Scotland's Lost Industries

Michael Meighan takes us on a journey into a time when Scotland, despite its small size, produced the best of everything, from stone to steel and rubber tyres to motor cars

Until the 1960''s The Clyde was synonymous with shipbuilding with many yards dotted on both sides of the river all the way from Glasgow to Greenock. Today they have all but gone, waterside apartments, exhibition centres and light industrial units taking their place. Scotland has many lost industries - from papermaking to gunpowder making as well as whaling, the motor industry, steel making, coal mining, shipbreaking and locomotive manufacture. Once, Scotland was a heavily industrialized country, making all sorts of industrial goods as well as food stuffs, cloth, coal, quarrying, paper, carpets and other goods. from jam to jute, from motor cars to aeroplanes, from sewing machines to ships, Scotland made them all. Nowadays the majority of industries found in Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century have gone, replaced by newer forms of manufacture - from the drilling of oil to the electronics industry. Michael Meighan takes us on a trip down memory lane, when Scotland was an industrial powerhouse, making goods for the Empire an Commonwealth as well as exporting to the world.