Busby House: the Kippen connection (1)

Of calico, the American Revolution, and local politics

Busby House in 1966

In the late 1850s, Alexander Thomson was commissioned to extend Busby House (above), which had been built some sixty years before, overlooking the River Cart from its Lanarkshire side. Much had changed since the house was built, and more would change before its demolition in 1969.

Busby’s industrial history begins in 1796 when David Kessock feued 1.2 acres of land on the east bank of the river from James Maxwell of Williamwood. Kessock established a small calico works and bleachfield and built a house. Five years later, however, it transpired that Kessock had been forging the excise stamp on his factory’s output to avoid tax, and he was forced out of business. James Hill became his trustee; at the time, listed as a manufacturer in Glasgow with an office in St Andrew’s Street, Hill’s Busby estate bordered the land feued by Kessock. A member of an extensive and distinguished Glasgow legal family, in 1805, he is listed in the Glasgow Directory as ‘Hill, James, writer, 49, Miller-street; house, St. Vincent-street’.

Hill had come into possession of the Busby estate from his 1792 marriage to Mary, the daughter of Glasgow merchant George Kippen junior, who had obtained it some twenty years earlier.

The Kippens

George Kippen junior (as we should call him, although he never seems to have been referred to as such) was born in 1737, the son of George Kippen senior (1715-1787). George senior was his parents’ sixth child and second son, but all the older children seem to have died before he was five years old, and his father died when George senior was approaching his second birthday; a younger brother, William, was born posthumously (but survived into the 1790s).

In 1736, George senior married Margaret Erskine; they had fourteen children together. George junior (1737-1786) was the eldest but pre-deceased his father by a year (at least five other siblings did the same, three in infancy).

It is likely that George senior was responsible for much of the family’s financial success. By his thirties, he had become a successful merchant ‘George Kippen & Co.’, with merchants John Glassford, Alexander McCall, William Shortridge and Arthur Connell as partners. George senior was also a partner in Henderson, McCall & Co., alongside Archibald Henderson, Glassford, McCall, Shortridge, Connell and others. Kippen and Glassford may have had a separate joint venture as well¹, importing and selling flax, linseed and barrel staves from the American colonies. Both had extensive interests in Virginia and Maryland, with Kippen senior described as a tobacco merchant whose warehouse ‘was in the short street leading from the east side of Saltmarket to St. Andrew's Church, known as the Baxter's or Baker's Wynd’².

If George senior’s principal interests were in American products imported into Scotland, it seems likely that George junior’s interests were the other way around. In 1769, he invested in what had begun as the Dalnottar Iron Company, one of three Scottish firms - with the Carron Company and the Smithfield Company - engaged in manufacturing wrought iron goods, principally for the American market³. Three years before, Kippen was listed as a major exporter of iron nails to America made by the Carron Company; investing in a rival business probably made economic sense. Kippen was in good company: the other partners included three major Glasgow merchants: George Murdoch (1715-95), Provost of Glasgow in 1754-6 and again in 1766-8, was one of the founders of the Glasgow Arms Bank; the unrelated Peter Murdoch was also a partner in the Arms Bank, while William Cunninghame of Lainshaw (of Glasgow’s Cunninghame mansion fame) had extensive interests in the tobacco trade.

George senior’s involvement in America probably ended with the Revolution, during which he is known to have lost some £10,000, owed by ‘four leading Virginians’⁴. George junior may have also lost money, but by then, he had diversified his interests, including taking on the Busby estate: he may have leased it, but more likely, it was purchased (It was certainly owned by William Kippen by the 1820s when one of George junior’s sons is referred to as ‘William Kippen of Busby’)⁵.

Of Busby

The White Cart had provided an energy source since early in the 14th century for lint, waulk (for fulling cloth) and grain mills. In 1778, Glasgow merchant William Ferguson established the first cotton mill in Renfrewshire (the Cart separates Renfrewshire to the east and Lanarkshire to the west at this point) at Newmill (later known as Busby Upper Mill). By the 1850s, Busby, as a community, had developed on the Renfrewshire bank of the White Cart near where the Upper and 1788 Lower Mills for cotton and yarn were located, and contained its own Busby House (built in 1799, remodelled by Peddie & Kinnear in 1858, demolished in 1958⁶). The 420-acre Busby estate sat on the Lanarkshire bank of the river, possibly extending as far north as the junction of the White Cart with the Kittoch Water and south at least as far as the southern edge of Bankholm Place, which replaced the printworks.

When George junior’s son-in-law James Hill died, the Busby estate was sold by his trustees for around £20,000 in 1821 to George junior’s fourth son, William Kippen (1779-1853). In 1815, he married Mariamne (sometimes ‘Marianne’), daughter of Glasgow merchant John Alston, and inherited the Westerton estate in Balloch after Alston died in 1835. Following his marriage, William Kippen appears to have become more aware of his improved social status, applying for the arms (below) granted in 1819.

He also became increasingly involved in broader political issues. In 1822, he was a member of a well-connected committee commenting on a Parliamentary bill ‘for Altering the mode of choosing Juries to serve in Criminal Cases in Scotland’⁷. A decade later, perhaps with funds inherited from his father-in-law, William Kippen moved into publishing:

The copyright of the Glasgow Chronicle, the Glasgow Journal, and the Glasgow Saturday Evening Post and Renfrewshire Reformer, besides the presses and all the printing materials belonging to Messrs David Prentice & Co., were sold on Friday by public roup at £595. The purchaser was Mr Thomas Boyd, calico printer, Bellfield, for William Kippen, Esq. of Busby⁸.

The Chronicle was the oldest Liberal newspaper in Glasgow, established in 1811 by Prentice as a successor to the Glasgow Sentinel, a thrice-weekly paper that exposed political scandals and supported Parliamentary reform. Its Liberal politics opposed the Conservative ones of the Glasgow Herald and Glasgow Courier⁹, connected to the politics of the Dukes of Hamilton and the Maxwells of Pollok. Prentice, the paper’s publisher and editor, died in 1837, and Kippen brought in a self-taught former nailer from Lanark, George Ritchie, as editor, followed in 1845 by Michael Thomson, ‘a licentiate of the U.P. Church, a gentleman of highly respected talents and acquirements’.

Over time, William Kippen’s focus had slowly switched from Busby to the north bank of the Clyde. By the time he died in 1853 at Westerton, which had become the family home, he was a JP, Deputy Lieutenant, and owner of Westerton and Lawmuir, as well as Busby. He left Westerton to one son, James Hill Kippen, while Busby went to another, Durham Kippen. If the sons inherited the father’s political interests, their interest in maintaining a newspaper did not, and the paper closed at the end of 1857¹⁰.

William was himself one of eight children, and there were 14 children from William’s marriage to Marianne Alston, of whom three died young.

James Hill Kippen, who inherited Westerton (and Busby when Durham Kippen died unmarried in 1884), was William Kippen’s third son. The eldest, George, emigrated to America in 1850 and became a farmer, and the second son died young. The next son, William (1822-1882), took over Gogar Park near Edinburgh; a few years after his wife’s death and suffering from depression, he shot himself at his front door.

Durham (1838-1884), the youngest son, was something of a tearaway in his twenties, in 1862 attacking a watchman outside a house of ‘supposed questionable fame’ in West Regent Street and forfeiting a pledge of a guinea when he failed to turn up to answer the charge of ‘disorderly conduct and assault’¹¹. By 1866, however, he was one of the sponsors of Busby local games and, five years later, a member of the Carmunnock School Board. His politics had shifted to supporting the Tory party, especially active in the 1873 election where Archibald Campbell, later 1st Lord Blythswood, was elected MP for Renfrewshire. His politics sometimes drew him into controversy, such as over ‘faggot votes’ in Peebles-shire in the general election of 1880, where Kippen appears to have taken over ‘a dwelling-house entered from a narrow close’ from a local butcher, intending to transfer the property to people who would not otherwise be legally qualified, in terms of sufficient property, to qualify them as electors, including some who were under-age¹².

In Renfrewshire, he was a regular judge at cattle shows. He involved himself in steeplechasing, occasionally winning prizes at horse shows, although his horse Cora Linn broke a foreleg during the Lanarkshire & Renfrewshire Hunt steeplechases at Houston and had to be destroyed. By then, he had lived for some time in Glasgow, at 201 St Vincent Street, then at 121 Wellington Street, opposite Alexander Thomson’s newly constructed office.

Durham Kippen’s interests in Busby continued: he was one of the principal promoters and then Chairman of the Busby Water Company, formed in 1875 to supply water to the village, and, as one of the Lanarkshire Commissioners of Supply, was involved in efforts to relieve those affected by the 1878 collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank through a supplementary rate.

In 1876, he travelled to New York, presumably in part at least to see his oldest brother. Back in Glasgow, he died, unmarried, in 1884 at 2 Mansfield Place (104 West Regent Street), aged 45, having suffered from ‘an internal malady’¹³.

The Busby printworks

A decade before his death, in 1842, William Kippen, Durham’s father, leased the seven-acre printworks to Thomas Inglis and Joseph Colen Wakefield. The latter had arrived in Scotland around 1855 to oversee the progress of the Busby works. He was probably responsible for commissioning Alexander Thomson to extend and remodel Busby House shortly after (the 1857 Ordnance Survey map below shows the house before alterations occurred).

However, Wakefield does not seem to have lived originally at Busby House; instead, he leased Eastwood House in 1857 and purchased it in 1864. The firm’s manager, Alexander Miller, had moved in by April 1861 and remained there for some ten years (in 1868, his son, Alexander Miller junior, another Inglis & Wakefield employee, moved out. He replaced John McIntyre as Alexander Thomson’s neighbour at 2 Moray Place). By 1875, Charles Colin Wakefield, Joseph’s son, was living there with his family when his daughter was born:

At Busby House, Busby, on the 18th inst., the wife of Charles Colin Wakefield, Esq; a daughter¹⁴.

In 1877, Joseph Wakefield sold Eastwood House to David Tod, a founder of Glasgow shipbuilders Tod & MacGregor, and presumably moved into Busby House at that point. He was a keen grower of rare orchids, ferns, and house plants, selling them off when he moved to London in 1881¹⁵.

Inglis & Wakefield had been one of the earliest tenants of Alexander and George Thomson’s warehouse at 68-80 Gordon Street, moving in by mid-1860 and returning there after the building was burnt out in 1864 and rebuilt two years later.

Durham Kippen received a regular income from leasing the printworks. However, when James Higginbottom of Netherlee complained that the rates on his printfield had almost doubled to £1,200, Kippen acted as a witness on his behalf:

Mr Kippen said he had let a larger and better works up the stream to Messrs Inglis & wakefield for £1,120. But from this they had to deduct £700 for house property and a small farm which went to his tenants, and so he only got £420 for his ground¹⁶.

(Higginbottom’s valuation was reduced to £745).

In 1886, a railhead connecting the printworks to Busby railway station was opened. By 1883, the Busby printworks took up seven acres, producing 3,000 pieces of cotton a day, employing 600 workers and with a bleachfield attached to it. Around then, however, the firm relocated from Gordon Street to George Square.

In November 1895, Inglis & Wakefield, now ‘of Busby, Glasgow, Manchester and London’, issued £120,000 of share capital to reconstruct the business: Thomas Inglis had died, and Joseph C Wakefield was now in partnership with Charles Colin Wakefield, Alexander Miller and John Robb (the latter replacing Miller as manager and now living in Busby House), and others. The share offering included an agreement to purchase the printworks, Busby House and other properties outright.

The printworks which are situated on the river Cart at Busby are large at well equipped and have an excellent supplier of water from the river and from various locks in the vicinity a private branch line runs from Busby station on the Caledonian Railway into the printworks.... Included in this purchase are certain lands, houses, and property in Busby, and certain water rights at Eaglesham with about ten acres of land acquired by the late proprietor....¹⁷

Together with the freehold of the printworks and other lands, machinery, stock, debtors and goodwill, the company was valued at just over £177,000.

The printworks would continue (just) into the 20th century, when, in 1901, they were bought over by the Calico Printers Association, established two years before through an amalgamation of 46 textile printing companies and 13 textile merchants, resulting in its owning some 80% of the printing industry in Britain. The Association had a policy of closing smaller operations, and the Busby works closed in 1901, making 500 men and women unemployed, three-quarters of whom ‘had to leave the district and seek work elsewhere’¹⁸. In March 1902, part of the empty works were used temporarily to house men and women from Eastwood, Rutherglen and Lochwinnoch following two weeks’ notice given to remove their men and women from the PaisleyAsylum and Poorhouse¹⁹. In November of that year, the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society purchased the site for £70,000²⁰. What happened next to the site is unclear, although various low-rise workshops and a mix of industrial and commercial premises now occupy the Field Road site.

The Kippens and Busby

The Kippen link with Busby continued into the 20th century: William James Kippen (1866-1928) inherited Busby and Westerton from his father, James Hill Kippen, Durham’s older brother. He became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh and a King’s Counsel. While the direct Kippen connection to Busby House ended when he sold the printworks, Busby House and other property in 1895, William James still owned land in the area; in 1924, he donated eight acres from the estate bordering the White Cart to the parishes of East Kilbride and Mearns as a public park (below), which opened as Busby Glen Park in Cartside Drive in December 1926. Kippen Drive, on the southwestern outskirts of Busby, retains the connection.

1. G Stewart, Curiosities of Glasgow Citizenship, Glasgow, 1881

2. ibid.

3. G Thomson, C Evans, JR Hume, J Butt, ‘The Dalnotter Iron Company: An Eighteenth Century Scottish Industrial Undertaking’, The Scottish Historical Review, 1956

4. PJ Ford (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, New York, 1892-6

5. Glasgow Herald, 22 Mar 1822

6. D Sweeney, Postscript to the Past: Lost Mansions and Houses of Renfrewshire, Glasgow, 2015

7. Glasgow Herald, 22 Mar 1822

8. Caledonian Mercury, 13 Apr 1837

9. Glasgow newspapers tended to repeat their titles: the 1811 Chronicle was the second of that name; another Glasgow Sentinel followed in 1821.

10. Caledonian Mercury, 31 Dec 1857

11. Renfrewshire Independent, 10 May 1862

12. The Scotsman, 26 Feb 1880

13. Glasgow Herald, 26 Jan 1884

14. Glasgow Herald, 19 Jan 1875

15. Glasgow Herald, 12 Apr 1881

16. Paisley & Renfrewshire Gazette, 16 Sep 1882

17. Manchester Courier, 18 Nov 1895

18. Barrhead News, 19 Feb 1904

19. Barrhead News, 28 Feb 1902

20. Dundee Evening Post, 11 Feb 1902