The cotton connection
The mill wheels and spindles at the Scottish cotton spinning village of New Lanark are silent now, their noisy din replaced by the more subdued sound of footsteps and clicking cameras of tourists.
New Lanark is a beautifully preserved relic of the Industrial Revolution, set in the heart of the Clyde Valley outside Glasgow, which has become highly successful in its new role of tourist attraction. And from next year, the conservation village is preparing to welcome yet more visitors when it opens a new hotel, offering 38 bedrooms and eight self-catering units.
Behind the project is the New Lanark Conservation Trust, the body that has overall responsibility for the preservation of the village.
New Lanark's hotel is to be set in what was known as Mill One, a tall, sandstone building, dating back to 1789. It is one of a small number of cotton spinning mills which has survived from this period and it is considered to have immense historical significance.
The trust's director, Jim Arnold, acknowledges the challenge ahead in bringing the hotel to life, but looks unruffled. "It's daunting but not overwhelming," he comments, adding that some of the biggest hurdles lie in retaining the character of the building in which the hotel is to be located.
Work on restoring Mill One started way back in 1993 and Arnold estimates the total cost when the work is completed will come to about £7m. Half this expenditure is being absorbed by the physical reconstruction of the building, which has lain derelict since 1968, when the trust got a compulsory purchase order to buy it from a scrap metal company.
Funding has come from a variety of sources, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, which gave £1.8m, Lanarkshire Development Agency, the European Regional Development Fund and Historic Scotland, as well as a number of private foundations.
The trust's aim is to create a hotel which is officially rated as three-star standard, but which offers a higher level of service. Arnold draws a parallel with French family-run country inns. The rate is expected to be about £40 per person.
Arnold adds that in decor, the hotel will not hark back to the Victorian age, with its florals and frills, but will have more in common with the simple, North American Shaker style. Facilities will be themed, unsurprisingly, on a cotton mill and will include a 120-seat restaurant and a 200-capacity function room.
Only a small amount of business for the hotel and restaurant is expected to come from the village's immediate area. Some of the old tenement houses in the village have been converted to modern homes and are owner-occupied, but the numbers are too small to represent a significant market. The town of Lanark, a few minutes' drive from New Lanark, has a population of less than 10,000.
"We will have no passing trade, we will have to make this a destination," says Arnold. In the summer months, the hotel is expected to get business from coach parties visiting the village. In the shoulder months, before and after the main summer season, the trust hopes to build up a short-break market.
Activity breaks
It also hopes to package activity breaks so that people can stay in a tranquil setting and enjoy hobbies such as walking, fishing, river rafting, canoeing, art and photography. Glasgow is an hour's drive away, so the hotel could also be an option for people who want to visit the city.
Arnold believes that there may be opportunities to get bookings from business travellers visiting companies in the Clyde Valley and, to ensure the hotel can cope with their needs, each bedroom will be equipped with modem links.
According to Arnold, at one point the New Lanark Conservation Trust commissioned consultancy firm KPMG to see whether any hotel operators would be interested in managing the hotel. But no group signalled any interest and so, undeterred, the trust set about the task of taking on the project itself. "The feeling was that if we could run a visitor centre which attracts 400,000 visitors a year, then we could run a hotel," he says.
Recruitment of a hotel general manager has just started and the aim is to have someone in place well before the June 1998 opening date. Arnold and the trust's development officer Annie Bell are sure of the kind of person they want to run the hotel. Ideally, he or she will have a desire to make a long-term commitment to the project.
The trust has also formed close links with the Further Education College at Motherwell so that students on catering courses will be able to come to the hotel on training placements. Anyone familiar with the history of New Lanark will feel that such an arrangement is very much in the spirit of the village, which owes its fame to one of its early owners, the social reformer Robert Owen. He believed strongly in the importance of training and education for young people (see panel).
For tourists visiting New Lanark today, attractions include an audio-visual display called The Annie McLeod Experience, which relives what life was like through the eyes of a young mill worker. There is also the chance to see a reconstruction of the village store, a millworker's house and Robert Owen's house, which has been restored and furnished in the style of the period.
Perhaps in a few hundred years, tourists will be brought on tours to see an example of a 20th century hotel conversion.
