Greengairs is a village in North Lanarkshire, Scotland.[2]
Greengairs is shown on a map by Roy c.1754 under the name of Green Geirs.[3] In toponymy the name means "green strips of grass".[4]
Lying 3 miles (5 km) southeast of Cumbernauld and 3 miles (5 km) north east of Airdrie, the village consists mainly of local authority housing. Between them Greengairs and Wattston have about 1,190 residents.[5]
It developed in the nineteenth century due to increased coal mining and quarrying. Ironstone was first mined by the Summerlee Iron Company in the 1840s.[6] It was in the parish of New Monkland or East Monkland. It also historically had its own school; the teachers had a house but no salary.[7] The village was badly affected by the Stanrigg Mining Disaster[8] where, in July 1918, a collapse led to the deaths of 19 miners, 6 of whom came from Greengairs.[9]
Greengairs power station opened in 1996, and is powered by methane produced by biodegrading materials from a large landfill site developed since 1990 in former open cast workings situated to the south of the village.[10] Greengairs is the largest landfill site in Scotland, handling waste from Glasgow and Edinburgh.[11] Greengairs has 6000m of pipes with biogas fed by 90 gas wells.[12]
^Begg, James (1845). The new statistical account of Scotland (Vol 6 ed.). Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. pp. 246–247. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
