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Ancient History
As proof that New Saint Even's Town was originally a religious and worshipful centre, the great variety of religious beliefs and sects that currently remain are testament to the heritage established nearly 2000 years ago.
Wrangholm Kirk currently caters for adherents to the Church of Scotland while just around the corner is situated the St John Bosco R C Church. There are also two prayer halls in the town, an Orange Hall and a Masonic Lodge.
Tragically, other landmarks have gone the same way as Wrangholm Hall, razed to the ground in the interests of progress, merely adding to the fact that little is left to show the origins of the town and Saint Even's life work.
But there are still clues to the town's illustrious past in the street names from the oldest parts of the town. For instance, Kings Drive leads to St Patrick's cemetary where Queen's Crescent provided additional room for regal corteges and carriages in the days when Kings and Queens sought blessings from the monasters in the Monastery. Sadly, many of the original headstones and grave monuments have disappeared from the cemetery due to the fact that turnover was high and many local folks were simply dying to get into the place so more room had to be created.
Indeed, New Saint Even's Town was the setting for many coronations in those early days when kings were celebrated and revered at the standing stone circle in New-art-hill. From there the procession wound down the hill to the quiet cloisters of Saint Even's Monastery where each coronation was blessed.
( Pic shows the original quiet cloisters )
Don't be misled by claims that Macalpin was the first King of Scotland. That claim is true up to a point, he was the first king of a 'united' Scotland. Prior to that the various estates of Scotland had their own clan chiefs, regional rulers and kingdoms, for instance the Kingdom of Fife has a longer established royal bloodline than many other parts of the country including the Windsor family who originally fled Germanland for Englandshire.
And so it was in North Lanarkshire, where the early kings and queens ruled more modest estates and landscapes.
Later, Clydesdale Street reflected the fact that this main thoroughfare was used by heavy horses and carts carrying grain to the distilleries, and raw materials to the iron works from where ingots of iron were shipped out afterwards to Glasgow.
The Clydesdale horses later gave way to the age of the 'iron horse' itself for in 1869, the Caledonian Railway completed its line from Glasgow to Edinburgh through New Saint Even's Town, but in a strange quirk of fate, the station, although wholly within the town boundary, was named after the nearby village of Holytown. The train was needed to cope with the growing numbers of pilgrims seeking to visit New Saint Even's Town and bathe in its history and also to visit the increasingly popular Carfin Grotto which opened to the public in 1922 after years of private devotion by visiting clerics from all faiths.
This increasing pilgrimage traffic brought with it many advantages for enriching its citizens, but it also had the additional side effect of attracting people from the cities seeking to make a quick shilling selling fake artefacts and relics. These 'traders' were carving out animal bones and passing them off as actual bones from Saint Even himself.
For those original inhabitants of the hamlet, it was the beginning of the end. This once thriving ecclesiastical centre became little more than an opportunistic trading centre for the unscrupulous seeking to fleece the gullible.
As New Saint Even's Town's religious heritage began to be swamped by the selling of 'tartan tat' so the town's attraction as a pilgrimage centre began to wane, and now it is just another place name on the map, albeit, wrongly named New Stevenston.
No-one knows what exactly happened to Saint Even or where he was buried, and very few seem to care, but he left his mark on history and the creation of a great nation while paving the way for Saint Ninian and Saint Columba to claim the glory.