| Architect Details |
Ellis & Wilson, architects 1890.
Alexander Ellis (b. Aberdeen, 1830) was articled to John and William Smith 1846-51 and set up independent practice in 1857 at his mother's home at 19 Hadden Street, Aberdeen. In 1859 he took on his first apprentice, Robert Gordon Wilson, and moved into his nephew 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. 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. Perhaps because of his family's United Presbyterian connections, Wilson secured a place in the office of Alexander Thomson c. 1866, at the end of his apprenticeship with Ellis. However, he returned to Ellis's office in 1869, when he was taken into partnership. 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, and the remaining twenty years of his life were divided between his two houses and the Royal Asylum where he died 3 May 1917. Wilson continued the practice and in 1906 took into partnership his son, also Robert Gordon Wilson (who had served his apprenticeship there in 1893-8), and John Wilson Walker, the firm's name changing to Wilsons and Walker (see separate entry).
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Historic Environment Records (HER)