17 Regent Park Square

Built by Daniel McNicol, first occupied 1865.

Andrew S McAllan

The first resident was Andrew Stewart McAllan. Andrew was born in Bonhill, near Dumbarton, to William Macallan, a calico printer. He married Margaret More Guthrie, daughter of another Bonhill calico printer, in 1850. Curiously the records show two marriages, one in Bonhill on 13 April, and then again the next day in the Gorbals – go figure. He lived in Great Wellington Street at the time (now Admiral St, behind the Old Toll Bar on Paisley Road West) and followed his father in the calico business, working for McAllan Brothers, calico printers of Renfrew Street.

Bonhill and the Vale of Leven in general were a major 19th century textile centre, the fast-flowing river providing water for bleachfields, where newly woven cotton (perhaps from Lanark mills) was laid out in the sun for months to bleach. Later the process was accelerated with cheimicals such as sulphuric acid and moved indoors. The fabric was then block printed to produce calico. The McAllan brothers, Andrew and John, appear to have owned the Dillichip Works at Bonhill, though they suffered financially in the early 1860s and were sequestrated. In 1866 the Dillichip Works were acquired by Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing, who had consolidated many of the works in the area, and went on to become a millionaire, MP and Baronet . Some get luckier than others.

The Dillichip Works on the River Leven in the inter war period. It closed in 1936. There is now a whisky bond on the site. Source: Vale of Leven Story

John McAllan died in early 1873, though his death certificate noted he was a retired calico printer who had been paralysed for over seven years, suggesting he had had a stroke around 1865; another possible reason why the business was abandoned.

After the closure, Andrew moved to Regent Park Square in 1865, where he stayed for about three years. He became a commission agent for J & T Wiseman & Co of West Nile Street, and later assistant secretary to Caledonia Assurance Co. He moved to a flat in the Pollokshaws Road tenements, firstly 10 Regent Park Terrace, then 13 (now 822 Pollokshaws Road & 1 Marywood Square respectively). His wife died at No 10 of uterine cancer in 1873, while Andrew died at 14 Melville Street in East Pollokshields in 1889.

Rowes

From 1868 to 1874 the house was occupied by the Rowe family. John Rowe was a manufacturer from Lesmahagow who lived with his wife Jane and eight children, who ranged in age from 33 to 9 (1871 census). They had two servants, Grace Brown, 21, a cook from Dumfrieshire and Helen Cruthers, 18, a housemaid from Edinburgh.

John’s eldest son William joined the clergy and in 1867 became minister of Laurieston Parish Church on Norfolk Street (now one corner of the Bridge St Subway car park). He was minister there for over 20 years .

His next eldest sons Gavin and Thomas went into business with John, though details of their company are scant. The census transcription helpfully reads “Manufacturer Faundress & Chat Employdy ??”. They appeared in legal records for 1872 when Gavin decided to resign and take his share of the firm. He tried to place an interdict (a Scottish injunction) on his brother and father to stop them doing anything to reduce his share, but it was thrown out by the court as John and Thomas were already quite willing to co-operate anyway. An odd way to try to fall out with your family . There are reports of prosecutions for theft of weft from the company, suggesting a fabric business, and the dissolution notice that followed Gavin’s action advertised for sale “Looms, Warping Mills, Yarns, Bobbins, Pattern Books, etc” .

John moved to a villa on Queens Drive in 1874 and continued in business as John Rowe & Co, while Gavin formed McMillan & Rowe, manufacturers of shirtings, skirtings and dress goods. Thomas vanished from the record.

Aitkens

Jane and Elizabeth Aitken were sisters who purchased the house sometime around 1882-5 and stayed until it was put up for sale in 1889.

The relationship between their parents is unusual if not bizarre. Their father Hugh Aitken was a calico printer in partnership at various times with his brothers Robert in Glasgow, and Thomas and John in Manchester. In 1861 Hugh was living at 20 Whitevale Street in Glasgow’s East End with his father Andrew, previously a hand loom weaver and latterly a retired dyer and calico printer. Andrew employed two domestic servants, Mary McCallum, 55, and Margaret Hutton, 26. Yet Margaret had already borne Hugh two children, Jane in 1859 and Elizabeth in 1860, and she would go on to have three boys by him also. Elizabeth was recorded as a Hutton and illegitimate on her birth certificate, with no father named, despite her mother living in the same house as Hugh. The children appeared to be then farmed out to other families; in the 1871 census Jane the eldest was a domestic servant in the Gorbals, aged 13, Lizzie and Hugh were staying in a boarding house in Tradeston aged 10 and 7, while George, only 4, was boarding with a miner’s family in Parkhead. One ponders at Hugh’s attitude to Margaret and his children, and whether he acknowledged the children’s existence, or hid them away out of shame. Who puts their young children in boarding houses?

Hugh died in 1875. He and Margaret appear never to have married, though after his death she and the children took the name Aitken – I suspect the name change was out of necessity for respectability rather than affection – and were back living together at 17 Whitevale Street in 1881. Margaret died that year, and I am guessing Hugh had at least provided for her, and thus the two girls inherited, and used this to buy the house in Regent Park Square.

Jane died unmarried in Dennistoun in 1893. Elizabeth married the Rev. Archibald Templeton M.D. in 1888, the wedding taking place in the house in Strathbungo. Archibald was the son of the famous carpet manufacturer, and a medical missionary who had spent several years in India. It was his brothers who built the famous “Doge’s Palace” Templeton factory on Glasgow Green. He continued to describe himself as a missionary back in Glasgow and was superintendent of the Oxford Street Dispensary. The couple settled in Crookfur; he died in 1923 and she in 1947. They had eight children, one of whom went missing in action at Gallipoli, while another died at the Second Battle of the Marne .

Fergusons

The house was on the market in October 1889 and the contents were auctioned in 1890 (“family giving up housekeeping”) . The house was purchased by John Ferguson or Fergusson, a lawyer’s book-keeper. John married Margaret Kilpatrick in 1852 and raised a family of six. He moved to Regent Park Square relatively late in life, aged about 70, though he still had his wife and five of his adult children living with him. He died in 1901, but his family stayed in the house. His wife died in 1907. The three sisters and William lived on there. Hope Fergusson was possibly the last survivor, passing away there in 1945 – a good run of 55 years for the house in the same family.

The Skaifes

Harold Skaife bought the house in 1947. He, William Fraser and a Mr Johnston founded Glasgow Cine Service, first at 123 Renfield Street, later at 567 Pollokshaws Road (now Strathbungo Dental) offering sales and service for 16mm cine equipment. Skaife and Johnston had been in the Army Kinematic Service (AKS) during the war. They built the first tape recorders in Scotland, and built a recording studio in Hamilton for the Scottish surrealist film-maker Enrico Cocozza; apparently this was where Lulu first recorded (I can’t vouch for this; her first single “Shout” was recorded in London).

Formation of Glasgow Cine Services. Kinematograph Weekly, 18 September 1947. Source: BNA

In the late 1940s the Skaifes rented the upper floor to Bert & Eunice Lott, a Jewish couple. There are still visible traces of the mezuzahs (small scrolls of Hebrew verse) fixed to the doorways upstairs. bert ran a taxi firm from the house, Bert’s Taxis, as advertised in the Jewish Echo.

The Skaifes also took on a lodger, Geoffrey Boothroyd, a technical expert for ICI, and an expert on guns. Boothroyd later married Agnes Henderson Wright and they purchased 11 Regent Park Square, two doors down the street. Skaife and Boothroyd both became fans of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and Boothroyd wrote to Fleming in 1956 to correct him on certain aspects of weapons use, suggesting Bond use a Walther PPK pistol instead of his favoured Beretta, for instance.

Fleming thanked him by introducing the character Major Boothroyd of Q Branch, who morphed in the movies into the character “Q”, played memorably by Desmond Llewelyn, John Cleese and Ben Wishaw. The whole story has its own blog post, Now Pay Attention, 007, including the tale of Boothroyd’s Smith & Wesson that appeared on the first edition cover of “From Russia with Love”, after suitable modification by the Skaifes in the basement at No 17, and which got him mixed up in a murder investigation. The gun is now in the Royal Armouries Museum. It apparently features the initials of Harold’s young son, Richard, scribbled on the back of the hand grips when he was given the job of polishing them.

Boothroyd and Fleming finally met in Glasgow in 1961, when Fleming was interviewd by STV. Source: Ian Fleming Estate

The modified snub-nosed Smith & Wesson M&P from the cover of From Russia with Love, now in the Royal Armouries museum. Credit: Royal Armouries

Rear of 17 Regent Park square, 1960, with the Skaife’s Heron dinghy, and teddy bear. Source: Richard Skaife

Additions and corrections welcomed.

References