| Architect Details |
W M Henderson 1853; James Forbes Beattie, architect 1861; Wardrop, Anderson & Browne, architectural practice 1885-6; A Marshall Mackenzie & Son and John Gibb Marr 1954-5; James Smith Richardson, architect 1956.
William Henderson, architect, wood merchant, valuator, etc was born on 6 December 1805, 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 eldest 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 offices in Loch Street, Aberdeen. 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. Baillie 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.
James Forbes Beattie was born in 1801, the son of Peter Beattie, a doctor, and Janet Jopp, and is believed to have been christened on 6 May 1804 in St Cyrus, Kincardineshire. He was articled to David Walker, surveyor, of Aberdeen, and became a partner in his firm in 1829 as Walker & Beattie. In 1839 Beattie went to Australia to manage the Kaawa Copper Mining Company, which was owned by a group of Aberdeen businessmen. He returned to Scotland in 1845 and obtained the post of Assistant Commissioner for Scotland under Peel's Drainage Act. He was arbiter of the Bennachie dispute when six influential landlords had claims settled according to his findings. Beattie married Jane Byres Copland and they had at least two sons, one of whom was James Alexander Beattie, born about 1846. By the late 1840s he had recommenced architectural practice in Aberdeen, his roles encompassing those of architect, civil engineer, land surveyor and garden designer. At some point in or before 1874 he took his sons into partnership as James F Beattie & Sons. This practice probably continued until the death of James Forbes Beattie on 10 January 1877 at Ecclesgreig, St Cyrus, Kincardineshire when he left heritable estate of £27,833 16s 11d. His son James Alexander Beattie subsequently went into partnership with another Walker, George James Walker, a distant relative of David Walker. The firm adopted the same practice title as its predecessor: Walker & Beattie.
The partnership of Wardrop Anderson & Browne was a merger of the practices of Robert Rowand Anderson and George Washington Browne with that of Wardrop & Reid. James Maitland Wardrop, the senior partner of Wardrop & Reid, died on 27 June 1882. His partner Charles Reid died in the following year leaving Wardrop's son, Hew M Wardrop, to inherit a large practice with a major commitment at Beaufort. As the younger Wardrop was then only twenty-seven and there was a risk of clients taking their business elsewhere, he merged his practice with that of Anderson & Browne: Browne he had probably known while in London as an assistant to George Edmund Street. The partners retained the Wardrop & Reid office at 19 St Andrew Square and took the title of Wardrop Anderson & Browne, although Anderson was senior partner. For reasons which have not been recorded, Browne withdrew from the partnership only two years later to commence independent practice in 1885. The practice title then became Wardrop & Anderson.
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.
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.
James Smith Richardson was born in Edinburgh on 2 November 1883, the son of Dr James T Richardson and nephew of the anatomist Arthur Thomson. The family moved to North Berwick in 1889. Richardson was educated at Abbey School, and was articled to James Macintyre Henry c.1899-1903, during which period he studied at the School of Applied Art. His interest in archaeology was encouraged by his father from an early age and a paper on 'Prehistoric Remains near Gullane' was published in PSAS as early as 1902. In 1903 he entered Sir Robert Lorimer's office as an assistant and in 1906 he made a study tour of English church woodwork with Aymer Vallance. In 1909 he commenced practice on his own account, from 19 Randolph Place, Edinburgh, his first significant works being woodwork at St Baldred's Church, North Berwick (1910) and the restoration from ruins of Teampull Mholuidh, Eoropie, Barvas (1911-12), when he opened an office at 4 Melville Street. He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland in 1912 and on 2 March 1914 he was appointed part-time Inspector of Ancient Monuments in H M Office of Works under Sir Charles Peers. The practice was closed in 1914 for the war. Richardson had been a volunteer in the Royal Scots since 1900 and was commissioned in the local battalion, serving in Ireland and France and reaching the rank of Captain. Richardson resumed practice in Melville Street in 1919. In the Spring of 1920 he took John Ross McKay into partnership. McKay, born in 1884, had been a fellow student at the School of Applied Art. Like Richardson he had worked for Lorimer, and had returned to Lorimer's office as chief assistant after the First World War, during which he had served as a staff captain under one of Lorimer's clients, General Hunter-Weston of Hunterston. Hunter Weston had invited him to stay for a weekend and Lorimer had instructed him to decline as he did not think it appropriate that an assistant should be a guest of a client; he went, and he was either dismissed or reacted by resigning on the following Monday. It was a partnership of the disaffected as Richardson also felt embittered about Lorimer, whom he regarded as having 'pinched' one of his clients shortly after setting up in practice. On 8 November 1920 Richardson was appointed full-time Inspector of Ancient Monuments, and in 1922 John Begg invited him to become a part-time lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art, mainly in architectural history. He did not give up his partnership, a number of clients coming to the practice as a result of his official duties, but thereafter McKay did most of the work. Richardson and McKay had their revenge on Lorimer in the matter of the Scottish National War Memorial, which Richardson opposed through the Ancient Monuments Board as its secretary - in a letter to fellow architect Robin Smith Dods, Lorimer described him as a 'wild talking irresponsible devil of a secretary' who had been 'trying hard to wreck it, incidentally with the hope of wrecking me'. In November 1922 Richardson succeeded in defeating Lorimer's scheme by erecting a canvas mock-up which Lorimer described as a 'nightmare erection' which gave no 'adequate idea of the silhouette … or of its light shade or colour'. As Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Richardson brought a great many monuments into guardianship with the support of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board, and Sir Lionel Earle, Permanent Secretary of the Office of Works, working closely with the Office of Works architect J Wilson Paterson, an association which had gone sour by the 1930s with what George Hay described as 'silly quarrels'; and from the late 1930s his power and influence declined as the result of the appointment of an administrative head at the Office, D L McIntyre VC. Between December 1924 and February 1926 Richardson & McKay were joined in practice at 4 Melville Street by Donald MacDonald MacKie (born 1897), a former pupil of Lorimer who had completed his apprenticeship with McKay after the First World War and had worked as assistant to the firm from May 1922 to May 1924. It is unclear whether a formal partnership existed or whether MacKie simply worked independently from a shared office, but MacKie left in February 1926 to live and work at his own premises of Coltbridge Studio, Murrayfield. Richardson's partnership in Richardson & McKay came to an end in 1942 when McKay merged the practice with that of William James Walker Todd, and in 1946 he gave up teaching at Edinburgh College of Art. By those dates such activities were perhaps seen as incompatible with his full-time appointment as Principal Inspector, a post from which he retired in 1948 at the age of sixty-five. In 1949 he gave the Rhind lectures on 'The Medieval Stone Carver in Scotland', eventually published in book form in 1964. In his retirement Richardson advised the National Trust for Scotland on the restoration of the garden at Pitmedden and lectured on its cruises; and he was consultant to the Queen Mother on the restoration of the Castle of Mey which was executed by Sinclair Macdonald. In 1952 the RSA made him Honorary Professor of Antiquities and in 1957 he established the Burgh Museum at North Berwick of which he was given the Freedom in 1967. Richardson suffered a severe heart attack in 1969 and died at North Berwick on 12 September 1970. In person he was bespectacled, 6 feet tall, big-boned but very slim, and slightly stooped in conversation with those of lesser height. He was a master of stagecraft when lecturing on site, an accomplishment he passed on to his successor, Stewart Cruden. He had what was described as a puckish, occasionally barbed sense of humour - which could be mischievous - often expressed in cartoon and verse. He had remarkable serendipity in obscure salerooms and at auctions, sometimes acquiring for himself and sometimes for the National Museum; and as his PSAS obituarist recorded, 'helpers were drawn from all walks of life' and included not only his custodians but some rather odd vagrants who were trained to pick up interesting material from demolition sites and even dustbins.
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