| Architect Details |
George Truefitt, architect 1869; Fryers & Penman, architectural practice 1906; A Marshall Mackenzie & Son and John Gibb Marr and Isobel Margaret Gordon (or Isobel Adams), architects mid-1930s; Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith 1975.
George Truefitt was born in 1824 and articled to Lewis Nockalls Cottingham c.1839-44. He was subsequently an assistant with Sancton Wood in London and Hervey Eginton in Worcester before commencing practice on his own account c.1850 as a distinctly eccentric designer. About this time he went with his friend Calvert Vaux on a walking holiday in France and Germany and returned with 400-500 sketches. He published 'Designs for Country Churches' in 1850 and was admitted FRIBA in 1860. The prosperity of his practice was largely dependent on his surveyorship of the Tufnell Park estate in London and on the patronage of the banker Sir William Cunliffe-Brooks in Manchester and on the Glentaner and Aboyne estates in Scotland which he bought in 1869 an 1888 respectively. Some of the later work was carried out in collaboration with the landscape gardener T H Mawson. In 1890 GeorgeTruefitt retired to Shelsey Lodge, Worthing, Sussex where he died on 11 August 1902. Truefitt was twice married, firstly on 23 September 1852 to Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles Haywood, of Broughton Fields Worcester by whom he had two sons George Haywood and Lewis Haywood and one daughter Mary Louisa. Following her death on 16 September 1896 he married secondly Constance (1870 - ) on 16th December 1896 by whom he had one daughter, Connie Georgie Truefitt.
Arthur John Fryers was born at Falkland, Fife on 30 October 1874, the son of Arthur John Fryers and his wife Elizabeth Rose. He was articled to William Forsyth McGibbon, attending classes at Glasgow School of Art where he won bronze medals in Measured Drawing; Building Construction; Graphic Statics; and Quantity Surveying. He commenced independent practice in Largs in 1894 and was a somewhat coarse designer. In his later years he lived in considerable style at Warren Park, Largs, a large Old English house built in 1891 for O E Philips when Fryers was seventeen. He exhibited this house as his own work at the RGI in 1893 but it is probable that McGibbon had a hand in it as Fryers did not commence independent practice until the following year. In 1898 he went into partnership with his brother-in-law Larmont Douglas Penman. Penman was eight years older, born on 9 September 1868 at 10 Robertson Street, Glasgow, the son of John Sandilands Penman, wine and spirit merchant, hotel keeper, restaurateur and cab proprietor and his wife Mary Struthers (maiden name Steven). He had been articled to Thomas Lennox Watson from June 1884 until 1889, remaining as assistant for a year after completing his apprenticeship and studying at Glasgow School of Art. In 1890 he had moved to Edinburgh as an assistant to George Washington Browne, attending classes at Heriot-Watt College, but late in the same year he had transferred to the office of Charles Davidson of Paisley. In 1892 he had moved briefly to Robert Thomson's office in Glasgow before finding a place in that of Hippolyte Jean Blanc in Edinburgh, and the following year he had moved again to that of Joseph Hall Morton in South Shields. On 26 March 1894 at the Clark Town Hall, Paisley he had married Amy Fryers, sister of Arthur John. After the formation of the partnership of Fryers & Penman, the quality of design in the Fryers practice notably improved. The practice began with suburban villas mainly for the Glasgow builder George Hamilton, but by 1905 had secured the patronage of the Coats family. At that date the practice was capable of work of the extremely high quality required by its clientele. In the years around 1910 Fryers & Penman shared a branch office and assistants with Charles Clegg & Son at 21 Spring Gardens, Manchester, and worked in collaboration with the latter firm. Penman was admitted LRIBA on 22 April 1912, proposed by John Bennie Wilson and the Glasgow Institute of Architects, at which date he was living at Dunallan, West Kilbride with an office at 22 Bath Street in Largs. By 1914 the practice had moved to Clydeview in the same town. Amy Penman died on 3 February 1908. Penman subsequently married Helen Jane Gauld. He died at Nithsdale, Bowfield Road, West Kilbride on 31 October 1931, leaving moveable estate of £5,863 3s 5d. Fryers lived on at Warren Park until 9 August 1954. He left £18,37 19s 2d.
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 Matthew's 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 Forrest 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, Marshall Mackenzie had amply demonstrated his capacity to gain clients, and Marshall was persuaded to re-admit him as a partner, but in respect of Aberdeen and Elgin-based business only, Lawrie retaining his semi-independent position in Inverness where the practice continued under the name of Matthews and Lawrie. From 1883 onward Mackenzie undertook virtually all of the design work of the Aberdeen office, Matthews being pre-occupied 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 practice in his own name only and 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 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 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 (born 1879) - his middle names were those of his maternal grandfather - 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 very 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 the Mackenzies in the same league as J J Burnet. The 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 practice title becoming briefly A Marchall Mackenzie & Sons. 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 his father 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 then reverted to its former title of A Marshall Mackenzie & Son. As a result of these deaths AGR determined to strengthen the Aberdeen office, where Marr had had little opportunity for design and still less for the modern design required to keep the practice in business. Leonard Stokes's son David, who had left the Architectural Association in 1930 and set up practice with Peter Fleetwood Hesketh in 1930, had run out of work. His office in Lincoln's Inn was nearby Mackenzie and Wigglesworth's, and shortly after his father's death AGR asked Stokes to take charge of the design work of the Aberdeen office. It was an arrangement on which Marr had not been consulted and with which he may not have been entirely happy: much later he observed that he felt Stokes had been sent up to keep an eye on him. Introducing a London Catholic to Aberdeen society of that time was not without problems, but Stokes found that 'the natives in Aberdeen became friendly in about six months'. Although the Aberdeen office was commissioned to build a large new office for the Halifax Building Society, by 1935 the Mackenzie & Wigglesworth practice in London was at a low ebb: Robert W R Mackenzie (1913-75) of the Perth bleaching (Lumsden & Mackenzie) side of the family was to have joined the office, but in the event there was not enough work to justify him coming. The Wigglesworth and Stokes partnerships were dissolved, AGR returned to Aberdeen and the Stokes 'went back to London without any reluctance.' Culter had been sold but AGR and his wife bought a smaller and completely unspoiled mid-eighteenth-century country house at Bourtie, near Inverurie. It was carefully repaired but not modernised and to the very end of her life Mrs Mackenzie cooked on an open fire. Apart from some country house work, most importantly Candacraig, the business of the post-war practice was mainly conservation work, the National Trust for Scotland being the main client. In 1952 Ian G Lindsay, as Chief Investigator, asked AGR to become a part-time investigator of historic buildings with responsibility for Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Kincardine, some of the survey work being delegated to a Huntly-born architect he had known in London, Robert J Troup, who, like many other architects at the time, was in need of financial help. Of all the part-time investigators, AGR had the greatest influence on Lindsay's thinking, particularly in respect of group value. He pioneered the concept of conservation areas, listing the fisher towns as single items. AGR Mackenzie and John Gibb Marr remained in partnership until 1960 when AGR retired completely, following a disagreement with Marr, which was regretted on both sides and subsequently made up. Like his father, AGR continued to work up to the time of his death on 20 March 1963, a few weeks after major surgery. He was buried at Bourtie churchyard where a simply inscribed standing stone marks his grave. Marr continued the practice after the dissolution of the partnership in 1960, and it was not until this time that its title was changed to A Marshall Mackenzie & Marr. He closed the practice in 1972, when most of the drawings were dispersed to the firm's clients or to the current owners of the buildings. He retired to Raigmore Tower, Inverness, where he died in 1983.
Isobel Margaret Gordon was born in Fraserburgh on 26 April 1909, the daughter of Robert Gordon, fishcurer and his wife Isabella Anderson who had been a teacher before she married. Isobel studied full-time at the School of Architecture, Robert Gordon's Colleges from 1927 to 1930 and subsequently served a three-year apprenticeship in the office of George Bennett Mitchell & Son. She graduated in Fine Art at the University of Aberdeen in 1932, having written a thesis on the development of the eighteenth-century neo-Renaissance in Aberdeen, and received her diploma in Architecture in June 1933. She was an Associate of the Aberdeen Society of Architects, and was admitted ARIBA on 3 December 1934, her proposers being R Leslie Rollo, John Gibb Marr and George Bennett Mitchell. In that year she had obtained a teaching diploma, and she occasionally lectured at the Aberdeen School of Art thereafter. In the same year, 1934, she entered the office of A Marshall Mackenzie & Son as an architectural assistant, affectionately referred to as 'Dr Marshall Mackenzie's quine'. Whilst there she carried out work on Glen Tannar House, including the design of bathroom tiles which were later salvaged from the house by her daughters during its partial demolition. In June 1936 she was appointed assistant County Architect to the County Council of Sutherland. She left the County Architect's Office in 1939 when she married James W L Adams, later Professor of Education at Dundee University. They had three children: J Gordon L Adams (1940-2003; later Doctor); Marjory I G Adams (born 1944; married name Keay); and Ishbel C M Adams (born 1946; later Doctor; married name Barnes). Isobel Adams continued to practise thereafter on her own account, working on a number of buildings around Aboyne and, it is believed, carrying out a large amount of work on the estate of the Marquis of Huntly. She was appointed honorary architect and subsequently Chairman of Dundee Old People's Welfare Committee and built various Old People's Clubs. She ceased to be a member of the RIBA in December 1975, at which time she was living at Wentworth, 127 Dundee Road, Broughty Ferry. She died in Broughty Ferry on 9 July 2002.
John Gibb Marr was born on 30 September 1890, the son of Alexander Marr, general labourer, and his wife Ann Gibb. He was articled to Sutherland & George of Aberdeen on 1 June 1907, attending classes at Robert Gordon's Technical College and Gray's School of Art. On completion of his apprenticeship on 1 June 1912 he joined A Marshall Mackenzie & Son as a draughtsman, later becoming chief assistant before being assumed as a partner on 1 January 1927. Lack of work led to the consolidation of the Mackenzie practices in London and Aberdeen with the London practice of Herbert Wigglesworth and that of Clement George in Aberdeen. After the deaths of and Clement George in 1932 and Alexander Marshall Mackenzie in 1933, Mackenzie's son, Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie ('AGR'), determined to strengthen the Aberdeen office, where Marr had had little opportunity for design and still less for the modern design required to keep the practice in business: his relationship with Marshall Mackenzie had been a very close one in which he never sought to do more than carry out his wishes as faithfully as he possibly could. AGR's choice fell on Leonard Stokes's son David, who had left the Architectural Association in 1930 and set up practice with Peter Fleetwood Hesketh. He had run out of work. His office in Lincoln's Inn was near to Mackenzie and Wigglesworth's, and shortly after his father's death AGR asked Stokes to take charge of the design work of the Aberdeen office. It was an arrangement on which Marr had not been consulted and with which he may not have been entirely happy: much later he observed that he felt Stokes had been sent up to keep an eye on him. Introducing a London Catholic to Aberdeen society of that time was not without problems, but Stokes found that 'the natives in Aberdeen became friendly in about six months.' Marr was a member of the Council of the Aberdeen Society of Architects throughout the 1930s, and was admitted FRIBA in late 1933, his proposers being AGR, Arthur Hay Livingstone Mackinnon and John Alexander Ogg Allan. Although the Aberdeen office was commissioned to build a large new office for the Halifax Building Society, by 1935 the Mackenzie & Wigglesworth practice in London was at a low ebb: Robert W R Mackenzie (1913-75) of the Perth bleaching (Lumsden & Mackenzie) side of the family was to have joined the office, but in the event there was not enough work to justify him coming. The Wigglesworth and Stokes partnerships were dissolved, AGR returned to Aberdeen and the Stokes 'went back to London without any reluctance'. Apart from some country house work, most importantly Candacraig, the business of the post-war practice was mainly conservation work, the National Trust for Scotland being the main client. AGR Mackenzie and John Gibb Marr remained in partnership until 1960 when AGR retired completely, following a disagreement with Marr, which was regretted on both sides and subsequently made up. Marr continued the practice, and it was not until this time that its title was changed to A Marshall Mackenzie & Marr. He closed the practice in 1972, when most of the drawings were dispersed to the firm's clients or to the current owners of the buildings. He retired to Raigmore Tower, Westhill, Inverness and died at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, on 29 July 1983. He had been married twice, first to Isabella Cranna and second to Kathleen Kinnaird. His son registered his death.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)