Larkhall, a Lanarkshire town and quoad sacra parish, chiefly in Dalserf parish, but partly in Hamilton- Standing 320 feet above sea-level, ¼ mile from the right bank of the Avon, 1½ from the left bank of the Clyde, and 3½ miles SSE of Hamilton, the town has a station on the Lesmahagow branch of the Caledonian railway, 6¼ miles S by E of Holytown. With slight exception it began to be built about 1776, and for 15 or 20 years continued to be only a small village. It then was rapidly extended, chiefly by means of building societies, but is less a town, in the ordinary sense of the word, than an assemblage of villages, hamlets, rows of houses, and isolated dwellings. Its inhabitants are principally miners connected with neighbouring collieries, bleachers, and handloom weavers in the employment of Glasgow manufacturers; and Larkhall has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, a branch of the Union Bank, gasworks, a quoad sacra parish church (1835; 700 sittings), a Free church, a U.P. church (1836; 700 sittings), an Evangelical Union chapel (1876; 420 sittings), St Mary's Roman Catholic church (1872), a subscription library, a masonic lodge, etc. The quoad sacra parish is in the presbytery of Hamilton and synod of Glasgow and Ayr; its minister's stipend is £200. Four public schools-Academy, Duke Street, Glengowan, and Muir Street -and a Roman Catholic school, with respective accommodation for 272, 81, 350, 350, and 212 children, had (1881) an average attendance of 284, 81, 422, 501, and 179, and grants of £281, 8s., £50, 11s. 6d., £351, 18s. 6d., £456, 13s., and £147, 10s. Pop. of town (1861) 2685, (1871) 4971, (1881) 6503, of whom 96 were in Hamilton; of q. s. parish (1871) 5332, (1881) 7063, of whom 360 were in Hamilton.—Ord. Sur., sh. 23, 1865.

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)