Falkirk from the south around 1830

The election of a Municipal Council in the 1830s following the great Reform Act failed to bring improvement because the magistrates and councilors had no power to raise the money needed to improve sanitation, repair the streets, provide lighting and adequate water supplies, or maintain the peace.  After an acrimonious dispute a Bill passed through Parliament in 1859 - the Falkirk Police and Improvement Act -  which went a long way to changing this situation.  The Stentmasters disappeared leaving only their debts and the Feuars survived but their influenced waned.  They were wound up in the 1890s.

By this time, with the iron industry continuing to expand, the villages of Camelon, Grahamston and Bainsford had grown into suburbs of the town; by 1900 they had all been incorporated into the burgh which had a population of close on 33,000, four times what it had been in the 1840s. 

 

The Town Hall (1879)                                The Sheriff Court (1868)

The huge revenues from the new industries as well as from the still fertile carse lands, helped reshape the town with a host of fine new buildings - churches and banks as well as handsome municipal premises. There were many shops of all kinds and the town became the major market centre serving a bugeoning population for many miles around the town. 

In the 20^th century the steady decline in demand for iron goods saw a series of amalgamations and eventual closure of foundries all over the town and beyond.   Even the two giants Carron Company and Falkirk Iron Works closed in the early 1980s.  Housing Acts in the 1920s and 30s brought the removal of many of the worst slum houses and after the second World War there was a major programme of council house building away from the town centre an green field areas throughout the district.  In the town itself buildings like the Garrison and Glasgow buildings disappeared under car parks and the old Howgate vanished in the new shopping complex. 

The Howgate in the 1950s
 
Despite the setbacks there has been a good deal of investment and much optimism about the future with commercial and business parks restoring Falkirk's reputation as a shopping centre and attracting small businesses in the modern technology and service sectors.

Ian Scott 2005