The Kilsyth connection
Alexander Thomson's grandfather, religious revivalism, and dating the Dullatur villas
According to JEH Thomson’s 1881 Memoir of George Thomson, Alexander’s younger brother, one of the few books inherited by their father, John, was a collection of the sermons of the Rev. James Robe, minister of Kilsyth from 1713 to 1753 (this was possibly Counsels and Comforts to Troubled Christians. in Eight Sermons by James Robe, with an Essay Shewing, That True Religion Is Neither the Cause Nor Effect of Vapours and Melancholy, printed with other matter in Glasgow in 1749). The book was presumably first owned by Alexander’s grandfather, the second of three successive paternal Johns in the family. At least three other sons were born and baptised ‘John’ in the two generations preceding Alexander, all of whom died young.
Alexander’s grandfather is described as follows by JEH Thomson:
‘This second John seems to have maintained the characteristic for which the family were noted in the district, that they were ‘aye mair for the ither worl’ than for this.’ He sat under the ministry of Mr. Robe of Kilsyth, whose earnest and devoted labours prepared the way for the Kilsyth revivals of the middle of last century.... Whatever his fitness for the next world, if his fitness for the present is to be measured by his success in it, it cannot be said to be great. Smitten with a desire to try scientific farming, which was then just beginning to excite attention, on a more favourable soil than the somewhat bare pasture land of the upper banks of the Carron afforded, he sold his property and removed to a farm on the Kinnaird estate. Shortly after he had settled there, both he and his wife died, leaving a young family, the youngest of whom was his only son John’1.
The ‘only son John’ was Alexander’s father.
Alexander’s grandfather, the unsuccessful farmer, was born around April 1722 in Stirlingshire and may have been one of only two surviving sons of seven born in the family. There was an elder brother, James, born in 1705, but he appears not to have taken on the farmland since his children appear to have been baptised in Plean or nearby Touchill. Of eleven children in all, six died young, and none of the others are known to have married.
At the time of John’s marriage in 1744, his parish is given as Kincardine, and how he came into contact with Mr Robe at Kilsyth is unknown, but may have been connected with the religious revival that took place in the area, beginning in Cambuslang in February 1742:
‘Many persons attracted by the novelty and strangeness of the events happening there, flocked from all the surrounding parishes, and some from a far distance to the preachings and religious services at Cambuslang’2.
The illustration above and a contemporary attestation give the scale of the revival:
‘At one Sunday service, some three thousand turned up for communion, 'not only from the city of Glasgow, and other places near by, but from many places at a considerable distance; it was reckoned there were two hundred communicants from Edinburgh, two hundred from Kilmarnock, one hundred from Irvine, and one hundred from Stewarton... some from England and Ireland... a considerable number of Quakers were hearers: a great many of these that had formerly been Seceders’3.
If the spiritually minded John Thomson was an early attendee, James Robe himself held out, writing later:
There were a few of the people under my charge went to Cambuslang, notwithstanding of what they heard me say of it.... It was a matter of discouragement to me when I heard that my brethren in Cumbernauld, Kirkintilloch, Calder and Campsie, had several persons in their parishes awakened at Cambuslang, and I had not one so much as the least touched, to my knowledge’4.
By May 1742, however, Robe had given in. Whatever was moving people in Cambuslang appeared to have an effect: on his return, he preached a sermon at which
‘there was a great mourning in the congregation as for an only son. Many cried out and these not only women, but some stout-hearted young men, and some between forty and fifty’5.
So great was the impact that Robe had to call on the help of a minister from Cumbernauld (where his late father had been minister) to assist those affected by ‘bitter cries, groans, and... weeping’.
In Stirlingshire and Dunbartonshire, the effect spread among parishioners in Kirkintilloch, Campsie, Cumbernauld, Denny, Airth, Larbert, and Kilsyth, continuing to mid-1743. But whatever was happening was not welcomed by some, as Mr Robe later wrote:
‘The Seceders having left the Church seem to have imagined that God had also left it with them, and they found themselves therefore unable to believe in the reality of the striking manifestations of the Divine presence and power’.
In July 1742, a Presbytery meeting of Secessionists declared the revival “a delusion of the work of the grand Deceiver”, singling out Mr Robe and other ministers for “imposing on the people and being at indefatigable pains, by printed missives, attestations, and journals, to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect”6.
That strength of feeling might be attributed to the fact that the Secessionists in Cumbernauld were building their own church at the time.
Grandfather John’s spirituality echoed down through the generations, via Alexander’s father and his refusal to move the family to risk the temptations of Glasgow despite the offer of promotion, and the practical faith of his own brothers and sisters. His elder brother William Cooper became a missionary and died in Sierra Leone, leaving a son who himself became a missionary. Another older brother, Ebenezer, an elder in the Gordon Street congregation aged only 21, entered into what became an annually renewed covenant with God, possibly around the time younger brother George was recovering from tuberculosis. George himself ‘solemnly consecrated himself to God, determining, if ever circumstances should permit him, he would devote himself to the work of missions’7. Once William Cooper left Glasgow for London, both Ebenezer and George, possibly Alexander as well, involved themselves in ‘Sabbath-school teaching’ at Gordon Street. George himself became a church elder in 1850, eventually leaving Scotland and dying in Cameroon in 1878 building a sanatorium for missionaries.
Indirect connections
John Shepherd and Kilsyth parish church
In 1816 a new parish church was erected to replace the building in which James Robe had preached. Still in use, it was designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architect James Shepherd, and is his only known work. However, since the graveyard attached to the old parish church continued to be used, it is possible that the octagonal watch-house built to guard against the activities of body-snatchers, and also built in 1816, might be by him.
John Shepherd appears to have been born in Stevenston, Ayrshire, in 1787, although the circumstances are somewhat clouded. His parents seem have been Edward Shepherd, a weaver, and Margaret Duncan, who married in Stevenston (with both listed as being ‘of this parish’) in 1785. Their first child, John was born in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, in May 1786, and appears to have died in Stevenston on 13 May 1787. However, John the future architect, if correctly registered, was born on 9 April 1787 and baptised three days later, a month before the death of his older brother of the same name. If true, that might suggest that Edward’s first-born son was known to be dying, but that the parents did not want to delay baptising their second son, but still wanted to name him ‘John’. It is possible that some births were not recorded: two at least of John’s presumed sisters survived: Margaret until 1864, Agnes until 1875, both dying unmarried in Saltcoats, but only Margaret’s name is included in the Ayrshire parish registers.
Nothing is known of his architectural training before Shepherd’s first appearance in the Glasgow Directory in 1813, as ‘John Shepherd & Co., architects and agents for heritable property, 21, Glassford Street’. Two years later he had moved to 636 Argyll Street, where his business remained until his death in May 1818::
‘At Glasgow on the 21st inst., Mr. John Shepherd, architect, much and greatly regretted’8.
The online Dictionary of Scottish Architects identifies John Baird I as Shepherd’s apprentice from around 1814. A John Shepherd was buried in the Gorbals Cemetery on 25 May 1818, with his cause of death given as ‘Decline’ and his age as 27 (rather than 31, if his birth year is correct). If this is the same John Shepherd, as seems likely, then Shepherd and Baird may have been more partners than master and apprentice (perhaps accounting for the ‘& Co.’ in the Directory entry), since that would make John Shepherd only ten years or so older than Baird.
However, Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men…9 suggests Shepherd was “a relative”, while Stamp & McKinstry’s ‘Greek’ Thomson names him, perhaps less likely, as “an uncle”10. Currently, there is no known familial relationship, but whatever the connection was, Baird had progressed enough professionally that the 1818 Directory, the entries for which are likely to have been finalised by July that year, listed him as ‘John Baird, architect, 636 Argyll Street’, at the same address as his former colleague, shared with R D Roberton, a ‘merchant tailor’ and the ‘accomptant’ James Wilson 11.
Dullatur
A more tangential connection comes in relation to James Robe: in later writings he is referred to as a member of a long-standing Cumbernauld family, and in 1752 he claimed membership of Heritors of the parish of Cumbernauld, having ‘lately become proprietor of the lands of Netherwood and Arniebog’, as did ‘John Robe of Dullatur’, possibly a younger brother12. Arniebog was a farm steading astride the Roman Wall, ‘the ditch of which is traceable in front of the dwelling’, and part of which was ‘a wet marshy tract’13. Netherwood was an adjacent property, later the site of a colliery. Much of Dullatur itself was described as ‘a deep and spongy, almost impassable morass’, so much so that many of the Covenanter troops retreating from their defeat at the Battle of Kilsyth in August 1645 were caught in Dullatur Bog and killed, with ‘only a few hundreds’ escaping from the approximately 4,000 foot and 500 cavalry who took part.
A century later,
‘At the cutting of the canal through it in 1769-70, swords, pistols, and other weapons were found in it, supposed to have been lost or thrown away in the rout from Kilsyth; bodies of men and horses, including a mounted trooper completely armed, were also brought to light; and myriads of small toads, each much the size of a nut or Turkey bean, issuing from it, hopped over all the fields northward for several miles, and could be counted from 10 to 30 in the space of 1 square yard’14.
With the land drained, Dullatur a century later became ripe for development. By the time the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway’s Dullatur station opened on 1 March 1877, 13 new villas were reported to be in the course of erection, with some nearly ready for occupancy. Three days later, more development on the 170-acre estate was being advertised by A.G. Thomson & Turnbull as ‘New country development. To be feued for villas’15, and four days after that the first villa was advertised for sale with entry by the end of May. By then, there were villas of ‘7, 8, and 9 Rooms, etc., with Gardens, Hot Water’ all being offered for sale or rent16.
Two of these are likely to be what is now No. 11 Prospect Road and Woodend. The latter had been largely gutted by 2020, when it was withdrawn from auction, but sold for £875,000 two years later, presumably having been rebuilt.
The timing of their construction is important, since the Dullatur properties have been assumed to be the work of Robert Turnbull, possibly working with his successor partner David Thomson. But Turnbull only proposed taking on a partner to Alexander Thomson’s trustees in mid-1876, with David Thomson joining in December of that year. This suggests that the Dullatur villas are more likely to have been sketched out by Alexander Thomson and completed by staff in his office, or at worst designed by those staff drawing on Thomson’s principles. It also suggests that 11 Prospect Road pre-dates its mirror image, the now-lost Melbourne Villa in Regent Street, Dalmuir, rather than coming after it.
JEH Thomson, Memoirs of George Thomson, Edinburgh, 1881
Falkirk Herald, 29 Sep 1866
‘An Account of the Second Sacrament at Cambuslang: In a Letter from Mr McCulloch to a Brother’, in J Robe, Narratives of the extraordinary work of the Spirit of God at Cambuslang, Kilsyth, etc., begun 1742, Glasgow, 1790
J Robe, op. cit.
ibid., and next
Falkirk Herald, 29 Sep 1866
JEH Thomson, Memoir of George Thomson, Edinburgh, 1881
Glasgow Herald, 29 May 1818
Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men who Have Died During the Last Thirty Years, and in Their Lives Did Much to Make the City what it Now is ..., Glasgow, 1886
G Stamp and S McKinstry (eds.), ‘Greek’ Thomson, Edinburgh, 1994
In 1818, ‘Argyll-street’ ran ‘from Stockwell and Glassford-street to Anderston walk’ and the given street numbers today would suggest an address far west of Anderston. It is more likely that the street numbers ran sequentially along one side of the street from Glasgow Cross and back again. In the 1818 Directory, there were no occupied numbers between Nos. 132 and 579. Street numbering in Glasgow would not be formalised until 1826.
Minute of the Heritors of the Parish of Cumbernauld, 28 Feb 1752, reported in the Falkirk Herald, 9 Feb 1871
Ordnance Survey Name Books, Dunbartonshire 1860 (OS1/9/5/32)
F H Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, Vol. II, Edinburgh, 1882
Glasgow Herald, 4 Mar 1876
Glasgow Herald, 5 Mar 1877 and 7 May 1877