Fifteen Regent Park Square was built c 1865 by Daniel McNicol, as part of one of his three Georgian-style Strathbungo terraces. Originally number 27, it was renumbered in 1931 as 15. It is most famous for its links to Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The terraces were initially owned by McNicol for rent, and the first recorded tenant of 15, in 1865, was Catherine Irvine, followed a year later by a John Watson.

James Harrington

In 1868-9 the house was occupied by JP Harrington, a wholesale Berlin wool and smallware merchant, of 26 Jamaica Street.

James Paxton Harrington was born in Coldstream in 1836, the son of a draper. In the 1861 census he was a haberdasher’s assistant living with his parents and four sisters in Cleland Street, Gorbals, but that December he married Mary Chapman and started a family of his own. He soon set up his own firm of JP Harrington, a wholesale haberdashery, selling Berlin wool and smallwares. Berlin wool work was a kind of decorative embroidery on canvas that was hugely popular in the 1850s-1880s, used for furniture covers, cushions, bags, or even clothing.

Example of Berlin work. A ladies purse from the 1840s. Source: LA County Museum of Art

The business must have flourished, as it moved from St Enoch Square via Jamaica Street to South Hanover Street off George Square, and he moved through a succession of addresses; Allanton Terrace in Queens Park, Regent Park Square, Beechmont in Lenzie, Craig-Rossie House in Langbank, and Ibroxhill.

His business was described in the 1875 PO directory as “manufacturer, importer, and warehouseman, Berlin wools, knitting yarns, foreign and English needle-work, traced embroideries, jewellery, leather and cabinet goods, beads, haberdashery, smallwares, wholesale only, shippers supplied on best terms.” Try singing it to the theme of Are You Being Served? Going up…

The business almost went up in flames when the Hanover Street warehouse roof caught fire in February 1886. The fire spread to adjacent premises as the firemen struggled to access the buildings, and £12,000 of damage was caused, mainly by the water used .

No matter, as the warehouse went up in flames again in October 1897, the fire starting this time in a restaurant in the atrium. £15,000 of damage was caused, much of it to Harrington’s stock that was either smoke- or fire-damaged, or soaked. In the following months the press carried adverts for sales all over Scotland organised by canny merchants who had acquired large lots of the fire-damaged stock at auction. The warehouse was fully insured, though the North British Daily Mail noted it had suffered four fires in the last ten years .

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