A ‘new town’ whcih was built in the 1950s has been dubbed the ‘worst place to live in the UK’. But Cumbernauld in North Lanarkshire has many charming villages and attractions which are unheralded for visitors
A town which has been labelled the ‘worst place to live in UK’ also has a surprising adoreable attraction.
Beautiful villages and charming towns are a familiar feature of much of Scotland, but not every place has left a good impression on visitors. Cumbernauld, a ‘new town’ in North Lanarkshire is just 10 miles from Glasgow, but it has been labelled “ugly” by a Reddit user on the “UrbanHell” subreddit. Referring (wrongly) to the town as “Cumberland”, the Reddit poster wrote: “The whole town (around 50,000 population) is like this.
“It’s truly horrible, seriously look at it on Google Maps and you’ll see. It also has no high street and no shops, just an ugly shopping centre full of chains set to be demolished anyway. “I have no idea what went wrong with this town and why it’s like this?” The post won 6,700 upvotes and prompted more than 800 comments. And it also left other Reddit users keen to share their opinions. One user, who corrected the spelling of the town, wrote: “Cumbernauld. It was a ‘new town’ back in the 50s. There were several of these built to ease population density within Glasgow. They were planned and built hastily and became areas of deprivation.”
Others rushed to the defence of the town saying: “Cumbernauld isn’t that bad. It’s one of Scotland’s new towns. “After the war, Glasgow had a huge housing problem. Tens of thousands living in slums so the government shifted the populations out to new satellite towns/schemes on the outskirts of the city.” It was once named Scotland’s “ugliest” town by the Daily Telegraph and was then criticised for its “spirit-sapping” architecture and views.
But the town boasts a number of beautiful green spaces, which are widely used and enjoyed and even used as filming locations for series such as Outlander, whose film studios are based in the Wardpark area of the town. Among its most favoured locations is the underrated 300-hectare Palacerigg Country Park, which has a petting zoo and several nature trails. Nearby is then historic Cumbernauld House which also has a park near the town centre.
The original part of town centre once won awards for its ‘brutalist’ architecture, but other parts of the original town including the original Cumbernauld village and Condorrat are charming and seem far away from the more ‘ugly’ parts. The town also has a selection of restaurants, cafés, and pubs including Italian restaurant La Bella, the Red Deer pub, and Café Alba which always provides a warm wecome.
