Ravenscraig

Ravenscraig is a village and new town, located in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, around 11⁄2 miles east of Motherwell. Ravenscraig was formerly the site of Ravenscraig steelworks; once the largest hot strip steel mill in western Europe, the steelworks closed in 1992, and is now almost totally demolished. After over two decades of lying derelict, the empty land was redeveloped in the 2010s, with new houses and services being built on a large scale. The main contributors to this project were Wilson Bowden Developments Ltd, Scottish Enterprise and Tata Steel Europe. Located in North Lanarkshire, Ravenscraig lies between the towns of Wishaw and Motherwell and the villages of Carfin and Newarthill, an area with a combined population of over 120,000. Ravenscraig is only some ten minutes drive from both the M74 and the M8 motorways, which lead to Glasgow and Edinburgh – Scotland's two largest cities – respectively. A rail line travels directly through the site and another travels around the opposite end of the site. Ravenscraig steelworks and Ravenscraig Steel Works, as well as the former settlement of the same title, took its name from the nearby secluded cliff face called Ravenscraig. This translates as Raven's Cliff or Cliff of the Ravens. It is situated in the valley of the North Calder Water, north of the steelworks site. This is first shown on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1859. A major expansion of Colvilles, the largest steel manufacturer in the United Kingdom before World War II, was approved in July 1954 by the Iron and Steel Board. In 1954 the first stages of development began in Ravenscraig, turning a green field into a site for steelworks. By 1957 several coke ovens, a by-products plant, a blast furnace and an open hearth melting shop with three steelmaking furnaces were built, and by 1959 a stripmill was complete. The closure of Ravenscraig in 1992 signalled the end of large-scale steel making in Scotland, and was the cause of a loss of 770 jobs, with another 10,000 job losses directly and indirectly linked to the closure.