Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive

To cope with the postwar housing shortage and crumbling conditions of older public housing stock in the Scottish industrial cities, three new towns were built, East Kilbride, Cumbernauld and Glenrothes, followed later by Livingstone.

Glenrothes, established in 1949, was the second of Scotland's new towns (East Kilbride was the first). It was located in central Fife to accommodate the enlarged mining workforce needed for the opening of a new coal seam at the nearby Rothes colliery. In common with Cumbernauld (see Cumbernauld, Town for Tomorrow, 1970), its architecture was functionalist and made heavy use of concrete, in a manner that clearly dated it in the 1950s/1960s. The clip illustrates the type of housing Glenrothes offered to the incomer.

One of several promotional films made by the Scottish new town corporations, under the aegis of and distributed by the Films of Scotland Committee, to promote and publicise the standard of living in the new towns, and to attract industrial development.

Kenneth Broom

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