For a generation and half Ravenscraig became synonymous with steel-making in Scotland but, firstly, it was built on green-field land surrounded by a circle of established towns and villages from Motherwell to the west, Cleland, Bellside and Newmains east, Bellshill and Holytown north and Wishaw to the south. Moreover, work on it was only started in 1954. It was post-Second War, before which smaller plants, mainly in Motherwell but also Wishaw, and the mines that fed them had already for the best part of  seventy-five years been the local mainstays. And both had meant demands for labour. People poured in from 1850 onwards. Then Motherwell itself had a population of perhaps 2,000. By 1880 that was near 14,000 and now it is 32,000 having reached a peak of 37,000 a century ago. And the population growth rate was not dissimilar in Bellshill, albeit there with mining at its core and from half the base, whilst in Wishaw and Newmains from a starting-point in 1850 twice that of its immediate neighbour to the north and on a combination of the two industries it is today 30,000, making the Ravenscraig Ring about 100,000 in total.