Holmwood House

 

Holmwood House is the finest and most elaborate residential villa designed by the Scottish architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson. It is also rare in retaining much of its original interior decor, and being open to the public. A Category A listed building, the villa is located at 61–63 Netherlee Road, Cathcart, in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, and is owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

 

Holmwood is considered to be immensely influential by several architectural historians, because the design as published in Villa and Cottage Architecture: select examples of country and suburban residence recently erected in 1868 may have influenced Frank Lloyd Wright and other proto-modernist architects.

 

History

Holmwood was constructed for James Couper, a paper manufacturer in 1857–1858. Couper and his brother Robert owned the Millholm paper mill in the valley of the White Water of Cart immediately below the villa. The principal rooms of Holmwood were orientated towards the view of Cathcart Castle (demolished in 1980). The cost of the house was £2,608:4:11d; the coach house, greenhouse & outbuildings cost a further £1,009:19:6d; and the gates an additional £75:2:0d

 

The polychromatic decoration was designed by Thomson and executed by Campbell Tait Bowie. The most notable survival is in the dining room which has a frieze of panels enlarged from John Flaxman's illustrations of Homer's Iliad. The sculpture on the hall chimneypiece was by George Mossman.

 

Holmwood was altered in the 1920s by the owner, James Gray. After World War II it was purchased by a local vet, James McElhone and his family, wife Betty and children: Rosemary, James, Helen and Paul.

 

In 1931, Thomas Redden Patterson purchased the house and settled there with his wife, Margaret Malcolm Dumbreck Forrester. Together, they established Forresters (Outfitters) Ltd a prominent Glasgow-based firm—founded in 1955 to continue the legacy of Margaret’s earlier business, Margaret Forrester, Drapers, which had operated on London Road. The company remained a respected name in local retail until its acquisition by House of Fraser Ltd in 1984.

 

Beyond their entrepreneurial ventures, the Pattersons also owned a yacht moored in Greenock, which notably took part in the Dunkirk evacuation. Thomas Patterson’s contributions to public life in Glasgow were formally recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of 1954 (CBE).

 

Holmwood was eventually sold to the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions who obliterated much of the original decoration with plain paint. The gardener's cottage was demolished in the 1970s; the grounds and those of an adjacent villa were used for a Catholic primary school.

 

The nuns put the property on the market in the early 1990s, and there was a danger that the grounds would be developed for housing, destroying the setting of the villa. Following an appeal, Holmwood was acquired by the National Trust for Scotland in 1994 with the support of £1.5million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.[3] It was restored by Page\Park Architects in 1997–1998. Their work included undoing the 1920s alterations and rebuilding the connecting screen wall to the coach house. Patrick Baty carried out the paint analysis.