| Architect Details |
Sir Samuel Morton Peto, architect 1870; William Henderson & Son, architectural practice which executed designs by Peto 1870; Matthews & Mackenzie, architectural practice 1886.
Sir Samuel Morton Peto was born at Woking on 4 August 1809 of a Baptist family, and his architectural work was incidental to his main business as a contractor and as a civil engineer. In 1830, at the age of 21, he inherited from an uncle a half-share holding in the contracting firm of Grissel & Peto, to which he had been apprenticed as a builder. During the period of his partnership in the 1830s and 1840s, the firm was responsible for many major London contracts, including the Reform Club, Nelson's Column and the Houses of Parliament. In 1846 he entered into partnership with Edward Ladd Betts (1815-1892) to concentrate on large-scale harbour and railway contracts both in Britain and overseas - mainly in Canada, Denmark, Russia and Argentina. The London building operations of Grissell & Peto were then sold to Lucas Brothers. Peto then entered politics, being Liberal MP for Norwich 1847-54, for Finsbury 1859-65, and for Bristol 1865-68. He was made a baronet in 1855, but by 1861 Peto & Betts were in financial difficulties in overseas contracts. Peto was obliged to sell his Suffolk estate of Somerleyton, where he had rebuilt the house with the sculptor John Thomas as his architect in 1844-51. Peto & Betts were eventually forced to suspend payment in 1866. Peto did not seek re-election thereafter, spending his remaining years in complete retirement. He died 13 November 1889. The architect Harold Ainsworth Peto (1854-1933) of Sir Ernest George & Kelsall Peto refounded the family contracting firm as Peto Brothers, which traded between 1872 and 1892.
William Henderson, architect, wood merchant and valuer, was the elder brother of James Henderson and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. Their father died in 1826, obliging James to discontinue his studies. For a time James was William's assistant and briefly his partner. The partnership had been dissolved by the time of the Disruption in 1843, whereafter they shared the patronage of the newly-founded Free Church between them, William designing approximately one hundred churches and manses, not all of which have been identified. By 1853 his son William Low Henderson (born 1828 or 1829) had been taken into partnership, the practice becoming William Henderson & Son. Under this title, the firm carried out a large number of architisctural and building contracts from premises in Loch Street, Aberdeen. In later years the firm moved to Union Street, at which time the timber merchant's part of the business was discontinued and the practice more strictly confined to architectural and valuation work. From 1857 onwards the Hendersons were architects to the Union Bank in the north-east: the Union Bank had taken over the Aberdeen Bank in 1849 but that bank remained semi-autonomous within the Union Bank and retained a management in Aberdeen. The banks they built for the Union were nearly all in a very simple standard Georgian survival manner. About the time of the passing of the Education Act the firm were architects for a large number of schools in the north of Scotland, particularly in Orkney and Shetland. In the 1870's (and partly while Alexander Mavor was a partner is the business) the firm were architects for numerous buildings of a more public character, including the Morningfield Hospital, and Newhills Cottage Hospital. The firm were also architects for the Aberdeenshire County Council, and built a number of police-stations throughout the county. William Henderson Senior died on 12 August 1872. From some time before 1892 there was an Arthur C Bruce in the firm. William Low Henderson died in June 1899. The practice continued under the name of William Henderson & Son after his death. The partnership of Matthews & Mackenzie had its origin in that of Mackenzie & Matthews. Just before Thomas Mackenzie's death in October 1854 an Inverness office was established with William Lawrie in charge as resident assistant. For ten years both the Aberdeen and the Inverness practices continued under James Matthews' sole name, Lawrie finally becoming a partner in 1864. The practice title of Matthews & Lawrie tended to be used in the Inverness area only, work in and around Aberdeen being usually undertaken in Matthews' name only. By 1877 Alexander Marshall Mackenzie (born 1848), son of Thomas Mackenzie and a pupil in Matthews' Aberdeen office from 1863 to 1868, had amply demonstrated his capacity to gain clients through his own independent practice, which he had commenced in Elgin at the early age of twenty-two. Matthews re-admitted him as a partner, but in respect of Aberdeen and Elgin-based business only, Matthews's other partner William Lawrie retaining his semi-independent position in Inverness where the practice continued under the name of Matthews & Lawrie. From 1883 onward Mackenzie undertook virtually all of the design work of the Aberdeen office, Matthews being preoccupied with civic duties as provost, principally on Rosemount Viaduct and the Union Terrace improvements. The Inverness practice was taken over by John Hinton Gall in his own name only after Lawrie's death in 1887 and Matthews eventually retired completely in 1893 at the age of seventy-three, leaving Mackenzie as sole partner. Alexander Marshall Mackenzie was born in Elgin on 1 January 1848, the son of Thomas Mackenzie, architect and his wife Helen Margaret McInnes. His middle name derived from his mother, who was a granddaughter of William Marshall, the Duke of Gordon's factor and a celebrated composer of reels and strathspeys. His father died in October 1854 when he was six. Educated at Elgin Academy, he was articled to James Matthews' Aberdeen office from 1863 to 1868, and remained there as assistant for a year. His elder brother Hugh being already settled in Edinburgh he then found a place in the office of David Bryce, living at 10 Forres Street. During that period he studied drawing and painting with Robert Innes who had painted a portrait of his father in 1851, and exhibited a selection of his topographical views at the RSA in 1870. This was, perhaps, at least partly in preparation for a study tour of Italy and France undertaken in that year, after which he commenced practice in Elgin at the early age of twenty-two. By 1877, the year after Bryce's death, Marshall Mackenzie had amply demonstrated his capacity to gain clients, and Matthews was persuaded to re-admit him as a partner, but in respect of Aberdeen and Elgin-based business only, William Lawrie retaining his semi-independent position in Inverness where the practice continued under the name of Matthews & Lawrie. From 1883 onward Mackenzie undertook virtually all of the design work of the Aberdeen office, Matthews being preoccupied with civic duties as provost, principally on Rosemount Viaduct and the Union Terrace improvements. When William Lawrie died in 1887, his chief assistant John Hinton Gall took over the Inverness practice in his own name only. Matthews eventually retired completely in 1893 at the age of seventy-three, leaving Mackenzie as sole partner. Marshall Mackenzie's classical work varied greatly in quality, mainly because of cost factors, working in granite being expensive. According to Herbert Hardy Wigglesworth, then his apprentice, a second visit to Italy in or about 1883 inspired the Northern Assurance Building and the Gray's School of Art and Aberdeen Art Gallery buildings, the details of the former suggesting that he had looked as much at modern Italian architecture as at high Renaissance examples. In the latter he adopted a two colour treatment by introducing elements of pink Corrennie granite, apparently in deference to the use of sandstone and brick dressings in Simpson's Triple Kirk opposite, an experiment that was to extend to the neo-Georgian villas he built in the 1890s. Much of his classical work from the mid-1880s onward was in a rather flat pilastraded idiom that lent itself to machine cutting: only at the Parish Council and School Board offices, and at the Manx Bank did he have the budget to adopt a more three-dimensional treatment. Marshall Mackenzie's Gothic work was much more consistent in quality. From 1883 onwards beginning with Craigiebuckler, he paralleled Honeyman, Rowand Anderson and Blanc in the adaptation of mediaeval forms to a more liturgical form of Presbyterian worship. Both Craigiebuckler and Ruthrieston were English Gothic in detail, but thereafter he showed a marked preference for late Scots Gothic forms. This development stemmed from his restoration of Arbuthnott Church in 1889, but was also related to the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society, originally initiated by the Rev James Cooper of St Nicholas East Church, William Kelly, later of Smith & Kelly, and his brother-in-law Charles Carmichael on Kelly's return from London and a continental study tour in 1885. Mackenzie was one of their founder members and his first new-build church in the Scots Gothic idiom was Powis, Aberdeen, 1895, its details drawn from Greyfriars Church, then under threat from the Marischal College extension scheme and which - against his own wishes - he was to be obliged to demolish. Mackenzie was elected ARSA in 1893 although he had exhibited only once twenty-three years earlier, and admitted FRIBA on 30 November 1896 with the influential support of the London architects Alfred Waterhouse, Colonel Robert W Edis, and John McKean Brydon. These events were prompted by royal patronage, initially at the new church at Crathie in 1893 and again in 1895 when the Duke and Duchess of Fife (the Prince of Wales's daughter Princess Louise) commissioned the rebuilding of Mar Lodge. An honorary LLD followed in 1906, marking the final completion of the Marischal College extension scheme, formally opened by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra to mark the Quater Centenary celebrations. The completion of the Marischal College works brought the practice still greater national fame, but by then the practice had already opened a London office in 1903, a development directly related to Mackenzie's brother-in-law. Mackenzie had married Phoebe Ann Robertson Cooper, the only daughter of Alexander Cooper of the Elgin legal firm Cooper & Wink, and a granddaughter of General George Duncan Robertson, head of the Clan Robertson. Her brother George Alexander Cooper (1856-1940), later Sir George 1st Baronet, had become an American property magnate. He had also married an heiress, Mary Smith of Evanston, Illinois, the niece of 'Chicago' Smith, and became a major art collector, his dealer being Joseph Duveen. In 1901 the Coopers bought the lease of 26 Grosvenor Square, which made them neighbours to the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen at no 27: they had recently returned from Canada where Lord Aberdeen had been Governor General from 1893 to 1898. The London decorators Howard & Sons redecorated no 26 'under the aegis of Duveen Brothers' probably with some involvement by Duveen's architect Rene Sergent in Paris, the panelling for Duveen's tapestries being made by Anatole Beaumetz. While this work was in progress, Marshall Mackenzie's eldest son Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie - his middle names were those of his maternal grandfather- born 1879, was working with Sergent in Paris as an improver. Articled to his father in August 1894 at the age of fifteen, 'AGR' took classes at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology and the University of Aberdeen, and quickly developed extraordinary ability, becoming his father's chief assistant at the end of his apprenticeship in 1898. Nevertheless he felt he needed London experience, and early in 1900 he obtained a place in the office of one of his father's proposers, Colonel Edis, which enabled him to study at the Architectural Association and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Lethaby, Halsey Ricardo and Frampton. After his spell with Sergent in 1901 he obtained a place in the London office of Niven & Wigglesworth, Herbert Wigglesworth having been an apprentice of his father's, and passed the qualifying exam in June. He was admitted ARIBA on 17 September 1901, his proposers being his father, Wigglesworth, and his partner Niven. At that date he had travelled only in Normandy and in Holland, but soon thereafter he spent two months on a study tour in Italy before being recalled to his father's office in 1902 to assist with the Marischal College extension. The London office was set up initially to enlarge and remodel Hursley Park in Hampshire, which the Coopers had bought in 1902, the work being carried out in association with Duveen, who obtained the boiseries and the Beauvais tapestries. AGR was put in charge of the London office although the division was by no means clear-cut, his father being in London for a few days every fortnight while the son undertook a certain amount of the design work of the Aberdeen office. Partly from the Coopers' influence and partly from sheer ability, the London practice was successful, at once securing the £300,000 commission for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Aldwych, followed by a still more prestigious one for Canada House, also part of the Strand-Kingsway improvements which put him in the same league as J J Burnet. The Canada House project was deferred but another for Australia House, also in Aldwych, followed a few years later and was built. AGR was then elevated to FRIBA on 3 March 1913, his proposers being Leonard Stokes who had become a close friend and with whose son there was to be a future connection, and Niven and Wigglesworth. By that date Gilbert Marshall Mackenzie was also in the London office. Born in 1890 or 1891 and educated at Charterhouse rather than in Aberdeen, Gilbert was articled to the Aberdeen office in 1909 but left in the same year for the University of Cambridge, probably to read modern languages in preparation for study at the Atelier Gromort in Paris in 1911. He returned to the London office in 1912 without taking the Diplome du Gouvernement, recalled to assist his brother with Australia House, and passed the qualifying exam in the same year without completing any apprenticeship and little more than a year's practical experience in total. He was admitted ARIBA in the same year, his proposers being his father, his brother, and another professional friend of his brother's, Herbert Austen Hall. Shortly thereafter he was taken into partnership. The Mackenzies suffered severely in the First World War. The long-deferred Canada House project was cancelled, the Union Club and the Royal College of Physicians being eventually bought for the purpose and the commission given to Septimus Warwick. Gilbert was called up and commissioned in the First Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders in which he reached the rank of Captain. While serving in France he drew and painted life in the trenches. Subsequently he was sent to Mesopotamia where he was killed in action near Kut on 21 April 1916. AGR enlisted as a private in the London Scottish, in the hope that he could transfer to the Seaforths and be with his brother, but was severely wounded and lost most of a leg. He was invalided out and assisted his father with the completion of Australia House, where work had continued throughout the war years. Mackenzie's second son, who had become a solicitor and was a partner in Cooper & Wink and was too old for active service similarly volunteered, but because of his eyesight he had to be content with the Service Corps from which he survived unscathed. Alexander Marshall Mackenzie was elevated to the status of full academician in 1918, and the Aberdeen practice remained as prosperous as ever, but despite the continuing support of the Coopers, the London practice did not recover its pre-war success as Burnet's had done. Although still based in London, by the later 1920s AGR was spending much of his time on the work of the Aberdeen office, where Alexander Marshall was assisted by John Gibb Marr (born 1890), who had originally been articled to Clement George. Marr was taken into partnership on 1 January 1927. Niven and Wigglesworth's practice had also begun to run out of work following the completion of Hambro's Bank in London, and their partnership was dissolved in 1927, partly because Niven had developed other interests. Wigglesworth merged his half of the remaining practice with Mackenzie's. Further consolidation took place in Aberdeen in May 1931 when the Mackenzies merged the Aberdeen practice with that of the cinema and auction mart specialist, Clement George, born 1879 in Macduff, who had been in the office from 1897 to 1907, and had remained a family friend: his senior partner, George Sutherland had died in 1927. The practice now became A Marshall Mackenzie, Son & George. These arrangements were to prove brief. Clement George died on 23 February 1932, followed on 4 May 1933 by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie who had been at the drawing board until within a week of his death, latterly working mostly from Culter House, a great early eighteenth-century house with a fine formal garden to which he had moved from the very stylish houses AGR had designed for him at Ladyhill and Loch Coull in 1911. The practice title then reverted to A Marshall Mackenzie & Son. 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.
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