Scottish Towns and Cities. Blantyre.

Blantyre  or ; Scottish Gaelic: Blantaidhr) is a town and civil parish in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, with a population of 16,900. It is bounded by the River Clyde to the north, the Rotten Calder to the west, the Park Burn to the east (denoting the boundary with the larger adjoining town of Hamilton) and the Rotten Burn to the south.

Blantyre was the birthplace of David Livingstone, the 19th-century explorer and missionary, and because of Livingstone’s work, the second-largest city in Malawi is named after it.

See also: List of listed buildings in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire

The name has a number of probable origins: originally Cumbric blaen tir “top of the land” which has been Gaelicised; an association with Saint Blane, whose associates have a number of local place-names named after them, such as Dalmarnock, and further afield, and personally, Dunblane.

The town consists of a number of small hamlets which have largely become connected into a single urban area, with housing in a variety of styles and ages reflecting the changing use and availability of land over the decades.

High Blantyre is the area to the east and south of Burnbrae Road which continues to High Blantyre Cross at the north. It is thought to be the area of earliest settlement, with a Bronze Age village near Auchintibber 2 miles (3 km) south of Blantyre Parish Church (High Blantyre). Also in this area is Greenhall Park, where the Calder (Cawther) flows north through a valley to eventually join the Clyde near Newton. A new residential development, Greenhall Village, was built at the western side of High Blantyre in the 2010s. There was previously a large mining community in this area clustered around several pits including Auchinraith and Larkfield which still exist as distinct communities within the town; weaving was another local occupation. A railway station (on the Hamilton and Strathaven Railway) was in use from the 1860s to the 1950s, located to the west of the church. High Blantyre Primary School was established in 1875, continuing through various reconstructions to its current buildings dating from 2005.