Airdrie (Gael. airde-reidh, 'smooth height'), a parliamentary and municipal burgh in New Monkland parish, NE Lanarkshire, 2 miles E by N of Coatbridge, 11 E of Glasgow, and 32 W by S of Edinburgh. It stands on the great highroad between the two cities, with which it also communicates by the North British railway, having one station (South Side) on the main Bathgate line, and another (Commonhead or North Airdrie) on the Slamannan branch, 16 miles WSW of Manuel Junction. With Glasgow it is further connected by the Monkland Canal, extending to Calder ironworks, 1½ mile to the SSW. Lying between two rivulets, on the side of a hill with a south-westward slope from Rawyards (624 feet above sea-level) to Coatdike (361 feet), Airdrie consists of a principal street running 1 mile E and W along the highroad, with minor parallel or divergent streets: and though well paved and lighted, airy, and regularly built, it wears a straggling and somewhat unlovely aspect. Chalmers identified its site with Ardderyd, the battlefield of Rhydderch and Gwendolew (573): but Ardderyd or Arthuret is far away in Cumberland (Skene, Celt. Scot., i. 157), and the first that we hear of Airdrie is its erection into a market-town by Act of Parliament in 1695, with the privilege of holding a weekly market and two yearly fairs. Down even to the close of last century it was merely a large village, and its rapid expansion during the next five decades was due to the opening up of the rich beds of coal and ironstone around it, to facilities of communication with the markets and outlets of the West, and to its share in the weaving orders of Glasgow manufacturers. It was made a burgh of barony in 1821, one of the five Falkirk parliamentary burghs in 1832, and a municipal burgh in 1849: prior to 1871 it partly adopted the General Police and Improvement Act. Governed by a provost, 3 bailies, and 12 councillors, with treasurer, town-clerk, and procurator-fiscal, Airdrie unites with Fa

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