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The Ravenscraig Steelworks - A Short History
My nephew Tom (aka Benji) got me involved in the team and the thing that took me by immediate surprise was the name of the team. I was intrigued, I mean, why should a bunch of guys, aged between 18 and 23 chose the name Ravenscraig?. After all, when the Ravenscraig Steelworks closed in 1992, most of these guys hadnt even reached their teens. In fact, for most of them, I would guess that the steelworks doesn’t feature much in their memories of growing up in Lanarkshire. For them, Ravenscraig is probably just a vacant bit of land between Motherwell and Wishaw.
Strangely enough, in that way this generation are not that different from Lanarkshires older generation - they too can picture the Ravenscraig as just vacant land, but that was pre 1960 before the Steelworks was built. But as a kid growing up in Motherwell or Wishaw in the 70s and 80s, you could never imagine the Steelworks not being there. And when parents and grandparents talked about how they used to walk the old Craig road from Craigneuk to Carfin, as a kid you just laughed and thought it was impossible. But ironically, things have now come full circle, and Lanarkshire kids these days will probably laugh in the same way at the thought of a steelworks being there in the first place.
But there was a Steelworks there. And Motherwell was once rightly called a Steeltown, and a Steelopolis before that in the early days of Colvilles. And the steel industry in Scotland used to be just that, Scottish owned. But in the late 60s the industry was nationalised, control moved outwith Scotland and the rest as they say, is history. Motherwell as a Steeltown started with Dalzell Works in 1872 and from there became the centre of steelmaking in Scotland for over 100 years. Dalzell was the first and ironically its now the last. Steelmaking is gone from Motherwell (and Scotland). We shouldn’t lament, but neither should we forget. Its part of who we were, and are.
Click here for a photographic tour and history of the Ravenscraig Steelworks and click here for the New Ravenscraig Alternatively, use the menu or back/forward buttons to navigate to other parts of our site.
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