A familiar piece of Airdrie history has been saved and is being expertly preserved at Lanarkshire’s museum of industrial life.
The landmark stone bearing the name of department store Orr’s was specially rescued ahead of the building’s demolition last year, and is now safely in storage at the Summerlee attraction in Coatbridge.
It is shortly due to be added to Culture NL Museums’ online collection, allowing visitors to add their own recollections relating to the business which was an Airdrie institution; and curators hope that it could eventually go on physical display.
The stone was a familiar sight at the entrance to the South Bridge department store, an Airdrie landmark which was run by five generations of the same family until closing down 14 years ago.
After lying empty ever since amid a string of difficulties with attempts to repurpose it, the building finally disappeared from the town centre streetscape last year and is being replaced with 20 council flats and two retail units.
Contractors carrying out the two-month demolition project last autumn took special care to save the prominent stone from the exterior of the store’s main entrance, to allow it to be saved for Summerlee where it is now being kept.
Industrial history curator Justin Parkes told Lanarkshire Live: “One of the local councillors had raised this, asking if the stone could be kept, and the contractor was able to make sure it could be preserved and retrieved.
“They were able to extract it by breaking the stones round about it and did a really nice job; we were then able to go down to the demolition site and they loaded it for us to take away.
“We’ll get a conservator to look at it as the stone needs some care and attention as there’s a bit of abrasion from during the demolition, but it’s robust and we’re really pleased to have it.
“It’s really important to have objects like this – people remember congregating outside Orr’s and seeing it, and different generations all remember the store so it has really strong community interest.
“We’d love to be able to display it in future and will think about when and where best to do that, and possibly look at applying for external funding to do something with it as it has a lot of memories.
“It’s going into our online collection; our next website update is due very soon and it will allow people to see photographs and information about it and also to leave comments if they have information related to it.”
Airdrie’s family-run department store was founded by John Orr and his brother James in 1857, initially as a clothiers based at Stirling Street in the town centre.
Previous issues of Airdrie local history magazine The Raddle tell how the expansion of Orr’s saw the shop initially move to larger space at Bank Street and then by 1896, back to South Bridge Street where its owner acquired the original building, adjoining bakery, four flats above the shop and adjacent weavers’ cottages.
The familiar three-storey block and basement was then built on the site, subsequently being extended up, down and to the rear and featuring the prominent gable ends bearing the store’s name which were a landmark sight in the town centre until 2021.
Orr’s continued to be run by a further three generations of the family until finally shutting its doors in June 2007, just short of its 150th anniversary.
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