| Architect Details |
Alexander Ellis (and perhaps James Giles RA in partnership), architects 1863.
Alexander Ellis was born in Aberdeen, 8 May 1830, second but eldest surviving son of Captain William and Isabella Ellis. His father died at sea in 1838 and was buried at St Jaco, Cuba leaving a third child, Edith, who married Alexander Diack, collector and cashier for Old Machar poorhouse. Ellis was sent to Robert Gordon's College on May 1842 leaving in 1844 to attend Marischal College at the early age of 14. He left without graduating in 1846 and was articled to John and William Smith 1846-51. Thereafter, although he himself was an Episcopalian, he worked with Rt Rev James Kyle, Bishop of the Northern District, on the design of the ambitious twin towered St Peter's Church, Buckie, but whether he was working directly to the bishop, or with Alexander and William Reid who executed the church (see 'Inverness Courier' 9 January 1851) is unclear: He had completed his commitments there by January 1856 when he entered the Trustees' Academy on the recommendation of James Giles who was to be associated with him on several projects. He left in June of the same year and the commission for the Church of St Mary of the Assumption (later the Cathedral) in 1857 enabled him to set up independent practice at his mother's home at 19 Hadden Street. In 1859 he took on his first apprentice, Robert Gordon Wilson, and moved into his brother-in-law Alexander Diack's office at 4 Belmont Street, from which they moved to no 13 about 1869, the Ellises and the Diacks then sharing a large house at no 17. The Diack connection was to prove significant in relation to Parish Council work, bringing the large Buchan Combination Poorhouse at Maud won in competition in 1866. In 1860 Ellis sent in a design for the Aberdeen Town and County Bank Head Office which was the subject of a limited competition from which he had been excluded. It was returned unopened but he exhibited it at Hay and Lyall's where it attracted some attention. In 1862 he was appointed executant architect for St Mary's Carden Place, built by the Rev Frederick George Lee to his own designs. Lee was a leading member of the Architectural Society of Oxford and an amateur architect: whether he obtained help directly from George Edmund Street, architect to the Oxford Diocese, who certainly designed the Minton tiles, whether he adapted the competition designs for the Crimea Memorial Church and other polychrome continental Gothic designs of that period, or whether Ellis himself had a large hand in the detailing is unclear, but the commission certainly enlarged Ellis's architectural vocabulary. Financially it was a serious setback as Lee became insolvent and Ellis was unable to persuade the diocese and the vestry that they had a moral responsibility to settle the architect's and contractor's accounts. In 1869 Wilson was taken into partnership. Wilson had been born at New Pitsligo in 1844, the son of a local master builder John Wilson and Eliza Gordon. The Wilsons were a staunchly United Presbyterian family and it may have been church connections that enabled him to secure a place in the office of Alexander Thomson (c. 1866-69) at the end of his apprenticeship with Ellis. A modified Thomsonesque treatment thereafter became apparent in the firm's urban work. In 1876 the Belmont Street house became too small to accommodate the Ellis and Diack families and Ellis and Wilson developed 54-71 Springbank Terrace - Ellis took no 66; Wilson, who had married 23 December 1875, no 60; and the Diacks no 70. Ellis did not marry until 6 August 1878, his bride being Helen Anne Murray, daughter of Dr Murray, surgeon, Glenlivet, whose elder daughter Mathilda had married the Aberdeen builder John Morgan seven years earlier in June 1871. Morgan was a man of exceptionally wide artistic interests whom Ellis had known since at least 1863 when he and his uncle Adam Mitchell were contractors for Corse House. It was probably following his marriage that Ellis built for their own occupation The Firs at Torphins, a large weekend house. Like Morgan's own bungalow, Woodcote, The Firs was largely timber framed on a brick plinth and influenced by what Morgan had seen on his visit to Toronto and Montreal. In the mid-1880s the practice moved to the newly built Victoria Buildings on Bridge Street. Ellis had to retire in 1896 suffering from insomnia, melancholia and indigestion. He made a voyage to Australia in the spring of 1897 in the hope of a cure, but although 'much improved' he was admitted to the Royal Asylum as a voluntary patient on his return. At some unspecified time during that period of his life he was described as 'small and slim in stature'. Although he recovered sufficiently to design a house on his own account at the corner of Rubislaw Den and Glenburnie Road in 1898, the remaining twenty years of his life were divided between his two houses and the Royal Asylum where he died 3 May 1917 leaving these houses and moveable estate of £9,110.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)