highlands and my son in Glasgow this has earned a subscribe and just been added to the list of places to go and see when I visit him. What a great and well presented video, thank you.
I grew up in Cumbernauld. My parents were vetted to live here, i used to love the town centre,hard to believe now, used to be a busy place to go. I came back to live here after 12 years away in a other new town of East KILBRIDE and was shocked to see how bad it was. Cumbernauld centre is a result of total miss-management which tried to stop development in other places in Cumbernauld. The town centre needs demolished and needs redeveloped. North lanarkshire has been taking money out of cumbernauld for years to redevelop other areas its time time it spent money here!
When you see pictures of the Glasgow tenements from the sixties, you might notice that they are invariably taken from behind the tenements, often in the bin area. This was all part of the message, since few buildings look their best from behind. I was born in the Gorbals myself, and my mother insisted that the house we lived in was far and away the best house she ever lived in.
Growing up in Livingston, also a 'new town', it's amazing how many pictures of Cumbernauld the streets of my youth. We also had a Centre and underpasses, although our Centre got renovated in 90s, resulting in it being almost impossible to get from one side of Livingston to the other after 7pm (when the doors of the Centre closed) as you had to walk around the entire structure to get across the valley.
“Jobs were plentiful” Um…no. Lived in Cumbernauld all my life. My parents were among thousands who moved out of Glasgow for a better life. And generally it’s given us that. But one of my dad’s frequent complaints was that the biggest failure of planning was providing everything folk needed BUT jobs. Most folk were forced to commute back into Glasgow for work.
If I'm working in Cumbernauld I'll always go for a walk around the centre, such an interesting building. The ongoing maintenance costs are likely interesting also, nothing lasts forever and perhaps a change would benefit the town as a whole.
Cumbernauld, it's centre (and also, thankfully, the surrounding area) was my first proper introduction to and experience of Scotland...it left a lasting impression, not just because of the architecture.
This is just up the road from me, I've visited a few times and it looks like they've actually fixed some of the leaks in the glass by the library since the last time I was there, or maybe it was just dry when these clips were filmed. Those walkways are lethal when they get a bit damp, that and they reek of piss which isn't very nice. The layout of the place is very confusing, but I still think it'd be a shame to demolish it and replace with some bland glass box, it should be left standing like the Barbican and maintained or even improved where possible, some layout changes inside, a bit of cleaning and new tiles instead of the ancient looking brown ones towards the bus stops would make the place feel much fresher.
Absolutely excellent video! I really don't understand why underpasses were such a popular design thing at one point in time? I guess it's easier to see in hindsight how underpasses are now often the 'No-Go' parts of, at least towns in the UK. But I can't imagine any point in time where an isolated tunnel that people HAD to walk through could be seen as a smart thing to install.
I grew up in cumbernauld in the 60/70s and loved it, but since left many years ago and still have many family members there. But it fell into disrepair and north Lanarkshire council never helped much. The underpass system, There was a report in the daily mail in the 80s saying that it attracted flashers😂 and Billy Connolly said that people from cumbernauld didn't know how to cross a road when they left the town😂 Craig Ferguson of American tv fame spent a few of his early years in darroch way, seafar, he called it a desert with Windows.
An odd description from Ferguson of a place full of green spaces and woodlands, I'd like to know what his preferred environment would look like. Many of these people are the same ones who love to go on about the slum tenements that Cumbernauld replaced as if they were the most wonderful housing ever. Usually when you look at the timeline they are too young to have actually lived in them, but in certain social circles you are nobody if you don't claim to have grown up with an outside cludgie.
Stayed 10 minutes away from it for 20 plus years. People used to live in parts of it when first built. Had actual apartments in a part of it. I also remember the big clock they relocated that used to be in front of the old Asda.
I am a planner, trained at the end of the 70s and it was notorious then. Never been but have visited Runcorns Shopping City. Reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. I see there is a fan of Skem in the comments. Don’t think l have heard of a fan of Peterlee
I live in another of the Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride. It also has a plan for a Town Centre redevelopment. During the Pandemic many outlets closed never to re-open and sadly it seems there is no future for the shopping centre in its current form. Broadly I support re-development with environmentally friendly materials and renewable energy installed.
Cumbernauld's walking routes are to me a prime example of 'great idea, terrible execution' with idealised rather than humanistic thought underlying them. Whilst there are footpaths between nearby residential areas and the supermarkets and Centre, they're all very indirect and now are in varying states of disrepair - plus they don't always feel safe during the day, let alone after dark. Walking directly to the ASDA from my partner's place in a straight line would take maybe 5 minutes, but as several main roads cut through, to walk there safely you need to take a winding, badly lit and poorly maintained path for 15-20 minutes. Consequently, folks often drive to the centre even if it's nearby or you see them walking on the roads dodging cars, as there are few pavements to allow pedestrians space because it was assumed they'd all take the long way rather than doing what people always do, take the shortcut. The poor management of the town centre is really evident with the Antonine centre. Whilst the original Centre looks dated after being around since the 60s, the Antonine is only 17 years old but looks really worn down in multiple parts too. The ceilings have several leaks and it's normal to have to skirt around a collection of buckets set out in the main thoroughfare catching water. It's a real shame because, as you and others have mentioned, if the town had been properly invested in and maintained it'd be incredibly pleasant to stay in. If you lik the great outdoors it's brilliant owing to the close proximity of the Campsies and the sprawling fileds and woodlands by the river.
Cumbernauld was great to grow up in in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in Ravenseood but by the year 2000 I took the first opportunity to move and get away and personally you couldn't pay me enough to move back
The center was not to bad during the 80s and 90s. Gateway/Asda moved in then Tesco eliminating any need to go inside the building and basically sucked the life out of the place. This is the same pattern with so many high streets. Tesco extras and Tesco minis etc. smaller retailers have no chance.
And yet Livingstone just 40 minutes away, transformed it's dilapidated centre, demolishing the old buildings like the awful bus station and reinventing the centre as a huge retail space and sprawling shopping park.
The reason why Livingston works is that the car is integrated into the design of the place, with lots of car parking - walking to the shops in Cumbernauld would be a full time occupation to feed a family of four and I imagine that most wives didn’t have a career, other than walking ! Planners and architects, who largely drive everywhere, have no concept of how heavy a couple of bags of shopping gets after carrying it for twenty minutes !
The greater Cumbernauld accent was the central Glasgow accent and most didn’t have the choice in the move initially . The majority of in a community consultation chose no pubs. The centre was the location of my first job of my youth. Home to a large group of refugees welcomed from chile fleeing their facist regime.
I definitely believe it's an ugly centre, but oddly I still love it. I haven't been there for a few years, so, since I'm on annual leave, I may just take a drive through tomorrow.
@ghostsoc the first law of architecture is that the building must be suitable for its function. In the late 1940s and 1950s architects drank the political cool aid and thought that they could change society through architecture. Nudge people into behaving in the 'right' way. Instead they created cold urban hell holes, devoid of community. Much of this was based on ideas that were developed in the USSR after the Russian Revolution where the bolsheviks envisaged self contained urban units which deconstructed the family, fed everyone in canteens and brought around social justice as a result..the reality was vast housing shortages and the construction of 'krushchevka' vast complexes of cheaply built concrete 2 room and 4 room flats that still blight cities across the former USSR. These were touted in some architectural circles in the west as the ideal future, the brave new world, as they were presented as a workers' paradise of egalitarian housing. The reality was, of course quite the opposite. Obviously the likes of Corbousier and van der Rohe and other radical politicised architects didn't ever live in the buildings they designed nor had to deal with the consequences of living in them. No, that was for the proles who needed to be told how to live!. Whilst having an indoor loo and a damp proof course was a welcome development for my New Monkton great grandparents, who had lived in the same damp 2 room mining cottage for 3 generations..no loo, open sewers, damp and a single stand pipe for 75 houses. The new flats they were relocated to in Glasgow had no community, the walkways became dangerous criminal areas and my Great Granny never recovered losing her community from the then demolished mining slum. The architect who designed the block.they ended up in of course lived in a Victorian Villa in the Grange in Edinburgh! A well known donor to the British Communist Party! Fortunately architects now understand that you cannot change the world through architecture.. people are what they are.. they need family, community and safety. I wonder how much longer Disney's share price will continue to.nose dive before the entertainment sector stops patronising its customers with politics and just goes back to entertaining us! One would have thought that they would have learned from what happened to the architecture.
Extremely interesting and very well produced. Thank you for making this. I live on the other side of Scotland so I know this place only by reputation, but there are similar (if smaller) dreary centres near me, such as the Nethergate Centre in Dundee.
I think the saddest thing about still living here is the absolute frustration of dealing with the Centre Management. People want it to stay, but improve it, and instead they seem hell bent on intentional negligence and improper management so they can throw up their hands and say it’s unsalvageable and to demolish it. The recent fiasco with the roof coming off in the winter storms, with absolutely no communication to any of the businesses paying rent in the property, the refusal to do any of the required maintenance to the place, not to mention the little turn a few housing development companies got when the neighbouring HMRC office was set for demolition and having the land up for grabs is really showing that having completely removed management is killing the Centre slowly but surely. It could have been great, but they want to turn it into unaffordable new build housing instead, with no supporting infrastructure like schools and doctors surgeries, both of which are at absolute capacity in the town as is.
Interesting film, i used to go up to the shopping centre in Cumbernauld for messages (shopping) every 10 or 20 months for a change. Once in a blue moon. It was fairly easy to get there and back from Stepps main street. I liked the shopping centre as it was different, odd, no BS gimmick retail outlets, 1 after another. This was during the early 1990s. I had no idea it was ‘done up’ in 2007. I had a girlfriend from Burundi who was travelling up to Cumbernauld - i was just staring in confused disbelief. Why do you want to go there.? The tax office is there.! I had no idea there was a tax office either. I had know there was an original village, and was told it was a overspill town like East Kilbride. I was always a wee bit fascinated with Cumbernauld with its out-of-the-way location, quietness and its locale, a bit similar with Coatbridge/ Airdrie. I can’t comment on the rebuild of the town centred complex. I have no alternatives. I would maintain it, but private or local government owned, it is bound to bomb. Fifty years functional use of the place seems very poor, and not dissimilar to the Sighthill flats or Red Road flats. High flats as residential is another abscess to avoid touching, a computer is only as fast as its slowest component. I was very recently in Cumbernauld getting lost 2 or 3 times recently, for to follow it with a 4th. This was down more to young people’s stupidity rather than Cumbernauld town. I went to get a car battery last winter in Bishopbriggs Halfords where they told me they were out of them, but that “Cumbernauld branch was showing they had four”. They merely said this verbally, a young person, they did not write down the address, number and postcode. I got lost several times, got dicky instructions and directions from locals, and ended up in that Tesco looking for a bottle of water and a coffee. I think the supermarket inside the Cumbernauld centre was ASDA but that was a long while ago. From memory, it was nameplate engraving/ key cutting shops, wee gift card and trinket shops. I liked the place, but i do not have look at it or go there. I strongly doubt Lanarkshire council will build a replace for the complex to put it mildly. In Glasgow they built an ASDA abouts the old Robroyston hospital around 2000, it was not 24 hours for a few years yet when opening, maybe 2002 or 2003. Between that and the M8 bypass motorway to the South, you want to see the size of the new ‘big box’ structure built for Harper Collins publishing. It is built for Keith R Murdoch of the media enterprise. I legitimately thought Boeing were building jumbo jets in there, the structure sticks up past the overgrown evergreen trees. In a digital era, physical book publishing is given much faster building facility than the centre of a town (mentioned) where thousands of jobs and shoppers have an ongoing locus & concern. Had no idea about the Cumbernauld penthouses. If one looks up the meaning of the word ‘penthouse’, those are very not penthouses. - fine videofilm, well made.
Good point. A lot of sources paint a very positive picture of moving to Cumbernauld when the Centre was first built... but there would have been tension also with the existing residents!
Great video! I remember watching (or perhaps reading) something on the story of The Cumbernauld Centre a few years back and was fascinated by it, the potential to have everything under one roof and not be exposed to the outside elements (hopefully without leaks of course) is perhaps still a little futuristic, thinking of those "Archology" developments in Sim City 2000. It is a shame that it's the mess that it is, the harsh reality of lack of funding is squarely to blame in my opinion as it has turned it into nothing more than a struggling run-of-the-mill shopping centre and in the eyes of many, a particularly ugly one as of course whatever design trend is in fashion when something is built it won't be the style 30+ years down the line. I think there is still potential there, it just needs the funding to repair it and in turn bring back retailers and customers and thus turn it back into the busting hub of the community again.
It’s a shame, we done a project on New Towns in school ( 20+ years ago) and most done Cumbernauld s it was the closest. I done Milton Keynes. It too has the city centre under a roof, and although it is roundabout daft, the pedestrians are kept away from traffic and vice versa. Their city centre has stayed fresh and honestly I love it.( due to family, I’ve been many times). It’s obvious that 1) the wrong design was chosen and 2) it was mismanaged if The Centre Cumbernauld has been so useless. Hopefully, thing will be looking up soon.
Cumbernauld was mentioned in the 1963 report "Traffic in Towns", often called "the Buchanan Report". Prof Colin Buchanan was very complimentary about Cumbernauld and its separation of traffic from pedestrians and cyclists.
Not only Cumbernauld , but all five of the Scottish new Towns : Cumbernauld , Livingston , Glenrothes , Irvine and East Kilbride - this principle of separating pedestrians from other road users was a fundamental feature of all of them .
A great video. I love the Brutalist style architecture, but I fear it’s days are numbered. Especially when the U.K. shopping is changing so much, especially post covid. The car must have been moving to cause the Golden Eagle hotel to be demolished.
The car bit is news to me, as I only heard about the bulging external wall that was allegedly ready to collapse on to the dual carriageway. The car accident may well have caused some minor structural damage that led to this, but I have no clue about that. The car story does seem to fit, I have to say, but I can't confirm it happened one way or the other.
I guess it must have damaged a crucial load bearing part of the structure. It must have been a fatal weakness. Kind of a concrete house of card perhaps
Your description put me in mind of the Palace of Knossos on Crete, as sort of human ant's nest where every need (including government) was catered for. It also was a 3-D maze of walkways, which one gradually got to know whilst growing up and were impenetrable to the stranger. I hope they find a use for the building, or rather a plethora of uses. Surely the council was a bit remiss in giving planning permission for that ugly retail shed which the private investor built? That seemed a bit foolish with unused space right next door.
I moved to Cumbernauld in 2007 and lived there for 5 years. It still see it as my 2nd home - I have a lot of good and some bad memories while living there, but overall it wasn't bad. You missed to show St. Enoch Clock, but granted, it's hidden in the Centre.
Visited the centre a couple of times in the 80s/90s, and accidentally detoured there since... the most depressing place I've ever been. And now they want to knock it down?? I'll fight them to the bitter end!! Great megastructure!
Hello from Skelmersdale! Great video. I would love to visit Cumbernauld. I have visited Livingstone and that seems to be doing really well for itself. One of the original new towns in the North West of England. Your video tells a similar story to that of Skem as it's known to locals. Built on the edge of Liverpool, it was designed to take people from the slums and give them nice, spacious housing with lots of green space. Our town centre is a building known locally as "Conny" or officially, the Concourse and everywhere in the town is no more than a 30 minute walk to it, and thanks to the use of bridges and tunnels, there's no need to cross roads. Sadly, since Skelmersdale Development Corporation went bust, the walkways and signage has fallen into disrepair so it's not uncommon to find people just walking in the road instead. As for the Conny, it too is mostly empty as the company which own it charges high rent for the area and despite offering free parking, has had it's controversies for ticketing people who visit twice in one day. The rest of the town is beautiful to me, lots of greenery between the estates. Each estate has its own unique style of housing. The roads are great, loads of roundabouts and two motorway junctions. We don't have traffic lights anywhere in the town, apart from one traffic light-controlled crossing which is barely used. Sadly we don't have a train station as when the new town was proposed, they tore up the track and replaced it with a road which is apptly, or ironically, called Railway Road. The currentl council seem determined to turn Skem into every other town by offering developers the option to build on the green spaces between the estates in exchange for not having to include any affordable housing. New build housing here is 3 times the price and only ⅔ the size of the 60s housing stock. It's a real shame as I love New Towns and it was the New Town feel that drew me to move here in 2015. My house was £81,000 and is a large 3 bed terrace with utility room, downstairs loo, driveway parking to the rear, and a south facing garden. In fact, every original estate was designed to have a south, or west facing garden to have as much natural light as possible. At the time, a more traditional town, such as Leyland, where I'm from, I would have been looking at £130,000 for a 2 bed terrace with no parking so yeah, moving here was a no brainer.
I lived on Bellway's Holland Park estate between 2003 and 2007. Watching this video reminded me exactly of living in Skem. No real issue with the place except it was sterile, decrepit, and dated, the Concourse being a poor offering considering the towns around it. Shame really, sort of an abandoned experiment feel about it, lots of Liverpudlians dropped in the Lancashire countryside. Went back to Bolton in 2007 and never been back to Skem since. Saw recently some grand plans for its redevelopment, hope they come off for the folk that live there.
Waste of some of the best farmland in England used to make my Dad a local farmer weep & then they filled with thieving schoucers who stole from farmers & trashed their crops, progress I suppose.
How fascinating. Will have to read more about Skelmersdale. Sounds like it had a lot in common with Cumbernauld, in that the initial plan had a lot of genuinely good ideas, but that things weren't always maintained over the years
@ghostsoc they had big plans for the town. Train station, hospital, population of 100000 which at its peak got nowhere near. There are 38000 here as of the last census. Here is a video from the development corporation used to "sell Skelmersdale" back in the 60s/70s which shows their ambitious plans.. th-cam.com/video/UHLqVyXICPg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Y33SR_661LxmKwo9
A chunk of the roof blew off recently. Closing a bunch of the centre for almost a month. Says it all really. It is a shame though as it really is an interesting place. Walking round it you can see the intensions.
Check out my video on the Barbican in London if you want a bit more surreal, brutalist architecture: th-cam.com/video/AVm7nmAoqzc/w-d-xo.html
I once got lost in the Centre, looking for the exit to the bus station. I asked two men, who laughed and said 'hen, we've lived here for thirty years and we can't find our way around'😂.
Are you still there now ?
@markossmith - In the Centre, or in Cumbernauld.?
@@De5O54 presumably the centre, based on the description of the guys being lost in there for over 30 years. If he’s seen daylight then he’s probably heading in the right direction.
This is a local bus station, for local people. 😂
Sounds like me in this giant shopping mall here in Australia. All looks the same so I bought up google maps to work out how to get out to get to my car
I remember the Cumbernauld centre being built in 1965. I think it opened a couple of years later. As a young lad, growing up in the space-race era, it seemed like a vision of the future. Roads going underneath it and porthole windows, it was like a set from a Gerry Anderson animation.
That must have been an exciting time. It does have the look of a massive old spaceship, doesn't it?
I've never actually been inside it. I've only seen it from the bus centre side while on the bus going to Glasgow.
I grew up in Glenrothes, this type of architecture was popular here too. It's quite sad to see the bulk of the old building knocked down.
The Gerry Anderson future that was taken from us.
The Osaka Monorail in Japan is very Gerry Anderson too. It was built for Expo '70, it's like what 1970 thought the year 2000 was going to be like. The trains are still the same, and you can see into the cabs with their CRT monitors and two brown corded phones.
Cumbernauld was so futuristic when I was a little kid. I was allowed to stay with relatives as a special little holiday, and found it exciting. Their 'lounge' was a lot like the one near the start of the video, with the modernist furniture etc. I saw the 1st UK airing of Star Trek in it. I loved that centre and remember it thriving. There was a record shop. There was a giant clock in the foyer, as shown in the film Gregory's Girl, at the end of the 70s. Looking back, it might all seem like a film set for A Clockwork Orange, but I was too young to understand what a future dystopia was. It was all beautiful to me.
I also remember parklands, on the edge of town, with a mini zoo, more of a shed really, filled with ferrets, weasels, and a tiny stoat, launching at me like a bullet, with murder in its eyes, and ricocheting off the mesh
I still find this kind of thing beautiful. Needs to be repainted white every few years, though! Once it gets grey it just looks like, well, a big lump of concrete.
What's it called....CUMBERBAULD
I used to work with one of the architects who had been an architect working for the Development Corporation for Cumbernauld. I'm sure he told me that the key design 'concept' was that of an Italian Hill Village for the 20th Century. It's a pity they didn't seem to know that the climate of central Scotland at 500 feet above sea level is a bit different to that of Tuscany...........
name and shame the architect - go on. did he live there ? just design a monstrosity - and live elsewhere...
Yes concrete does not look good in Scotland the climate kills the look of concrete!!! ok in LA or Italy but here forget it!!!
8:23 Thanks for a wee trip down memory lane..grew up there, and as a kid it was brilliant..the Brutalist architecture was over shadowed by the endless fields quarrys and river meadows which were😮 utopia for a kid.....moved to Ireland in the 80s but have a strange nostagia for the old place.. great families, neighbours .....pity the city planners and investor's let it turn to dust great wee vlog..excellent footage cheers 🍻
Glad you enjoyed it - and that you had a good time growing up in Cumbernauld. There are still some very lovely parts to it today, but I'm sure it's not like it was a few decades back
About 25 years ago I spent a day at the centre. It as the most depressing, oppressive place I’ve ever been in. I can see aesthetic value in some brutalist structures, walked around this place for hours and found nothing, no single square meter of any value to humanity. Thank you for the making the video though 😊
There is a single square metre close to TJ Hughes. You obviously didnt try hard enough.
Great video, but no mention of Gregory's Girl! Watch the 80s film to get a good look at the place if you aren't local.
A superb film. And an excellent way of getting a look at Cumbernauld's past 👍
One of my favourite movies ... and there was Clare Grogan
Brilliant film.
Ha, I came to make the same comment. One of my favourite films.
@@neilfoster814 Great minds think alike sir!
I’m from Cumbernauld, it’s so strange hearing an outsider’s perspective on TH-cam.
The last line “a haunting monument to a future that never came” gave me fucking chills.
When the Cumbernauld development corporation were running the town it had limitless potential and optimism was high, when the CDC was dissolved and incorporated into North Lanarkshire Council, not only Cumbernauld but every town new and old within the newly created council areas became run down and neglected. Public funds were diverted from commerce and industry, stopped from being reinvested in the town and essentially became the victims of mass corruption. Councillors fill their own pockets while the town crumbles around us.
Which leads to a loss of hope/optimism, increased levels of poverty, drug use and violent crime, which leads to the place being vandalised and destroyed by its own inhabitants while still being neglected by the local authorities.
There’s a list of people a mile long that should be in jail for what they’ve done to this town over the years.
Wasn't a councillor indebted to a local gang of mobsters at one point?
Ive visited Cumbernauld a lot in the past decade as the company I work for had offices in the now demolished Fleming House right next to the Centre. If you get over the dated architecture it’s a lovely place! People were really friendly and welcoming and the whole place is walkable which was lovely on my lunch breaks.
The people of Cumbernauld deserve better than this rotting relic. If a downsized, accessible and less car centric town centre can be built then I’m all for it!
Now if they painted the walls yellow, darkened one or two of the corridors, it could be taken as a real life ‘Back Rooms’ - perhaps it could be a money-spinner ! Excellent quality of video production, keep up the good work
2:47 - “Cars would never encounter pedestrians, and pedestrians would never encounter cars.” I still managed to get knocked down!
I grew up in Cumbernauld. I remember the Center as bustling and full of shops… Gateway became Asda, it had the Red Balloon crèche which I was JUST too old to go in. There was the Tryst Swimming Pool. What Everyone Wants. Beatties. I remember also the huge clock they had. Certainly felt like an experience to go there. Haven’t been there in ages, but the video sure brings back a lot of memories. A lot of the walkways and odd corridors were sometimes weirdly alien to explore as a kid.
Loved to have seen what the penthouses looked like on the inside...
Loved going there for a day out with my much loved, beautiful Gran.
If I was a good boy, she would take me to Wimpy for my lunch, where we were treated like royalty, with food to match.
Great times, never forgotten.
Love you Gran. RIP ❤
👍
My wife is from Glenrothes, another Scottish New Town. Their equivalent is the Kingdom Centre (also, like many retail centres, is struggling I think) but it's nowhere near as avant garde as Cumbernauld's. My wife's family have the original brochure given out by the town planners when they were trying to attract residents from Edinburgh and Glasgow tenements, must have seemed like paradise at the time. I like Glenrothes and would like to visit Cumbernauld. As someone who lives in an historic English town and constantly reminded about 'heritage,' New Towns are a complete contrast and rather refreshing.
I’ve worked in for about 15 years and still need a satnav to find streets , and when you think you’ve found it it takes an age to actually find the house you’re actually looking for
I worked in Cumbernauld about a decade ago. The town itself was ok - it got talked down a lot by people who never went there but enjoyed sneering at it.
But the town centre was horrific, even before all the shops closed. It was a maze of brutal concrete tunnels that didn't quite line up either physically or stylistically.
I always felt that i was playing a post apocalyptical video game like Doom or Duke Nukem when I was walking round it. It was awful. It's staggering that it won awards.
Living nearby, not far from Stirling, I had to go to the Argos in Cumbernauld recently to get something. I'd never actually been in Cumbernauld town centre before but had always heard about it. Christ, it didn't disappoint its reputation. The only thing i could think of that could have completed the look would have been a few derelict Mi-8 helicopters and maybe half an Ekranoplan.
Love seeing small channels like yours get a boost from A GOOD VIDEO! Well done you!
I worked and lived in Cumbernauld during the late 90's and it was a strange kind of place. I agree the surrounding countryside and even some of the residential spaces were lovely but the centre I never really understood.
It reminded me of another 'new town' built after the war and that was Basildon. A lifeless soulless place that didn't have the benefit of the unique countryside on its door step as a redeeming feature.
These kind of places become magnets for all sorts of destructive malevolent influences and they are not in short supply around some parts of Scotland as they were in south Essex.
It was always a strange experience travelling to work through the beautiful green countryside pockmarked by battle grey housing estates which seemed bleak and marauding.
But as someone mentions below it did feature in Gregory's Girl and that did to a degree showcase the positive side of things and the lovely countryside to boot.
Lived in Cumbernauld since 1975 until i was 30 best years of my life where Cumbernauld house is was our makeshift golf course , football field anything really
Reminds me of Crystal City in Virginia. At one time, could walk underground from one end to the other, with shopping, movie theater, offices, banks, doctors offices, and other services. Everything in one place. On week days it was bustling. Now, dated and comparatively dead.
Oooh - fascinating. If I can get out there any time in the near future I would love to cover it
I grew up in Cumbernauld in the 00s and this was a wonderful time capsule to stumble across! I have very happy memories in the shopping centre, and I love how strange and eerie it seems now. I'm so used to it being known as the ugliest town in Scotland - thank you for the very fair and interesting video!
Good video. I grew up in Cumbernauld and this structure was "The Toonie"- no one called it "The Centre, Cumbernauld" (invented by a marketing company no doubt). In the 60s and 70s there were lots of rat-runs for youngsters like us to escape authority and get up to mischief. The consortium closed off some of these rat-runs which is a shame as it was half the charm of the place.
This has just 600 views? No way. This is high production quality! Incredible good work. Please keep it up. You'll get there!
Thank you! We're keeping at it 💪
37,000 now
@@Statueshop2973,000 in the 4 hours since you posted.
120k
@@ghostsoc I agree ... I'm a retired film-maker and I think this mini-doco is great. Good script, good voice-over, not too many digital tricks ... does the job! R (Australia)
A "liminal space" lover's dream. I could spend days around there with the camera. Great video too by the way.
"The site was left to the town council to run" The words that spell doom for any project.
and then they sold it on
If you think this sounds bad in the UK, you should come to Italy and see the state of anything that's state owned or municipality run....
Great narration of a really good text. In the 70s my grandparents told me to keep well away from Cumbernauld; already dangerous and falling apart.
Reminds me of any number of maze-like, 90%-closed shopping centres in Osaka, I love 'em all!
The network of well planted, off-road paths made Cumbernauld a boon for flashers as well as random attacks by youths on guys walking home from the pub at night. True.
It's the same with all the new towns. People didn't feel safe walking along the paths because they were so secluded. So they ended up walking along the roads which of course have no pavements and high speed limits.
The designers could hardly have anticipated that the police would abrogate their responsibilities.
Currently the police station has ACAB sprayed on it, shows how effective they are.
@@NiallWardropMuch like the high-rise "streets in the sky" which are now a "dated", "failed", "dystopian" idea. Which also works perfectly fine in Japan. You see big bricks of concrete in Japan with hundreds of flats, yet not one place is blasting too-loud music, not one stairway has had it's light smashed for concealment of muggers, and not one person has ever been stabbed there. Odd, isn't it?
@@michaelmartin9022 When I lived in Cumbernauld I tried to do something about the antisocial behaviour, and petty vandalism. I was quickly made aware that if the council, police etc. decide an area is "bad" you are expected to accept a certain standard as inevitable.
@@michaelmartin9022 It's because the Japanese have a more hivemind mentality and are extremely socially self-aware. Most neds don't even understand the concept that other people exist.
The most effective design for a wind tunnel ever made.
Exactly and they make it even more noticeable by not putting the heating on lol.
"ye gaun up the toonie" 😊 I grew up there, at the age of 7 I could skateboard (a new rhing back then) from the entrance to the town centre at the Seafar end, all the way down, without stopping to the bottom of MacGregor road and through the underpass going towards Our Ladies High, it was an awesome place to grow up in despite it's ugliness, concrete and white and grey roughcast housing. 🎶"Sunday, Monday, Happy Days"!, the soundtrack to "Grease", the theme from "Jaws" (when you went to the swimming baths), and long hot summers.
Where I lived we went doon the toon. 🙂
Really interesting!! I'm going to add this to my list of places to see. Thanks for this video
I'm one of the few who have lived in the town since birth now 57 years! I strongly believe we should keep the town centre and it should be repaired with all those horrible 70's extensions removed revealing the original mega structure. Love or Hate the design its different. With retail having changed so much there is now not a need for as you mention in the video Boots, McD's and the same shoe shop as every other town in the UK. We have something that is different and special. We wont be around for long but the Town Centre should be to celebrate the New Town Concept and how special and great a place Cumbernauld is to live.
This has the same vibe as Runcorn shopping city. I'm sure that was part of the new town scheme too back in the day.
I remember the day the Golden Eagle hotel partly collapsed and had to be pulled down. Outside the shops also at the Presto you could go hire wee bikes and go round a "mini town" at the rooftops to the side and drive around when you mum was in Presto. I absolutely loved it
I worked in presto for about 18 months till 1981 then it closed down like a week before Christmas.!
We used to go to the town hall disco, and me and my mates were punks!
Cumbernauld is a pretty decent place. The houses tend to be very well designed. It has the odd rough area like any other town, but its generally an okay place to live. I remember the town centre in the 80's when it was still thriving with loads of great shops. Its mostly dominated by discount and charity shops these days. Much of the shopping is focused around satellite retail parks these days.
There are some really good design decisions in there. And I reckon if the Centre had been maintained and updated over the years it could well be thriving still!
There was a long raised walkway over some roads, that was known locally as 'Skid Row', because it was covered in dog poop
@@keltyk That's millcroft road.
The maze like interior of the old town centre is what made it so much fun. I grew up there in the 70s. Some of the accessable areas are truly bizzare, like a kid has gone crazy building in Minecraft
They should run tours of the old town center, taking you into all the derilict areas, I would love that.
Breaking news: the Cumbernauld Centre is set to be around for another 10-15 years yet!
This is sad. From what I understand there is much division on whether it should remain purely because it's an architectural example of its time. It seems to me it's being kept just to stroke the egos of some architects who were probably not involved in its construction anyway.
@@kevinmaltby4202That's exactly it. The architects behind brutalism seemed to believe in concrete for the masses and something a tiny bit nicer for themselves.
@@Hartley_HareYes very true. I like Scotland but on the often grey, damp days really show green-algae streaked, cracked grey-concrete for the depressing sight that it is. The interiors in this video show what a cold, tired and soulless place it is. Jeez, I'm bringing myself down thinking about it! I know it's in commercial hands but if it were possible for the people of Cumbernauld to take a vote on whether it stays or goes I think that's the way to go. Not what some bunch of architects in London want.
@@kevinmaltby4202 I read an article, ages ago, that said it's about context. Concrete might make sense in a country where you get hours of sunlight throughout the year, or at least one where you don't get semi-permanent rain. But in Scotland, where you don't get hours of sunlight and have semi-permanent rain, a concrete building is a three dimensional depiction of grinding misery and unhappiness. And if the building isn't going to survive ageing - there are terraced houses on this street that are 150 years old and still function perfectly well - it's probably not very well-designed. Bah.
@@Hartley_HareYup, I agree with that about context. Tin roofs in Australia look good in the 'burbs!
How HARD does a ‘careless driver’ have to hit a huge hotel for it to have to be DEMOLISHED?
I don't think The Golden Eagle hotel was that well built in the first place
Good point - I think the hotel probably had a few existing issues even before the crash!
Could be the damage revealed rusting rebar or something dodgy like that.
I used to go to the Eagle every Thursday night when I lived there, a long time ago now.
What's it called ?
Kenny Dalglish spent a couple of seasons at Cumbernauld. I've got an old Celtic booklet with Kenny in flares picking up his new Vauxhall Cavalier! Luxury 🤣👍
Nowt wrong with much missed Cavs.
I stayed in the hotel in 1980 and it was beyond belief. No natural fabrics or materials anywhere - plastic, nylon, neoprene, etc. I was a walking, talking, electrostatic monster. Tried to find a restaurant but was unsuccessful so I had to eat in the hotel. Disaster. I asked for a steak with salad and got a small piece of chewable meat with a couple of lettuce leaves and half a tomato.
I remember driving up to the place late afternoon and I thought the Centre was a huge industrial complex. The whole place was dismal and had no character.
I stayed one night and have never been back.
.Apart from that , did you LIKE it?
Thanks for this concise and informative piece of social history. I live in a (70s/80s era) New Town in England, so I was comparing and contrasting. Look forward to more videos.
Thanks for watching! We're obsessed with New Towns, so we may well be visiting yours someday...
Cumbernauld actually works very well, and that is the reason why it is hated, not by the residents but by the chatterati. The paths run as directly as possible, it is the roads that are circuitous, and every house has a parking space. The underpasses thing is just a symptom of the same lack of effective policing that blights all but the well off suburbs these days. The problem is that the pedestrian accident rate in Cumbernauld is something like a third of the average and the current anti car rhetoric is that this can't be done so they hate Cumbernauld for showing that it can.
The shopping centre thing is just the same issue found all over, the failure to understand that there is a natural size for any particular town centre and building a new set of shops only empties the existing ones. Cumbernauld has now done this three times.
On my first visit to one of the housing 'estates' I was surprised about the parking - great that there were spaces, but as they weren't attached to the housing it was a pain to unload loads of stuff in the rain (or snow).
@@robertyork4041 Which is interesting for a place which is derided as too car centric. Compared to other places with a similar density of housing it's not too bad, many such there is difficulty in finding a legal parking space at all. It's obviously better to have your own driveway but that is unusual in high density housing.
Just watched this. What a brilliant looking place! The potential for this to become THE shopping centre to visit in the UK is fantastic!! Do it up, get good stores in there, advertise it's obvious quirkiness, love it!! ......'gift horse in the mouth', if only the local council can see it! Love it!!
@johnbeggs9669 have you ever been there ?
there’s no saving it the place is a fucking shithole
I visited Cumbernauld a few months back and was disappointed to see St Enoch's clock from Gregory's Girl was inaccessible to the public!
I did an art project on Cumbernauld for GCSE art back in the day.
Years later, I moved up to Scotland and met my now wife, who is from Glenrothes. I had to genuinely convince her that an ‘indoor town centre’ is weird. Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Livingston…..what is it with 1960s Scottish town planners mashing a bunch of buildings together to make a ‘megatron’ town centre?
As an Aussie. Wow at your use of the term Maccas
I knew exactly what you meant. Now I want a mcmuffin though.
I've always been fascinated by places like Cumberauld, you have a new subscriber 🙂
Thanks for the laughs guys! Btw, all the people who say they'd love to visit my town i can give you the grand tour if you like. For a small fee i could show you where Alan Rough, Scotland goalkeeper stayed. I can also point out where the best takeaways are and which of the corner shops sells the cheapest buckfast. If you'd like to avoid the centre that'll be extra!
As a resident of the Highlands and my son in Glasgow this has earned a subscribe and just been added to the list of places to go and see when I visit him.
What a great and well presented video, thank you.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.
This is giving me flashbacks to my childhood in a concrete laden new town with underpasses you wouldn’t want to visit and houses with tiny windows
I grew up in Cumbernauld. My parents were vetted to live here, i used to love the town centre,hard to believe now, used to be a busy place to go. I came back to live here after 12 years away in a other new town of East KILBRIDE and was shocked to see how bad it was. Cumbernauld centre is a result of total miss-management which tried to stop development in other places in Cumbernauld. The town centre needs demolished and needs redeveloped. North lanarkshire has been taking money out of cumbernauld for years to redevelop other areas its time time it spent money here!
Agreed - there's been a real series of management fumbles over the years. Hopefully it can be addressed in the near future!
When you see pictures of the Glasgow tenements from the sixties, you might notice that they are invariably taken from behind the tenements, often in the bin area. This was all part of the message, since few buildings look their best from behind. I was born in the Gorbals myself, and my mother insisted that the house we lived in was far and away the best house she ever lived in.
Growing up in Livingston, also a 'new town', it's amazing how many pictures of Cumbernauld the streets of my youth. We also had a Centre and underpasses, although our Centre got renovated in 90s, resulting in it being almost impossible to get from one side of Livingston to the other after 7pm (when the doors of the Centre closed) as you had to walk around the entire structure to get across the valley.
All together now...."What's it called? Cumbernauld!" 🙂
"What's it like? Shite!"
I also remember being my dad's friends penthouse it was amazing, sunken sitting room
They do look like pretty cool flats! Wish I could see inside one of them...
2:04 _"But the kind of ugly that was very fashionable ... in the 1950s"._ Best description I've ever heard. Spot on! 😂
The 1950s was certainly an interesting decade
Well, fashionable for Architects and Town/City Councils certainly. Not so much the everyday chap in the street, whom had no say in the matter.
There was People Still living in the pent houses in the 80s. My Mum's hairdresser lived there. They were pretty nice actually!
“Jobs were plentiful” Um…no. Lived in Cumbernauld all my life. My parents were among thousands who moved out of Glasgow for a better life. And generally it’s given us that. But one of my dad’s frequent complaints was that the biggest failure of planning was providing everything folk needed BUT jobs. Most folk were forced to commute back into Glasgow for work.
All of half an hour away , with lots of other work surrounding the place . Hardly a problem .
If I'm working in Cumbernauld I'll always go for a walk around the centre, such an interesting building. The ongoing maintenance costs are likely interesting also, nothing lasts forever and perhaps a change would benefit the town as a whole.
Cumbernauld, it's centre (and also, thankfully, the surrounding area) was my first proper introduction to and experience of Scotland...it left a lasting impression, not just because of the architecture.
This is just up the road from me, I've visited a few times and it looks like they've actually fixed some of the leaks in the glass by the library since the last time I was there, or maybe it was just dry when these clips were filmed. Those walkways are lethal when they get a bit damp, that and they reek of piss which isn't very nice. The layout of the place is very confusing, but I still think it'd be a shame to demolish it and replace with some bland glass box, it should be left standing like the Barbican and maintained or even improved where possible, some layout changes inside, a bit of cleaning and new tiles instead of the ancient looking brown ones towards the bus stops would make the place feel much fresher.
Absolutely excellent video! I really don't understand why underpasses were such a popular design thing at one point in time? I guess it's easier to see in hindsight how underpasses are now often the 'No-Go' parts of, at least towns in the UK. But I can't imagine any point in time where an isolated tunnel that people HAD to walk through could be seen as a smart thing to install.
I grew up in cumbernauld in the 60/70s and loved it, but since left many years ago and still have many family members there. But it fell into disrepair and north Lanarkshire council never helped much. The underpass system, There was a report in the daily mail in the 80s saying that it attracted flashers😂 and Billy Connolly said that people from cumbernauld didn't know how to cross a road when they left the town😂 Craig Ferguson of American tv fame spent a few of his early years in darroch way, seafar, he called it a desert with Windows.
An odd description from Ferguson of a place full of green spaces and woodlands, I'd like to know what his preferred environment would look like. Many of these people are the same ones who love to go on about the slum tenements that Cumbernauld replaced as if they were the most wonderful housing ever. Usually when you look at the timeline they are too young to have actually lived in them, but in certain social circles you are nobody if you don't claim to have grown up with an outside cludgie.
Stayed 10 minutes away from it for 20 plus years. People used to live in parts of it when first built. Had actual apartments in a part of it. I also remember the big clock they relocated that used to be in front of the old Asda.
I am a planner, trained at the end of the 70s and it was notorious then. Never been but have visited Runcorns Shopping City. Reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. I see there is a fan of Skem in the comments. Don’t think l have heard of a fan of Peterlee
Same C O thoughts!!
I live in another of the Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride. It also has a plan for a Town Centre redevelopment. During the Pandemic many outlets closed never to re-open and sadly it seems there is no future for the shopping centre in its current form. Broadly I support re-development with environmentally friendly materials and renewable energy installed.
Visited a relative who moved there in the 1960s. Fantastic place. Space age city, no roads to cross. Everything clean shiny and new.
I would have loved to see Cumbernauld during its early years!
Cumbernauld's walking routes are to me a prime example of 'great idea, terrible execution' with idealised rather than humanistic thought underlying them. Whilst there are footpaths between nearby residential areas and the supermarkets and Centre, they're all very indirect and now are in varying states of disrepair - plus they don't always feel safe during the day, let alone after dark. Walking directly to the ASDA from my partner's place in a straight line would take maybe 5 minutes, but as several main roads cut through, to walk there safely you need to take a winding, badly lit and poorly maintained path for 15-20 minutes. Consequently, folks often drive to the centre even if it's nearby or you see them walking on the roads dodging cars, as there are few pavements to allow pedestrians space because it was assumed they'd all take the long way rather than doing what people always do, take the shortcut.
The poor management of the town centre is really evident with the Antonine centre. Whilst the original Centre looks dated after being around since the 60s, the Antonine is only 17 years old but looks really worn down in multiple parts too. The ceilings have several leaks and it's normal to have to skirt around a collection of buckets set out in the main thoroughfare catching water. It's a real shame because, as you and others have mentioned, if the town had been properly invested in and maintained it'd be incredibly pleasant to stay in. If you lik the great outdoors it's brilliant owing to the close proximity of the Campsies and the sprawling fileds and woodlands by the river.
I was based in cumbernauld for a while and drove all over scotland...but the place I always got lost was cumbernauld
Cumbernauld was great to grow up in in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in Ravenseood but by the year 2000 I took the first opportunity to move and get away and personally you couldn't pay me enough to move back
I love the reasonable way you tell all that.
The center was not to bad during the 80s and 90s. Gateway/Asda moved in then Tesco eliminating any need to go inside the building and basically sucked the life out of the place. This is the same pattern with so many high streets. Tesco extras and Tesco minis etc. smaller retailers have no chance.
And yet Livingstone just 40 minutes away, transformed it's dilapidated centre, demolishing the old buildings like the awful bus station and reinventing the centre as a huge retail space and sprawling shopping park.
Livingston , there is no e on the end .
The reason why Livingston works is that the car is integrated into the design of the place, with lots of car parking - walking to the shops in Cumbernauld would be a full time occupation to feed a family of four and I imagine that most wives didn’t have a career, other than walking !
Planners and architects, who largely drive everywhere, have no concept of how heavy a couple of bags of shopping gets after carrying it for twenty minutes !
The greater Cumbernauld accent was the central Glasgow accent and most didn’t have the choice in the move initially . The majority of in a community consultation chose no pubs. The centre was the location of my first job of my youth. Home to a large group of refugees welcomed from chile fleeing their facist regime.
I definitely believe it's an ugly centre, but oddly I still love it. I haven't been there for a few years, so, since I'm on annual leave, I may just take a drive through tomorrow.
I did a geography projet on this on the 1980s which was still touted as a miracle of urban planning!
Amazing. It's quite surprising how long it retained its reputation as a brilliant innovation... followed by how quickly it became a "carbuncle"
@ghostsoc the first law of architecture is that the building must be suitable for its function. In the late 1940s and 1950s architects drank the political cool aid and thought that they could change society through architecture. Nudge people into behaving in the 'right' way. Instead they created cold urban hell holes, devoid of community. Much of this was based on ideas that were developed in the USSR after the Russian Revolution where the bolsheviks envisaged self contained urban units which deconstructed the family, fed everyone in canteens and brought around social justice as a result..the reality was vast housing shortages and the construction of 'krushchevka' vast complexes of cheaply built concrete 2 room and 4 room flats that still blight cities across the former USSR. These were touted in some architectural circles in the west as the ideal future, the brave new world, as they were presented as a workers' paradise of egalitarian housing. The reality was, of course quite the opposite. Obviously the likes of Corbousier and van der Rohe and other radical politicised architects didn't ever live in the buildings they designed nor had to deal with the consequences of living in them. No, that was for the proles who needed to be told how to live!.
Whilst having an indoor loo and a damp proof course was a welcome development for my New Monkton great grandparents, who had lived in the same damp 2 room mining cottage for 3 generations..no loo, open sewers, damp and a single stand pipe for 75 houses. The new flats they were relocated to in Glasgow had no community, the walkways became dangerous criminal areas and my Great Granny never recovered losing her community from the then demolished mining slum.
The architect who designed the block.they ended up in of course lived in a Victorian Villa in the Grange in Edinburgh! A well known donor to the British Communist Party!
Fortunately architects now understand that you cannot change the world through architecture.. people are what they are.. they need family, community and safety. I wonder how much longer Disney's share price will continue to.nose dive before the entertainment sector stops patronising its customers with politics and just goes back to entertaining us! One would have thought that they would have learned from what happened to the architecture.
It was still very popular with retailers in the 80's. The grown of the retail park put paid to that.
Extremely interesting and very well produced. Thank you for making this. I live on the other side of Scotland so I know this place only by reputation, but there are similar (if smaller) dreary centres near me, such as the Nethergate Centre in Dundee.
I think the saddest thing about still living here is the absolute frustration of dealing with the Centre Management. People want it to stay, but improve it, and instead they seem hell bent on intentional negligence and improper management so they can throw up their hands and say it’s unsalvageable and to demolish it.
The recent fiasco with the roof coming off in the winter storms, with absolutely no communication to any of the businesses paying rent in the property, the refusal to do any of the required maintenance to the place, not to mention the little turn a few housing development companies got when the neighbouring HMRC office was set for demolition and having the land up for grabs is really showing that having completely removed management is killing the Centre slowly but surely. It could have been great, but they want to turn it into unaffordable new build housing instead, with no supporting infrastructure like schools and doctors surgeries, both of which are at absolute capacity in the town as is.
That's something I came across a lot - there's definitely a sense of wilful neglect in some of the decisions that have been made
Interesting film, i used to go up to the shopping centre in Cumbernauld for messages (shopping) every 10 or 20 months for a change. Once in a blue moon.
It was fairly easy to get there and back from Stepps main street. I liked the shopping centre as it was different, odd, no BS gimmick retail outlets, 1 after another. This was during the early 1990s. I had no idea it was ‘done up’ in 2007.
I had a girlfriend from Burundi who was travelling up to Cumbernauld - i was just staring in confused disbelief. Why do you want to go there.? The tax office is there.!
I had no idea there was a tax office either.
I had know there was an original village, and was told it was a overspill town like East Kilbride. I was always a wee bit fascinated with Cumbernauld with its out-of-the-way location, quietness and its locale, a bit similar with Coatbridge/ Airdrie.
I can’t comment on the rebuild of the town centred complex. I have no alternatives. I would maintain it, but private or local government owned, it is bound to bomb.
Fifty years functional use of the place seems very poor, and not dissimilar to the Sighthill flats or Red Road flats. High flats as residential is another abscess to avoid touching, a computer is only as fast as its slowest component.
I was very recently in Cumbernauld getting lost 2 or 3 times recently, for to follow it with a 4th. This was down more to young people’s stupidity rather than Cumbernauld town. I went to get a car battery last winter in Bishopbriggs Halfords where they told me they were out of them, but that “Cumbernauld branch was showing they had four”.
They merely said this verbally, a young person, they did not write down the address, number and postcode. I got lost several times, got dicky instructions and directions from locals, and ended up in that Tesco looking for a bottle of water and a coffee.
I think the supermarket inside the Cumbernauld centre was ASDA but that was a long while ago. From memory, it was nameplate engraving/ key cutting shops, wee gift card and trinket shops. I liked the place, but i do not have look at it or go there. I strongly doubt Lanarkshire council will build a replace for the complex to put it mildly.
In Glasgow they built an ASDA abouts the old Robroyston hospital around 2000, it was not 24 hours for a few years yet when opening, maybe 2002 or 2003. Between that and the M8 bypass motorway to the South, you want to see the size of the new ‘big box’ structure built for Harper Collins publishing. It is built for Keith R Murdoch of the media enterprise. I legitimately thought Boeing were building jumbo jets in there, the structure sticks up past the overgrown evergreen trees.
In a digital era, physical book publishing is given much faster building facility than the centre of a town (mentioned) where thousands of jobs and shoppers have an ongoing locus & concern.
Had no idea about the Cumbernauld penthouses. If one looks up the meaning of the word ‘penthouse’, those are very not penthouses. - fine videofilm, well made.
Today the roof, when it hasn't been blown off, leaks like a sieve! Bucket sales are a booming industry.
I grew up in Irvine new town,,,the mall goes over the river Irvine,,,very difficult to get lost!!!!
City dwellers who wanted to escape " - sorry but they were called "overspill" by everyone else!
Good point. A lot of sources paint a very positive picture of moving to Cumbernauld when the Centre was first built... but there would have been tension also with the existing residents!
Tremendous video, I used to visit the centre when I was a boy
Thank you!
Great video! I remember watching (or perhaps reading) something on the story of The Cumbernauld Centre a few years back and was fascinated by it, the potential to have everything under one roof and not be exposed to the outside elements (hopefully without leaks of course) is perhaps still a little futuristic, thinking of those "Archology" developments in Sim City 2000. It is a shame that it's the mess that it is, the harsh reality of lack of funding is squarely to blame in my opinion as it has turned it into nothing more than a struggling run-of-the-mill shopping centre and in the eyes of many, a particularly ugly one as of course whatever design trend is in fashion when something is built it won't be the style 30+ years down the line. I think there is still potential there, it just needs the funding to repair it and in turn bring back retailers and customers and thus turn it back into the busting hub of the community again.
It’s a shame, we done a project on New Towns in school ( 20+ years ago) and most done Cumbernauld s it was the closest. I done Milton Keynes. It too has the city centre under a roof, and although it is roundabout daft, the pedestrians are kept away from traffic and vice versa. Their city centre has stayed fresh and honestly I love it.( due to family, I’ve been many times).
It’s obvious that 1) the wrong design was chosen and 2) it was mismanaged if The Centre Cumbernauld has been so useless. Hopefully, thing will be looking up soon.
Great video. The council are planning to demolish the centre in two phases phase of demolition in 2027-28 and the second phase in 2031-33.
Och, there's nothing wrong with the Town Centre. I love it!
It just needs a wee lick o' paint!
Interesting blog and well worth the watch. 👍
Cumbernauld was mentioned in the 1963 report "Traffic in Towns", often called "the Buchanan Report". Prof Colin Buchanan was very complimentary about Cumbernauld and its separation of traffic from pedestrians and cyclists.
To be fair, even now it's very easy to get around without crossing any roads... so long as you don't mind using underpasses instead
Not only Cumbernauld , but all five of the Scottish new Towns : Cumbernauld , Livingston , Glenrothes , Irvine and East Kilbride - this principle of separating pedestrians from other road users was a fundamental feature of all of them .
Literally everything from that era is being demolished. Thank God!
A great video. I love the Brutalist style architecture, but I fear it’s days are numbered. Especially when the U.K. shopping is changing so much, especially post covid. The car must have been moving to cause the Golden Eagle hotel to be demolished.
Yes puzzled by that remark. Unless it hit that perfect ‘do not damage’ concrete support buildings have
The car bit is news to me, as I only heard about the bulging external wall that was allegedly ready to collapse on to the dual carriageway. The car accident may well have caused some minor structural damage that led to this, but I have no clue about that. The car story does seem to fit, I have to say, but I can't confirm it happened one way or the other.
I guess it must have damaged a crucial load bearing part of the structure. It must have been a fatal weakness. Kind of a concrete house of card perhaps
It looks like a medium-security prison to me.
Your description put me in mind of the Palace of Knossos on Crete, as sort of human ant's nest where every need (including government) was catered for. It also was a 3-D maze of walkways, which one gradually got to know whilst growing up and were impenetrable to the stranger. I hope they find a use for the building, or rather a plethora of uses. Surely the council was a bit remiss in giving planning permission for that ugly retail shed which the private investor built? That seemed a bit foolish with unused space right next door.
Knossos had a Minotaur though. Maybe that's what Cumbernauld is missing.
I moved to Cumbernauld in 2007 and lived there for 5 years.
It still see it as my 2nd home - I have a lot of good and some bad memories while living there, but overall it wasn't bad.
You missed to show St. Enoch Clock, but granted, it's hidden in the Centre.
From what's shown here - I like it!
Visited the centre a couple of times in the 80s/90s, and accidentally detoured there since... the most depressing place I've ever been. And now they want to knock it down?? I'll fight them to the bitter end!! Great megastructure!
Hello from Skelmersdale! Great video. I would love to visit Cumbernauld. I have visited Livingstone and that seems to be doing really well for itself.
One of the original new towns in the North West of England. Your video tells a similar story to that of Skem as it's known to locals. Built on the edge of Liverpool, it was designed to take people from the slums and give them nice, spacious housing with lots of green space. Our town centre is a building known locally as "Conny" or officially, the Concourse and everywhere in the town is no more than a 30 minute walk to it, and thanks to the use of bridges and tunnels, there's no need to cross roads. Sadly, since Skelmersdale Development Corporation went bust, the walkways and signage has fallen into disrepair so it's not uncommon to find people just walking in the road instead.
As for the Conny, it too is mostly empty as the company which own it charges high rent for the area and despite offering free parking, has had it's controversies for ticketing people who visit twice in one day.
The rest of the town is beautiful to me, lots of greenery between the estates. Each estate has its own unique style of housing. The roads are great, loads of roundabouts and two motorway junctions. We don't have traffic lights anywhere in the town, apart from one traffic light-controlled crossing which is barely used.
Sadly we don't have a train station as when the new town was proposed, they tore up the track and replaced it with a road which is apptly, or ironically, called Railway Road.
The currentl council seem determined to turn Skem into every other town by offering developers the option to build on the green spaces between the estates in exchange for not having to include any affordable housing. New build housing here is 3 times the price and only ⅔ the size of the 60s housing stock.
It's a real shame as I love New Towns and it was the New Town feel that drew me to move here in 2015. My house was £81,000 and is a large 3 bed terrace with utility room, downstairs loo, driveway parking to the rear, and a south facing garden. In fact, every original estate was designed to have a south, or west facing garden to have as much natural light as possible.
At the time, a more traditional town, such as Leyland, where I'm from, I would have been looking at £130,000 for a 2 bed terrace with no parking so yeah, moving here was a no brainer.
I lived on Bellway's Holland Park estate between 2003 and 2007. Watching this video reminded me exactly of living in Skem. No real issue with the place except it was sterile, decrepit, and dated, the Concourse being a poor offering considering the towns around it. Shame really, sort of an abandoned experiment feel about it, lots of Liverpudlians dropped in the Lancashire countryside.
Went back to Bolton in 2007 and never been back to Skem since.
Saw recently some grand plans for its redevelopment, hope they come off for the folk that live there.
Waste of some of the best farmland in England used to make my Dad a local farmer weep & then they filled with thieving schoucers who stole from farmers & trashed their crops, progress I suppose.
How fascinating. Will have to read more about Skelmersdale. Sounds like it had a lot in common with Cumbernauld, in that the initial plan had a lot of genuinely good ideas, but that things weren't always maintained over the years
@ghostsoc they had big plans for the town. Train station, hospital, population of 100000 which at its peak got nowhere near. There are 38000 here as of the last census.
Here is a video from the development corporation used to "sell Skelmersdale" back in the 60s/70s which shows their ambitious plans..
th-cam.com/video/UHLqVyXICPg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Y33SR_661LxmKwo9
Crikey, I met a couple from Skem up at the Casino one late 70's, early 80's niter. Dead nice, sound as.
Couldn't work out where they meant 'Skem '! 😉
A chunk of the roof blew off recently. Closing a bunch of the centre for almost a month.
Says it all really. It is a shame though as it really is an interesting place. Walking round it you can see the intensions.
Tidy wee video. Thanks and reluctant thanks to our algorithm overlords.