Greek Thomson ~ Glasgow's MasterBuilder ~ Part 1

 

Greek Thomson ~ Glasgow's MasterBuilder ~ Part 2

Greek Thomson ~ Glasgow's MasterBuilder ~ Part 3

 

Greek Thomson ~ Glasgow's MasterBuilder ~ Part 4

 

Alexander 'Greek' Thomson

 

Alexander Thomson began work in 1834, as a clerk in a lawyers office in Glasgow. One of their clients was an architect, Robert Foote, who was impressed by seeing Thomson's drawings and took him on as an articled apprentice. He learnt a great deal from getting access to Foote's extensive library and collection of classical casts, but in 1836 Foote had to retire due to illness. To complete his articles, Thomson became apprenticed to the architect John Baird, initially as an assistant, and later became chief draughtsman. Thomson's younger brother George got apprenticed to Baird in the early 1840s.

 

In September 1847 Thomson married Jane Nicholson, and on the same day her sister married another architect, John Baird (unrelated to Thomson's employer, and referred to by biographers as John Baird II), who fell out with his previous partner. In 1848 Thomson joined him in a new partnership, the practice of Baird & Thomson.

 

In 1857, as "the rising architectural star of Glasgow," he entered into practice with his brother George where he was to enjoy the most productive years of his life. He served as president of both the Glasgow Architectural Society and the Glasgow Institute of Architects. Thomson was an elder of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and his deep religious convictions informed his work. There is a strong suggestion that he closely identified Solomon's Temple with the raised basilica of the same form of his three major churches.

 

He produced a diverse range of structures including villas, a castle, urbane terraces, commercial warehouses, tenements, and three extraordinary churches. Of these, Caledonia Road Church (1856–57) is now a ruin, Queen's Park United Presbyterian Church (1869) was destroyed in WWII, and St Vincent Street Church (1859) is the only intact survivor. Hitchcock once stated, "[Thomson has built] three of the finest Romantic Classical churches in the world”.Thomson developed his own highly idiosyncratic style from Greek, Egyptian and Levantine sources and freely adapted them to the needs of the modern city.

 

At the age of 34, Thomson designed his first and only castle, Craigrownie Castle, which stands at the tip of the Rosneath Peninsula in Cove, overlooking Loch Long. The six-storey structure is Scots Baronial in style, featuring a central tower with battlements, steep gables and oriel windows, in addition to a chapel and a mews cottage.

 

Thomson's villa designs were realized at Langside, Pollokshields, Helensburgh, Cove, the Clyde Estuary, and on the Isle of Bute. His "mature villas are Grecian in style while resembling no other Greek Revival houses,...[and they] are dominated by horizontal lines and rest on a strong podium." According to Gavin Stamp, "Thomson carefully designed his villas with symmetries within an overall asymmetry in a personal language in which the horizontal discipline of a continuous governing order—whether expressed or implied—was never abandoned.[Regarding similarities to Frank Lloyd Wright, Stamp states, "It has often been remarked that there are clear resemblances between the early houses of the Prairie School and Thomson's horizontally massed design, with its low-pitched gables and spreading eaves -- together with a connecting garden." As Sir John Summerson noted, "There is something wildly 'American' about Thomson -- a 'New World' attitude. You can see it in the villas...a sort of primitivism, ultra-Tuscan."

 

Later in his career he would abandon his eclecticism and adopt the purely Ionic Greek style for which he is best known, as such he is perhaps the last in a continuous tradition of British Greek Revival architects. In attacking the Gothic, he "insisted that 'Stonehenge is really more scientifically constructed than York Minster'...[alluding to] Pugin's comment that in their temples 'the Greeks erected their columns like the uprights of Stonehenge'."[12] Other important works still standing include Moray Place, Great Western Terrace, Egyptian Halls in Union Street, Grosvenor Building, Buck's Head Building in Argyle Street, Grecian Buildings in Sauchiehall Street, Walmer and Millbrae Crescents, and his villa, Holmwood House, at Cathcart.

 

Thomson was a visionary who introduced into our vocabulary some of the essential elements of sustainable housing. This argument hinges on an unrealized design Thomson prepared in 1868 for the Glasgow City Improvement Trust, an agency of the Town Council given the task of redeveloping a large area of slum housing centred on the medieval Old Town. The Trust invited Thomson and five other prominent architects to propose designs for the reconstruction of various parcels of land along the spine of Glasgow's High Street. Thomson suggested that closely spaced parallel tenements be built within the central courtyard, the ends of which will be open to facilitate ventilation. He also proposed that alternate streets be glazed for better warmth and safety for the residents. Although Thomson's ideas failed to catch on at the time, new research and CAD techniques have helped show how revolutionary was his proposal for improved workers' housing.

Glasgow's famous Holmwood House gets a revamp - STV News report

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.