South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture

The original surveyed route for the M74 and the A723 Hamilton Interchange intended the motorway would run a lot closer to Hamilton. In fact, the initially planned route meant passing right through the Palace Grounds and the Low Parks. This would have cut off the Mausoleum from Hamilton itself, stranding it on the other side of the motorway.

As a result this idea was vetoed. Instead, after a new survey had been completed, the Ross Pond was drained and the River Avon rerouted. The motorway could then run East of the Mausoleum, keeping it within Hamilton. The section of the River Avon and walkway under the M74 Flyover is the original 1960s vintage.

In 1964 Motherwell Road was widened and the Interchange construction began. A huge section of the Low Parks Estate wall, running up to the Clyde Bridge, was unceremoniously pulled down and destroyed! With that, yet another one of the last great visible links to the old Palace was lost forever. Only sections of the wall in Muir Street and Bothwell Road remain to give an idea of the scale of the Low Parks. Within that wall, outside Hamilton College, is the last surviving section of the old Palace railings. Despite what some still claim, the railings are indeed the right way up!

A few years later the mining village of Bothwellhaugh, north east of the Low Parks, was finally abandoned after the late 1950s closure of Hamilton Palace Colliery. The colliery, instigated by William, 12th Duke in the 1880s, was leased by Bent Colliery Company. It is the cause of the Low Parks becoming heavily undermined. The last families were moved out of Bothwellhaugh by 1967. Land where the village stood was redeveloped in the early 1970s to become Strathclyde Country Park and Loch. Just along the road from where the Theme Park now stands is roughly atop the old mine workings themselves. The start of the rowing strip lies in what was the gap between the last two rows of miner’s houses; Raith Place and Brandon Place.

Hamilton M74 Services are located on the site of William, 12th Duke’s original Hamilton Racecourse.  This racecourse, just to the North of the old Mote Hill itself, opened in 1888 but closed in 1907.

Today the Hamilton Palace Sports Grounds building and car park stand on the site of the Palace. The Palace itself stretched across the dual carriageway and almost into ASDA’s car park in its full pomp and majesty!