#gowans — Public Fediverse posts

A very Edinburgh gothic horror story: the thread about the demolition of Rockville

The Merchiston Pagoda; Tottering Towers; Crazy Manor; Sugar Loaf House; the Chinese House; the Strangest House Edinburgh Ever Built. Call it what you like. Rockville is (was) one of the most important and inspired buildings in Victorian Scotland. Perhaps ever. And it was unceremoniously demolished in 1966.

Rockville, immediately prior to demolition in 1966. A colour photo, the only colour photo I have ever seen, courtesy and with kind permission of Derrick Johnstone

Rockville‘s architect, builder and original resident was Sir James Gowans; stone mason, quarry master, builder, architect, engineer, railway contractor, theorist, philanthropist and local politician. Gowans’ father let quarries, including nearby Redhall, and James would take on the role of lessee amd quarrymaster there. He developed a deep understanding of and interest in stone as a building material and would build almost exclusively in it – the name Rockville for his new project was therefore entirely appropriate. When he set out to build it he used not only his own stone, but reputedly stone from a quarry in every county in Scotland, as well as from England, the Continent and as far away as China.

Sir James Gowans

It’s hard to summarise how important Rockville is. Or was. On the face of it, it looks like an extreme expression of Victorian Gothic, the romantic fever dream of a madman. But this belies the fact it is actually a structure of incredible rationality, whose design adhered rigidly to strict system of geometry, repetition, patterns and materials. It has as much in common with the work and theories of the Modernist Le Corbusier as it does with some of his Victorian contemporaries.

Rockville, a contemporary illustration from “The Builder”, 1860

James’ theories formed a complete system of design and building – and Rockville was the ultimate expression of this. The whole house rigidly conformed to a rule of 2ft x 2ft units, a room could not be 3 times longer than it was wide or 1½ times taller – it had to be in twos. The gingerbread house effect on the exterior of Rockville was actually a dressed stone framework carefully infilled with decorative rubble and this “skeleton” formed the basic unit of the house. Everything else in the entire building was some sort of multiple or fraction of that. The house was 26 units (or 52 feet) wide. its two principle storeys each 7 units (14 feet) tall. From the front, the projecting right bay was 9 units wide, the central bay 7, the entranceway 6 and the tower 4. The top of the cupola which capped the tower reached a height of 33 units or 66 feet.

The “gingerbread house” effect as a result of Gowans design and building system. The frieze on the wall was by James’ father-in-law and shows him, as a master mason and thinker

There was no angle in his house that wasn’t a right angle, or a limited division thereof. It had to be 0°, 30°, 45° etc. and nothing inbetween. All the mouldings were based on right angles, regular octagons or circles (or halfs thereof). The only places where James allowed himself to break his system was on the mansard rooflines (where the overall profile was a triangle with sides at 60°, but there is a steeper section with a slight flares at the bottom to help with runoff) and the base of the cupola atop the tower, which also had a slight flare to its lower profile.

Looking towards the “pagoda” tower, notice the steep pitch of the roof and the decorative ironwork, the pattern being a repeating unit of the monogram “G” (for Gowans) and daisies; the Scots word for that flower being “gowans”

I won’t go on too much about the house here – I’ll do that in another thread more dedicated to the details of the house, but suffice to say some of James Gowans’ ideas were a century ahead of their time. He went from building rather dull and predictable Georgian New Town blocks to Rockville almost out of nowhere, in only a few years. His inventiveness, skill and understanding of the materials he worked with, strong sense of colour (the house glistened green or red or gold or silver in the light depending on how the sun caught his carefully selected stones.) and his attention to quality and perfection marked him out. His biographer, Duncan McAra, says he was “not only one of the most important of Scotland’s Architects, but one of the most original European Master Builders of the 19th century“. And Rockville was his most important creation – it was Gowans in its purest form.

James built Rockville for himself and his young family but his wife, Elizabeth Mitchell, tragically died in 1858 before they had moved in, drowning in her bath in a house they were renting in Greenbank at the time. She was the daughter of another railway contractor, James Mitchell of Ross & Mitchell, a tunnelling expert who had built the Scotland Street Tunnel. Gowans would remarry and with his children, new wife and the family that followed, settled down to a good life at Rockville.

“Rockville House” not long after completion. The girl in the white dress may be either his daughter Rosa Jane or Isabella. A photograph by George Washington Wilson. CC-by-SA 4.0 University of Aberdeen GWW collection

He was a successful business man, a builder, quarrymaster, railway engineer or architect as required, but sometimes his schemes did not come off as intended. Ultimately he over-reached himself. Together with Frederick Thomas Pilikington – another rogue architect with an uncanny skill with stone – he designed and overly-invested in a new theatre for the city he loved. The concept of the New Edinburgh Theatre, winter gardens and aquarium was ahead of its time and far too big for the city and the venture soon failed. James lost heavily on it. He organised the city’s International Exhibition of 1886, which was a triumph, but again he put too much of his own time, effort and money into this project and it broke him; financially and physically. He was bankrupted and had to move out of Rockville and let it, his health was never to be the same again and four years later he was dead from the prostasis that he had long been suffering from.

The International Exhibition Pavilion in the Meadows, 1886. From the Illustrated London News, February 1886

Rockville was initially used as a preparatory school for the entrance exams for the Civil Service and Army Commissions, but soon found a careful new owner in a family who had a similar mindset around public service as James did. This was the Harrison family headed by Dr John Harrison CBE LLD, (1847-1922) and who moved into the house in 1891. John was the son of Sir George Harrison, former Lord Provost – if you’ve ever wondered where Harrison Park or Harrison Road get their names, it’s from Sir George. John was a two times Town Councillor, two times runner up for the election of Lord Provost, and a council member of the Old Edinburgh Club.

John Harrison, picture from an obituary in the Edinburgh Evening News, 10th July 1922

The Harrisons added an extra bathroom, a garage for a car and electric and Rockville remained fundamentally unchanged. His widow and daughters lived on there after John’s death in 1922 and its last permanent resident, Helen Roberts (Mrs John Harrison) died in January 1949. At this juncture, the house was put up for sale; it would never again have a long-term occupant. In May, Lyon & Turnbull listed for auction a huge array of “SUPERIOR HOUSEHOLD FURNISHINGS” including the “silver removed from Rockville” as the house’s contents began to be dispersed.

Rockville in 1964

The house then came into new ownership and was partitioned and sublet. Occupants came and went: Newton; Crawford; Brown. Classified adverts in the Evening News throughout the 1950s list various items of furniture and clothing for sale from the address. The house was in decline however; Gowans’ masonry was true and sound but the interior timbers had dry rot. In 1960 it was purchased by Mr Raj Bodasing, a retiree sugar cane farmer from South Africa who moved in with his family, and for a brief spell it was once again a single family home. However Raj’s untimely death in 1962 saw the house sold again. In 1962, on the same day that it was announced that the Corporation were preparing a Building Preservation Order to conserve Charlotte Square, a proposal was refused to demolish Rockville and replace it with a Mormon church for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Scottish Development Department blocked this application and the house went back on the market. However being unoccupied it rapidly began to deteriorate further and was soon on its way to becoming just another decaying Victorian villa in a city filled with decaying Victorian villas.

Sale listing of Rockville. Scotsman, 5th June 1963

In 1963 it was purchased by the local building company James Miller & Partners. Now known as Miller Homes, this was the company of former Lord Provost Sir James Miller who had built much of interwar suburban Edinburgh. Millers let it be known that their plan was one of demolition and replacement. Local Councillor Maurice Heggie, for the Progressives, and a group of architects including Alan Reiach spoke up for the conservation of the house. He noted that while a number of Napier Road residents considered it “a monstrosity which should be pulled down“, it could make an ideal addition to Napier Technical College. Patrick Murray, curator of the Museum of Childhood, said Rockville was a test-case for the conservation of more recent historic buildings (at this stage it was only 106 years old).

The Edinburgh Corporation Housing Committee at West Pilton, November 1962. Maurice Heggie is on the extreme right. Edinburgh Evening News photo.

Millers were unmoved and on August 6th 1965, the Dean of Guild Court, an institution once chaired by Gowans, granted permission to them to demolish Rockville. There was an instant howl of public outrage. Millers were at this time still very much an Edinburgh company, with a reputation to maintain, so as a conciliatory gesture, director Roger Miller wrote to the Scotsman on August 10th announcing that the company was willing to sell the building, at cost, to any society prepared to face the cost of its preservation and adaptation for public use. A three month deadline, expiring in November that year, was set.

November came and went, and no offers were forthcoming. Millers had not yet decided when the house would be demolished so in the meantime, three local students set about raising a petition to have it publicly preserved. Douglas May (19) and Raymond Fraser (18) were studying law and 19 year old David Alves, Art. They had spoken to that outspoken advocate for the preservation of Victorian architecture, Sir John Betjeman, and he had encouraged them that the majority of preservation societies just did not have the money to buy and renovate the house and that state support was needed. The students collected 2,500 signatures and hoped that the Corporation might be enticed to buy the house and preserve it as a museum of Victoriana and public garden. Someone else suggested that it should instead be offered to Disneyland in the hope they might move it stone-by-stone to the US.

Rockville in 1964

But Millers were running out of patience, they had a business to run and a bottom line to serve. On January 12th 1966, the Scotsman reported Roger Miller as saying demolition would come “very soon” – the structure’s condition had been made worse by fire-raising by vandals in previous weeks. The students lodged their petition with the Corporation to try and have a stay of execution granted to allow them to present a plan to have the house bought by the City and converted into a children’s home, funded by a public appeal for £25-35,000 for renovation, and have the building placed into trust under the auspices of “a national charity“. The Corporation’s Planning Sub-Committee rejected this on January 19th. On January 27th, the vultures moved in to pick over the carcase of Rockville, the Scotsman reporting that bulk of its Victoriana was “trundled off in lorries to London dealers“, leaving little for local sale. On the 29th, a “gang of Cockney demolition workers” moved in; the lead was stripped from the roof and the rain poured in while the Scotsman’s reporter looked upon the wrecking squad ripping up the dance floor. Miller’s wrecking ball did the rest.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/monochrome_trains/4588896602/

Millers erased Rockville and ploughed up and levelled its gardens. In its place they erected 3 very mundane blocks of flats quaintly insipid named “the Limes” (Rockville was famed for its Pinetum, not its Lime trees). Gowans’ beautiful, signature gateposts remain, like the gateway to a cemetery someone has desecrated by building upon. Perhaps the greatest insult to Gowans’ memory and ideals was that the brick he had fought so hard to keep out of the city as Lord Dean of Guild Court was used to build upon the grave of Rockville, complete with a cladding of synthetic Fifestone.

“The Limes”, James Miller & Partners,

It has been said that the end of Rockville was inevitable – just another Victorian villa when people wanted bright new things. The irony is that Gowans’ rigid adherence to his geometric theory, his building system and his prefabrication made Rockville right at home in the 1960s. That year, the city further danced upon the grave of his career by spending £30,000 demolishing the Synod Hall, the former New Edinburgh Theatre that almost ruined him. Sadly it turns out that they demolished one failed concert hall to make way for another, which in turn failed and would never be built. Instead a painful gap site was opened in the city and lay there for almost the next 30 years. To complete the addition of insult to injury, a few years previously they had spent £386,000 building a multi-storey car park upon the Castle Terrace Gardens, a strip of land that James Gowans had purchased at his own expense to form a pleasant public garden for the street.

The hole on Castle Terrace left by the Synod Hall would sit empty for the best part of 30 years while schemes to fill it came and went. Scotsman, December 3rd, 1966.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Rose Mount: the thread about a long gone West End villa and model housing schemes

This thread was originally written and published in June 2022.

What better way to start the day than with a quick refresher on why this unusual and distinctive block is so called and on a little of its history:

Tweet by @LizzieHelenMay on Rosemount Buildings, 19/6/2022

The name Rosemount is taken from a villa of that name – Rose Mount – which once occupied this corner of land that was then outside the city limits. It was the domain of William Morison, a writer (in Scottish law; a Solicitor). Morison feud this land from the Heriot Trust in 1790 (under old Scottish feudal property law, a smaller portion of land – the feu – was split off of a larger holding for development, but the owner of the latter remained the feudal superior of the former, and was paid a feu duty as such.)

!799-1800 Edinburgh Post Office directory

Morison owned the plot of land south of the road to Glasgow via Linlithgow, and surrounded by the Dalry House estate to the west, Bonar of Grove to the south and Walker of Gardner’s Hall to the east. Note at this time the modern street name of Morrison Street did not exist (Morrison is a modern rendering of the traditional Morison). Instead of a single street name, the road was progressively Rose Mount, Tobago Street and then the more ancient lost place names of Castle Barns and Orchardfield.

“Edinburgh Castle from the South West”, early 19th century, Patrick Nasmyth. This view is taken from the area known as Orchardfield, which was a literal name for a portion of orchard land long linked to the Castle. This area is now occupied by Bread Street. From Edinburgh University Art Collection, EU0974, © 2020 University of Edinburgh.

Morison also owned the properties of Whitehouse and Adiefield in the same stretch.

Ainslie Town Plan, 1804, showing Morison at Rosemount and his neighbours. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Tobago Street was so called because the owner of the land here was one Nathaniel Davidson “of the Island of Tobago“. We can assume a plantation owner of some description. Castle Barns and Orchardfield dated back to the early Kings of Scotland, David I having an orchard and barns there in 1120 to service the castle with produce. Morison and Rose Mount are first mentioned in the feuing of 1790s and by the 1817 revision of the Town Plan, a bay-fronted house can be seen looking down an ornamental driveway and avenue along the Glasgow Road, perfectly positioned to catch the evening sun and make a statement to anyone arriving in the city from the direction of West Lothian, Stirling and Glasgow.

Rosemount, indicated by the arrow. Kirkwood’s Town Plan of 1817. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Morison is “the late” William Morison by 1824, when his lands here called “Morison’s Park” are offered for feuing. It is noted at this time that the street that would later be called Morrison Street was intended to be called St. Cuthbert’s Street. By 1849 the city is growing up around Rose Mount, the driveway and avenue seem somewhat suppressed and the structure to the rear of the house is in ruin. By this time Morrison Street (note the different spelling) is clearly established, but the buildings along its north side are not as of yet.

1849 OS Town Plan, showing Rose Mount on Morrison Street. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Morrison Street was probably not named for our William Morison, but for Thomas Morison or Morrison – a wealthy builder from Muthill near Crieff in Pertshire – whose bequest founded the Morrison’s Academy private school in Crieff. After Thomas Morison’s death, the trustees of his estate – lead by one Captain Hugh Morrison – bought William Morison’s land to the north of what would become Morrison Street and developed the streets of Dewar Place, Torphicen Street etc. By 1848, Rose Mount (site marked X) falls into disuse and is swallowed up by the Caledonian Railway coal yard, By 1854 it is struck off the Post Office Directory but the name is commemorated with an entry for Rosebank Cottages (confusingly on the old Grove lands to the east.)

OS 1876 town plan showing location of former Rose Mount house. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Rosebank Cottages were built between 1854 and 1857 and are a charming Colonies-style housing scheme (but not by the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company) modelled on Shaw’s Houses in Pilrig. The Rosebank Cottages were designed by Alexander MacGregor to provide “flatted cottages for the better class of mechanics“. Each house contained living room, two bedrooms, a scullery and a toilet.

Rosebank Cottages.

The interior layouts and construction were by a young James Gowans, later Sir James; architect, builder, quarrymaster, local politician and businessman extraordinaire. At Rosebank, Gowans strived to give the working man and his family a small, self-contained house with its own front door, this was one of the reasons for the “deck access” of the upper level flats, accessed by a common external staircase that Gowans designed the ironwork for.

Deck access to upper flats at Rosebank Cottages, with original Gowans ironwork on the staircases.

Inside there was the luxury of a hallway, meaning there were no rooms accessed by first passing through another. He also pioneered soil pipe vents at roof level for the water closets to vent the smells away from the properties (a standard feature of toilet plumbing that we now all take for granted) and an innovative passive ventilation system which was pre-heated by drawing air in past the kitchen range grate and extracting it through a flue in the roof ridge. As if to prove a point (or perhaps because of his financial circumstances), Gowans moved into the recently completed Rosebank Cottages, living at number 34 for 4 years.

At around the same time, John Taylor and Son of Princes Street, “Cabinet makers and Upholsterers to Her Majesty the Queen” opened a large cabinet works to the south, the Rosemount Cabinet Works.

OS 1876 Town Plan showing the Rosemount Works. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

I can’t find a good photo of the Rosemount Works, but it’s noted as being built in brick, and it can be seen in the corner of these dark and grainy Britain From Above aerial photos. Taylor and Son went into liquidation in 1946 although it was communicated in the local papers that the business was being continued by some of its management. By 1951, it was a saleroom for second-hand furniture being operated by Findlater Smith Ltd.

The Rosemount Works, from Britain From Above.

The year following the construction of the Rosemount Works, 1858, the Rosemount Buildings were built to the plans of William Lambie Moffatt, to provide “model industrial housing” comprising of 96 brick-built flats in a around a private quadrangle.

Rosemount Buildings, exterior view. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor

The styling was very industrial itself, making extensive use of cream brick details. Moffatt (who incidentally had spent some of the younger years of his life at 8 Morrison Street), made his name designing poorhouses in Scotland and North England. Most of Moffatt’s poorhouses (or workhouses as they were known in England). These buildings were in a traditional, stone-built style, but clearly something influenced him in the radically different, dare I say “English”, style of Rosemount Buildings.

Rosemount Buildings, interior view of the quadrangle. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor

Again, Rosemount Buildings used deck access, with corner stair wells rather than external staircases, to provide each house with a private entrance. There was a great concern around public health at this time and it was felt that such arrangements were more sanitary for workers housing than the traditional Scottish “close”. The traditional tenement drying green was turned on its head by this design, being a central feature of the quadrangle, rather than hidden away behind the block.

Rosemount Buildings, deck access stairwell, could easily be from a barracks or factory. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Kim Traynor

In later life, Moffatt designed schools for the Free Church and – after the 1872 Education Act – for the School Boards, but these generally seem to be again in the now traditional stone, gothic style, preferred by the clients, e.g. the Portobello Board School on Duddingston Park.

Former Portobello Board School by William Lambie Moffatt

Moffatt’s Gothic style in these schools is quite distinctive, they are more ecclesiastical looking than the style favoured by later School Board architects – e.g. “Lovers Loan Board School“, now Leith Walk Primary School.

Lover’s Loan, now Leith Walk Primary. Note the ecclesiastical gothic style, similar to Portobello

Those unnecessarily grand buttresses at Lover’s Loan could easily have come off a cathedral, and were repeated by him on the visually similar Bristo (later Marshall Street) Board School, and the corner tower could have been lifted directly off of the plans for Lover’s Loan with only a few small adjustments.

Bristo Board School, another Lambie Moffat design for the Edinburgh School Board.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

The house that pens built: the thread about the many lives of Waverley House

There is a building in Craiglockhart in Edinburgh that frequently comes up in property listings with the romantic and ancient sounding name of Perdrixknowe .

Perdrixknowe, from a property listing

The name is straightforward enough in its etymology, Perdrix- is the French for Partridge, –knowe is the Scots for a hillock or a mound (from the English Knoll), often specifically in the context of a gathering place for fairies. James Steuart, in his history of Colinton Parish, records that the Partridge Knowe, or Patrickes Know (Perdrix frequently became Patrick in Scots placenames) was the rise in the ground to the north of the Craiglockhart and Craighouse hills.

Roy’s Lowland Great Map, c. 1750, showing a slight suggestion of a rise in the ground immediately north of the Craiglockhart Hills. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

There are a couple of other –knowe place names in the general area, e.g. Broomieknowe just to the south, Kingsknowe to the west. John Thomson helpfully records the name in the maps of his 1830s “Atlas of Scotland“. But I can locate neither Perdrix– nor Partridge– knowes in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for Midlothian of 1852-3 or in any archived newspapers of that period, suggesting it had already fallen out of favour as a local place name by that time.

“Partridge Know” on Thomson’s Map of 1830. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Certainly Perdrixknowe, as ancient a name as it may be, was only given to the house here as recently as 1990 when it was converted into retirement flats. When it was first built back in 1884, by the genius architect, local politician and quarrymaster that was Sir James Gowans, it was known instead as Waverley House. We should not be troubled by this name in the slightest, it was a very common trend back then to give something a referential name to the works of Sir Walter Scott. Except in this case, all is not quite what it seems.

Waverley House, OS 1:25 inch map of 1892. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The house was built for a wealthy local businessman by the name of Duncan Cameron (1825-1901). The Cameron family owned the stationery firm of Macniven & Cameron based on Blair Street in the Old Town. The brothers John and Donald Cameron had joined the stationery wholesaling firm of Nisbet Macniven in the 1840s and soon ended up first running and then taking a share in it, the name changing to Macniven & Cameron in 1845.

Duncan Cameron, 1886, a portrait by his daughter Mary. With permission, from the research of Derek Prime

Duncan joined his older brothers in the business in 1850 and in 1862 patented a new and improved fountain pen nib which he christened The Waverley. This was featured a fine, upturned point so as to better write on rougher papers; a double efficiency that both sped up the writing speed of clerks and also allowed them to work on cheaper papers.

Macniven & Cameron patent for the Waverley nib

The name was of course taken from the works of Walter Scott, as just about everything popular in Scotland seemed to be at the time, and the tin in which the nibs came even had his image on it.

Waverley Pen nib tin, from an auction listing

The Waverley nib was a smash hit success, it was affordable, it was effective and because it could write on cheaper papers its utility was wide, “a luxury for the million” as the testimonial from the Argus newspaper says on the tin. With an official contract to supply pens to Her Majesty’s Government Offices, it was with good cause that they proudly boated that “Macniven & Cameron’s Pens Are the Best” on the box. Their nibs were much in demand in India amongst the Imperial civil service, indeed their Hindoo nibs of 1873, designed for caligraphy and sold in a tin with an Indian elephant upon it, may have been deliberately aimed at it.

With famed stable mates The Owl (“Par Excellence the Ladies’ Pen”) and The Pickwick (for “Swift Commercial Writing“) in their portfolio, the company became one of the names in pens and the Camerons became fabulously wealthy. From the names of these best sellers the company took its familiar slogan, “They came as a boon and a blessing to men, The Pickwick, The Owl and the Waverley Pen“.

“MacNiven & Cameron’s patent steel pens. They come as a boon and a blessing to men, the Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen”, an American advertisement. Notice the prominent position of the Scott Monument in the background.

Macniven & Cameron didn’t make their own pens, they did not have the specialist fine manufacturing base in Edinburgh to do this in the required volumes, and so instead they subcontracted the work out. Such was the demand however that in 1900 they acquired a factory in Birmingham, the epicentre of this specialist manufacturing in Britain, to bring production in house. The city housed eleven of the top twelve manufacturers of pens in the 1930s, producing ten-to-fifteen thousand pens per week.

Macniven ~& Cameron vans, early 20th century. Note that on the left advertises the main Waverley Works on Blair Street, the Bowersburn Works in Leith that produced their paper products and the Pen Works in Birmingham. With permission, from the research of Derek Prime

The company advertised widely in the press and was quite canny, being a prominent adopter of railway advertising and made sure adverts for its wares were prominent in main line stations. A certain generation of rail traveller may still recall the enamelled signs that used to prominently greet the travelling public.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/allybeag/2142739598

Back to Duncan Cameron, like all self respecting Victorian businessmen he expressed his success in life by having built for himself a fabulous villa. For his architect he chose James Gowans, one of the most creative and distinctive local architects and one who had a passion for masonry worked from the nearby Redhall quarries.

Northeast elevation of Waverley House as it appeared in 1884. Architectural drawing by Louise Bonnington in 1987. With permission, from the research of Derek Prime

The detailing of the house itself heavily referenced the source of Cameron’s wealth; look at the mouldings around the pediments and cornicing and also the chimney pots and you will see that these are pen nibs. James Gowans liked this sort of visual pun, his own house – Rockville – was decorated with daisies, his surname being the Scots term for that flower. The inverted crow-stepped detail around the main window is a feature distinctive in the work of Gowans.

Waverley House is covered in Waverley Pens

A description of the house is given in a 1902 advertisement for its sale, a “substantially built and commodious two-storey villa, with area flat behind and conservatory in front, sheltered from the east; Containing dining room, drawing room, parlour, five bedrooms, four dressing rooms, bathroom, 2 WCs, kitchen, scullery, pantriea (pantry), servants’ accommodation; Laundry with fixed tubs and boiler; Hot and Cold water throughout; Ample cellerage. There is an Acre of Garden Ground.” The photograph below shows the main front door, flanked by an ornamental stained glass window and one of the conservatories that wrapped around the front of the building.

The Camerons (Duncan in top hat) – and Glen the dog – in their carriage, outside the front of Waverley House, in the 1880s. With permission, from the research of Derek Prime

The grand staircase balusters I have seen being described as based on fountain pens, but I can’t find a photo however but the interior photo below suggests that this similarity may be purely symbolic, unless those are bundles of pen bodies?

Are the balusters of the staircase bundles of pen bodies?

Duncan Cameron was well known throughout Edinburgh but kept himself out of public life and municipal affairs. He was however known to the people of Blair Street where his factory was based and his obituary notes that he was kind and generous to “many a poor widow in the neighbourhood“. With plenty of money to spare, Duncan senior bought himself the Oban Times in 1882. His parents both hailed from Glencoe and he maintained a keen interest in and sympathies with the lot of the Highlander, extending to being able to converse in Gàidhlig. The Camerons were well known in the area and were referred to as the Pen Folk. He installed his son (also Duncan) as editor of his newspaper. He held his position as Chairman of the Board of the family business until his very end: he died suddenly in February 1901, aged 76. Duncan junior took over the business but did not keep on Waverley House; it was for sale in 1902 and by 1903 it was being lived in by the “Misses Geikie“.

Father and son, Duncan Cameron senior (left) and junior. A painting probably in the gardens of Waverley House, by Mary Cameron. With permission, from the research of Derek Prime

In 1890, Duncan junior had returned to Edinburgh to join his father in the pen business, which had left a vacancy at the top of the Oban Times. This was filled by the next son, Waverley, who was named after the pen. Sadly Waverley drowned in a tragic yachting accident off nearby Lismore just a year later in June 1891. He had been sailing with friends when their boat was swamped by a sudden squall; Waverley’s hat was all that was recovered of him and his friend, Donald Campbell, later succumbed to his exposure. Only Allan MacDonald survived the accident. His grieving father had a large Celtic cross erected on the Lismore shore as a memorial, close to where the boat had gone down.

Waverley Cameron memorial cross, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Philippe Giabbanelli

After his father’s death, Duncan junior kept the pen side of the business going but massively expanded the manufacturing stationery side of things, with new factories opened in Leith and London. He ran the company from London until he retired to Oban, his son Waverley B. Cameron taking over. He was chairman of the Oban Times, until his death in 1954.

In 1911, the Oban Times editor’s chair was filled by Flora Anne, Duncan senior’s eldest daughter, when she and her husband retired to Oban. By this time she was known as Mrs Macaulay, her second husband being George Macaulay, a Superintendent of the Edinburgh City Police but also a highlander. The Macaulays had a house at Argyll Lodge, but also an apartment above the Oban Times‘ offices on the second floor.

Flora Macaulay

George passed away in 1924, but Flora remained involved in the running of the Oban Times for the final 47 years of her life. She was a supporter of Highland culture and the Gaelic language and in 1947 helped establish the Macaulay Cup for camanachd (shinty), which is still going. She died in Oban in 1958 at the age of 99, still working on the paper despite having been invalided in an accident and confined to her home since 1952. She was returned to the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh to be buried alongside her first husband and near the Cameron family plot, a vast Celtic cross with Pictish details marking the spot.

Flora Macaulay’s grave alongside her first husband, the Gaelic scholar the Rev. Robert Blair. It is marked by a huge Celtic cross adorned with Pictish-inspired carvings. CC-by-SA 4.0 Stephencdickson

Duncan senior’s younger daughter Mary, who painted the portrait of him earlier in this post, was a renowned artist and sister to Duncan junior, Waverley and Flora. She travelled to Spain in 1900 to study art and fell in love with the country, becoming known for her Spanish scenes. She had a particular skill for painting animals, having practised using the family dogs and her own horse as models and by taking classes at the Edinburgh Veterinary College to better understand animal anatomy.

Mary Cameron in 1909 in her Studio in Spain.

In the late 1939 Waverley House was taken over by the Scottish Wayfarer’s Welfare Society as a boys home, it having been evicted from its own premises in Stockbridge by wartime Civil Defence. It took in boys from broken homes or off the street – usually turned over by sympathisers in the authorities as an alternative to the punishment of a reformatory – who found themselves in the city “penniless, tattered, despondent and hungry“. The organisation could house around 25 to 30 boys at a time, they typically stayed for six months before moving on to employment such as agricultural labour or the armed forces. The Society had only been established in 1935, starting off with the donation of £10 and use of an abandoned police station on Hamilton Place by Miss Dorothea Maitland.

It was a very progressive place for the time and while it was initially set up just to be a night shelter, it soon took on a wider purpose as a reactionary response to the ill effects of institutionalisation at the time. It sought to provide its boys with the caring, family atmosphere that was missing from their lives, with each resident being assigned a “Housemother” and a “Housefather” from amongst the staff. It had a rule of never turning a boy away, and never holding someone’s past against them and sought to re-integrate wayward youths back into society with a sense of purpose and self-worth. It was reported as having had a good success rate, with 51 out of 55 boys cared for in 1957 passing successfully on from the house into work.

“Dear Mum and Dad”. Article about the work of Waverley House from the Evening News, 9th May 1957

The house parents rose at 430AM to ready the first boys for their work or training, and all boys had to return by 10PM, later on Friday and Saturday evenings. Even after they left the boys were encouraged to treat Waverley House as their family home. The Wayfarer’s Society were still there as late as 1983 when they advertised for staff for the establishment to help care for its nine residents. The trustees of the society sold the building to Ogilivie Homes in 1989, who converted it to the retirement complex of Perdrixknowe and started it on the next chapter of its life.

Thank you to John Grant who has allowed me to include some of the research of his late father-in-law, Derek Prime, who was a resident of Perdrixknowe and took a keen interest in research its history, as well as that of the Cameron family and Sir James Gowans.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret