| Architect Details |
James Matthews, architect 1858; James Matthews and John Bridgeford Pirie (as leading draftsman to Matthews), architects 1872; George Bennett Mitchell, architect 1906.
James Matthews was born in December 1819, son of Peter Matthews, a teller in the Commercial Bank in Aberdeen and a Burgess of Guild, and was christened on 12 or 13 December that year. His mother was Margaret Ross, daughter of William Ross, the architect-builder who had built Union Bridge. Educated at Robert Gordon's Hospital, he was articled to Archibald Simpson in 1834, and worked under the supervision of Simpson's assistant Thomas Mackenzie (born 1814). In 1839 he went to George Gilbert Scott's in London. On his return early in 1844, Simpson offered him the post of chief assistant with the promise of partnership in two years. He declined as he thought Simpson would be 'too greedy' (the Mackenzies, however, found Matthews 'a bit of a Jew'). Matthews then formed his partnership with Thomas Mackenzie, initially with Mackenzie doing most of the designing in Elgin, and Matthews attending to the management of the Aberdeen office. In that year they won the competition for the Free Church College (New College) in Edinburgh, in a competition assessed by Sir Charles Barry. The perspective, formerly at Bourtie, is now in the possession of Professor Alistair Rowan. The competition was set aside, however, and the commission given to William Henry Playfair. Initially the Elgin practice was much more prosperous than the Aberdeen one and in 1848 Matthews applied unsuccessfully for the post of head of the Edinburgh office of the Office of Works. Mackenzie died of brain fever - apparently brought on by an accident - on 15 October 1854, Matthews continuing the practice thereafter under his name alone, though he did form a brief partnership with George Petrie of Elgin in c.1857. Petrie presumably filled the role of Mackenzie manning the Elgin end of the practice. Just before Mackenzie's death an Inverness office had been established with William Lawrie in charge as resident assistant. Although not made a partner until 1864, Lawrie was given what seems to have been a free hand in the design work and for some years the Inverness office was the more prosperous. Matthews continued the Aberdeen office alone, and it was not until 1877 that Mackenzie's son, Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, was taken into partnership, having established a successful practice of his own in his native Elgin. Thereafter Matthews ran the practice as two separate partnerships - Matthews & Mackenzie in Aberdeen and Elgin, and Matthews & Lawrie in Inverness. When Lawrie died in 1887, the Inverness practice was inherited by John Hinton Gall (born 1848), who had been his chief assistant since 1872 and who continued the business under his own name, Matthews withdrawing completely from that branch of the firm. Matthews entered the Town Council in 1863, and retired as a councillor in 1871. In November 1883 he was recalled as Lord Provost and held office until November 1886. He was mainly responsible for implementing the City Improvement Act of 1883 which included building Schoolhill and Rosemount Viaduct and giving improved access to the latter area of the city. He was a director of the North of Scotland Bank, of which he was Chairman from time to time. His public services (in particular the Mitchell Tower and Graduation Hall) brought an Honorary LLD from the University of Aberdeen. In his later years Matthews lived in some grandeur at Springhill, which he had greatly altered for himself. Matthews retired from the practice in 1893 at the age of seventy-three, and died at 15 Albyn Terrace on 28 June 1898. He was buried in St Nicholas churchyard, where his monument records the earlier deaths of his daughter Margaret Rose Matthews on 18 May 1868, his son James Duncan Matthews on 21 November 1890 and his wife Elizabeth Duncan on 21 March 1895.
John Bridgeford Pirie was born in Aberdeen in 1848 (christened 26 December, St Nicholas Parish) the son of John Pirie, a sea captain with George Thomson's line, and his wife Ann Bridgeford. Both his parents died early (his mother in February 1868 his father having predeceased her). He was educated at Ledingham's Academy in Aberdeen. About 1863 he was articled to Alexander Ellis, also the son of a sea captain. There he worked under Robert Gordon Wilson and it was probably through Wilson's subsequent period as an assistant with Alexander Thomson from c.1866 that Pirie was to develop an interest in Thomson's work. At the end of his articles c.1866, Pirie spent a short time as an improver with David Bryce in Edinburgh, returning to Aberdeen as leading draughtsman to James Matthews c.1867. He exhibited a design for a screen at the RSA in 1870 and by March 1871 he was living at 6 Brown Street, Woodside, from which he exhibited at the RSA in 1871-73. After ten years with Matthews whom he left on 11 September 1877, Pirie went into independent practice at 177 Union Street Aberdeen with the encouragement of the builder John Morgan who was seven years older. He was immediately successful, winning in 1878-79 the competitions for two major churches, one in Fraserburgh and one in Aberdeen, both in a very original, predominantly early French, idiom. Both Morgan and Pirie were founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and enthusiasts for the teaching of John Ruskin with whom Morgan corresponded. Morgan and Pirie travelled together in Britain to see the latest developments, and Morgan's travels in America and the Far East were to have a considerable influence on the decorative arts aspect of the practice through the books and prints he brought home. Pirie may also have had a link of some kind with Frederick Thomas Pilkington as W T Johnston has traced Pirie using his office at 2 Hill Street, Edinburgh as an address in 1882. When Pirie opened his office at 177 Union Street he shared it with Arthur Clyne, a former colleague at Matthews's practice. In 1881 they merged their practices as Pirie & Clyne and moved to 123 ½ Union Street which was to remain their address. Pirie & Clyne were amongst the most individual architects in Scotland in later Victorian times, designing in Thomsonesque Greek and early Gothic, and sometimes even in combinations of these; except at John Morgan's 50 Queen's Road which challenges comparison with Burges's Tower House in originality, Greek was more usually adopted for domestic work. Their churches are invariably early Gothic: they are more conventionally planned than Pilkington's and may not have the same mastery of scale, composition and construction but they are even more individual and inventive in the smaller details, developing unusual motifs which are at times proto-Art Nouveau from a very wide range of sources. Pirie died of tuberculosis on 24 February 1892 at his house at 24 Hamilton Place. During his last months he occupied himself with the design of the monument to James Saint which relieved 'many a weary hour of illness' and the writing of a paper 'The Beauty of Art', based on a close study of the writings of Ruskin but it was never given. He left a widow Mary Troup MacDougall (who died on 27 May 1936) and five children, one son and four daughters, but no moveable estate, John Morgan observing: 'He died early in years, yet he left abiding monuments of his taste, skill, and genius, and it gives some idea of his genius when one finds some of his details all over town. No company would insure his life, he died poor, and left a young family unprovided for.' Morgan was involved in raising money for them (he gave Bridgeford a quarterly allowance of £4). As late as 1929 money owed to various creditors still appears to have been outstanding. There may have been some difficulty with Clyne as Pirie's widow withdrew her husband's drawings from the practice archive and stored them in the attic of their house in Hamilton Place. After Pirie died Clyne had made up the accounts of the practice and calculated that £11 15s 11d was due to himself, but this does not seem to have been paid. In 1910 this sum was still outstanding and a letter to Clyne's solicitor from Mrs Pirie indicates that one of her daughters, Annie Mary, had been 'threatened' because of this non-payment. The more important drawings from the practice were retained by the family when the Hamilton Place house was closed and are now in the NMRS. Pirie's son Bridgeford MacDougall Pirie, born 1877, became an architect but practised only briefly in Aberdeen in 1897-99. He emigrated in 1905 to Malta where he worked for the Royal Engineers.
George Bennett Mitchell was born on 27 November 1865 and educated in Aberdeen and Newburgh. He was articled to Pirie & Clyne in 1881 (though he perhaps joined the practice somewhat sooner as an office boy, since John Bridgeford Pirie records that on 9 October 1878 'Mitchell began duty') and joined the practice of Jenkins & Marr as assistant on completing his apprenticeship. He remained with them until 1887 when he was appointed architect in the surveyors' department of Davidson & Garden, advocates (i.e. solicitors), Aberdeen. While there he carried out a great deal of work on the Dunecht estate for A C Pirie, both at the house and in the village, and was allowed to undertake a few small private commissions in his own name. During these early years he made several visits to France and Italy. On leaving Davidson & Garden, Mitchell opened his own practice at 148 Union Street; the exact date for this is uncertain as Mitchell himself gives dates varying from 1898 to 1 January 1903 and 1 January 1904 in different documents. His business mainly consisted of country house work and villas and cottages for the estates with which he had become acquainted through his work with Davidson & Garden. In 1913 Mitchell's son George Angus Mitchell (born on his father's thirty-first birthday and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School) entered the practice as an apprentice, and was one of the first two students to enrol at Aberdeen School of Architecture when it opened in 1913. His training was interrupted by war service in 1915, but he returned to his father's office on his demobilisation in 1919, completing his diploma course the following year. He practised in association with his father from 1921. The practice moved from 148 Union Street to 1 West Craibstone Street in 1922 and George Angus became a partner in 1929, the firm name becoming George Bennett Mitchell & Son. George Angus Mitchell was elected FRIBA in late 1930, his proposers being Clement George, James Brown Nicol and George Watt. This may have prompted his father to seek RIBA membership, as he applied for Licentiateship immediately and was admitted at the beginning of 1931, his proposers being George, Nicol and William Liddle Duncan; and in May of the same year he too became a Fellow, with the support of the RIBA Council as a whole. By this time George Bennett had been awarded an MBE; he was also a Justice of the Peace, and had acted as District Civil Commissioner at the time of the General Strike in 1926. George Bennett Mitchell's main interest outside the office was the Boy's Brigade, of which he became Commander and President of the Aberdeen Battalion in 1906. His concerns for social welfare were further manifested in his work as Red Cross Transport Officer in Aberdeen during the First World War. He was also a devoted churchman, being a lifelong member of the West Church of St Andrew, of which he was an elder for over forty years. From at least 1914 Mitchell had a country residence at Cean-na-coil, Aboyne, one of the several houses he designed there, as well as his Aberdeen house at 4 Deemount Terrace and later at 18 Rubislaw Terrace. Mitchell was taken ill in October 1940 whilst working as Divisional Food Officer for the North-East of Scotland, a position he had taken on in 1938 when hostilities were imminent. He underwent an operation involving the amputation of a leg, and resigned from the Food Office shortly afterwards. He died at his home on 22 March 1941. He was survived by his son, who continued the practice, and his daughter Meta, who like him took a leading part in youth welfare work in the area. His wife had predeceased him some years earlier.
|
Historic Environment Records (HER)