Viewpark is an area in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Situated immediately north-east of Uddingston (but on the other side of the M74 motorway), Viewpark is two kilometres (1+1⁄4 miles) west of Bellshill. It has an estimated population of 13,916 in 2016, a figure which also includes the smaller adjoining neighbourhoods of Birkenshaw, Bellziehill, Calderbraes, Fallside and Tannochside under the Thorniewood ward of the local council.
St Columba RC Church Viewpark.
History.
Viewpark takes its name from a rural estate of that name, located just off New Edinburgh Road (today part of the A721, which dates from the early 19th century and is thus ‘new’ only by comparison to Old Edinburgh Road which runs parallel further north), near to which was the Viewpark Colliery, one of several mines dug in the area between Uddingston, Bellshill and the North Calder Water including Rosehall, Tannochside and Bredisholm, each of which had several pits. The workers were housed in scattered hamlets of miners’ row cottages at Aitkenhead/Nackerty, Thorniewood, Tannochside, Muirpark and Cockhill, while other mansions in the area included Thornwood House (the site of which was north of Lynnhurst), St Enoch’s Hall (near Banyan Crescent today) and Fallside House (today at Quarrybrae Gardens), the latter of which had a railway station on the Clydesdale Junction Railway from the 1870s to the 1950s (this line and the Caledonian main line, a short distance to the north, are both still in use to day, although there is no local station). A section of Roman road was found in the grounds of Fallside House in 1952. Other local industries included a brickworks and an oilworks.
Famous people from Viewport. Jimmy Johnstone
Viewpark House mansion had a varied history: built in the 1830s to a design by noted architect John Baird, from the 1850s to the 1900s it was the home of the Addie family who controlled the local mines, who extended the estate to the limits of what would become the housing development, it then became a women’s refuge, housed Belgian refugees of World War I and afterwards was divided into small individual apartments. The house, like others in the area, was demolished in the 1950s, but its grounds – Viewpark Gardens – are still present and used by the community as a park, allotments area and walled flower garden including a greenhouse, popular for wedding photography due to its backdrop of flora and original brickwork features. The gardens contained a group of life-sized sculptures, of which only two remain: Hercules and Athena. They were inspired by Aesop’s fables and may be the work of Robert Forrest, whose sculpture was collected by another wealthy Lanarkshire coal merchant, Sir James Watson, for his estate at Earnock.
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