A short (and approximate) timeline
We can deduce the approximate dates of the buildings at the Cross from their first appearance in the Valuation Roll, the annual list of ratepayers in the area. This is available online through the Scotland’s People website but currently for every 10 years from 1855 to 1915 and every five years from 1920 to 1940. Builders occasionally put dates on the buildings prior to completion. The Census every ten years can help, but is (by definition) a Census of people, not of shops or businesses. Newspaper reports are much less common than would be expected.
Apart from the New Kilpatrick Paris Church, the oldest building at the Cross was originally known as the Kirkwood Buildings. This was not in the 1875 Valuation Roll, but appears in the Census of April 1881 with all the flats occupied. We know it today as the shops Okome and Rose ’n’ Thyme on Drymen Road at the northern corner of New Kirk Square.
An early inhabitant of the Buildings was married in January 1880 and gave their address as Stewart Place – this is not conclusive but suggests the latest building date was 1879.
The other candidate for ‘first building’ is Eaton Place better known as the northern half of the shops by the railway station (currently Pizza Hut and The Lantern, with Dental FX upstairs). A child was born at Eton Stables on Christmas Day 1879. Her name was Elizabeth Meldrum and I have described the family history in my post on Meldrum’s Tree and Meldrum’s Stables (link). She also features later in this post.
Next came Stewart Terrace on Drymen Road, with Killermont Terrace on the north end; in modern terms this runs from Marie Curie to Marks and Spencers. It is in the 1885 Valuation Roll, but not in the 1881 Census. However, while we would see these as a row of shops today, it was built as houses with front gardens initially (probably easiest to imagine when looking at the Oxfam shop). The first switch to commercial use was in the late 1930s.
About the same time as Stewart Terrace, Lindsay Place was completed at the south end of Eaton Place; it is now home to Leo’s, Station Barber, Peter Ivins and Clyde Property. Soon after it was built the name changed to Melville Place. This has a dating stone of 1881 on the building.
Douglas Place was built next, in several phases over 10-15 years:
- The first phase (between 1881 and 1885) included the buildings at the south-east end of New Kirk Road i.e. Vanity Fair, No. 40, Christie’s, The Bookmonger, Wells and Co. These were built as residential properties, with the exception of the eastern half of Vanity Fair which was a shop.
- The second phase (between 1891 and 1895) was on Roman Road, the building that stands empty that previously housed the Bank of Scotland only (not the rest of the row).
- The third phase (between 1895 and 1901) extended the row down to the current Bulbir’s (Post Office) and round the corner into what is now called Douglas Place.
Douglas Park Terrace is the row of shops on Milngavie Road, on the west side just south of the railway bridge at Hillfoot. It does not feature in the 1895 Valuation Roll, but there is a record of a death registered there in May 1900, which gives a date range.
The final piece of the Victorian/Edwardian shopping bequest was the New Kirk Square Buildings in 1906. In modern terms this starts at Grace and Favour on Roman Road, runs west to the corner where Slater Hogg and Howison have their office at the traffic lights, along Drymen Road to Hillhart Café on the corner of New Kirk Road, and then east on New Kirk Road to Bearsden Funeralcare. Shops opened for business in 1907.
The Kirkwood Buildings: the first modern shops at the Cross
In 1860 this area was marked on the map as a field of New Kirk Farm.
Between 1875 and 1881 a new building referred to in the 1881 Census as the Kirkwood Buildings appeared. In modern terms, it is at the corner of New Kirk Road and Drymen Road. Looking at the first floor you can see the architectural difference that occurs just above the right-hand side of the Marie Curie shop sign. I can spot differences in the colour/weathering of the stone, the style of windows, and ‘the bit below the roof’ (the fascia?):
The difference is also visible from the air – the building on the corner has a different roofline to those on either side:
When this building appears in the 1881 Census, it is well-populated (see below, the Census was taken on Sunday 3rd April) so presumably the building was completed in the late 1870s and at the latest in 1880:
There is a plumber’s shop, then a shoemaker’s (seemingly next door), then a baker’s shop.
About halfway down the page we can see that Ralph Abercromby was a master baker, employing two men, three boys and one girl. Just below his name we can see Annie Kay, aged 23 and from Inverness, was a shop girl who lived there as well. At the bottom of the page, we can see Thomas Morton gives his occupation as “vanman (bread)”, so he was probably one of Ralph Abercromby’s employees as well.
Ralph Abercromby had left by 1885, replaced by Thomas McCubbin – who, in tun, had a similarly short stay as by 1891 the baker was Gabriel Hamilton.
The shoemaker’s shop (Rose ‘n’ Thyme) was a drapers by 1885, run by Isabella Langlands. She remained until between 1901 and 1905 when the business was taken over by Maggie McPhail, previously a neighbour and dressmaker.
The plumber’s shop (the southern half of Marie Curie) was run by Thomas Doig, printer in 1885, but by 1895 it had become a butcher’s shop, rented by J&R MacFarlane. In 1905 another butcher, Robert White, was running it.
We have a photo and now we know the sequence of those who rented the shops, we can see that the combination of Robert White, Langlands and G Hamilton date this photo to between 1901 and 1904:
I have taken this from Sheena Peters’ book and have reproduced the text to make this quite clear. The older house to the right was the New Kirk Farmhouse, later Meldrum’s house when he ran the stables for carriage hire – for more on this, see my post by clicking this link here).
This approximate comparison from 2024 shows that the entrance to the flats above has been moved. In the black and white photo, it is in-between Hamilton’s and Langland’s shops. At some point, a predecessor to Okome expanded to take the passageway within their shop. The modern entry is the old doorway to Robert White’s butcher’s shop. You can tell this by comparing the door position to the three windows above.
Thus, we can tell that Okome is on the footprint of the original baker’s shop (plus a passageway), Rose ’n’ Thyme is on the footprint of Miss Langland’s drapery, and Robert White’s butcher’s shop is now one part of Marie Curie.
I wanted to answer three further questions: who owned the property?, who was Kirkwood?, and what do we know about the early shopkeepers?
Who owned the Kirkwood Buildings?
The Valuation Roll records owner, tenant and occupier for each property. In 1885 the owner of the Kirkwood Buildings was Thomas Stirling and he also owned the old New Kirk Farmhouse and part of Stewart Place (now New Kirk Road), as well as a stable at Eaton Place. By 1905 he also owned all of Douglas Place. In modern terms you could walk from M&S to Okome, turn left onto New Kirk Road and walk the length of it as far as Vanity Fair, turn right on Douglas Place, turn right again at Bulbir’s, as far as the old Bank of Scotland and everything you walked past belonged to him. Arguably he did more than any other person to create the Cross as we know it today.
Thomas was born on 19th June 1837 at Drumnessie Farm near Kilsyth – his father was the farmer, and the family link to Drumnessie went back at least one more generation. He was the third child of seven, one brother, Stewart, going on from education at the local parish school to university and a career as a doctor (see this page for photos and cuttings, link). A week after Stewart’s birth in 1844, his mother Margaret died – Thomas was aged 6 at the time; while the family was rich enough to have two servants in the 1851 Census, the impact on Thomas must have been profound.
Thomas moved to Glasgow and in 1861, aged 23, he was a master grocer, employing a man and a boy in his shop at 348 St Vincent Street. This does not survive – the site is where St Vincent Street crosses the motorway. At this time he was renting a room at 391 St Vincent Street with his younger brother Stewart (the future doctor); a year later he had moved to 52 Elderslie Street (just off of St Vincent Street) and by 1871 he had moved a few doors down to number 40 (still renting).
Ten years later and in 1881 as the owner of the newly built Kirkwood Building, he lived there as a boarder in the apartment of Margaret Blair, a widow of 33, and her three young children. In the 1891 Census the living arrangements were the same.
An 1887 court case gives a brief insight as Thomas was supplying groceries to a man (now bankrupt) in Kelbourne Street, Kelvinside, to the value of £64 (worth about £7500 today). We can see Thomas’s shop was not just supplying to the local area around North Street – Kelbourne Street is off of Queen Margaret Drive, nearly two miles away. We can also see the sums involved – £7500 of groceries is more than an average week’s shopping! This gives an idea of where Thomas got the money to fund the buildings at Bearsden Cross.
This clipping from 1882 (Glasgow Herald 5th July) also establishes Thomas’s business was as a family grocer, which I believe to be as distinct from a licensed grocer who would also sell alcohol:
Maybe this explains why he did build a public house or inn at Bearsden!
In 1894, aged 56, he married Sarah Brooks Tatton, 25 years his junior (born 31st October 1863), at St Clements Church, Higher Openshaw, Manchester (link). Sarah was the daughter of an engineer, James Tatton, so it is hard to guess how they might have met.
They moved into a villa called Glengarnock which is number 3 Rosevale Road, at the back of Eaton Place; they were rich enough to have a servant living with them. Here they had three children, Thomas Stewart Stirling (around 1895), Eleanor Brooks Stirling (25th March 1897), and James Stirling (1901, died as a baby).
Between 1901 and 1905 the family moved to a villa on Whitehill Road, which Thomas named Drumnessie in honour of his birthplace; this is now number 4.
Apart from the house name, absolutely none of this features in the brief obituary of him in the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 19th April 1924:
By the 1925 Valuation Roll Drumnessie had a new owner. The 1939 Register shows her living at 15 Woodland Avenue, living on private means, with Eleanor B Muir, her widowed daughter. (Eleanor had married a pioneering doctor in radiology but he died of heart failure aged 46 two years later (link). Sarah died in May 1953, Eleanor in 1985 and Thomas in 1988 in Honiton, Devon (having worked as a deputy chief medical officer in Somerset).
This photo is taken from the book “Old Bearsden” by McKinlay and Hamilton – I have included their text to make this quite clear. Notice the houses beyond Robert White’s shop with the front gardens extending most of the way to the roadway! The furthest three houses were demolished for the building housing M&S, Bearsden Cross Dry Cleaners, Optical Express and Cote Fitness above). The terrace beyond this, named Chartwell Terrace would not be built until around 1910.
Who was Kirkwood?
Possibly Allan Kirkwood (1835-1890). He was the factor for the Garscube estate, then for the Killermont estate. He had chaired meetings of the Glasgow Agricultural Society (1883) and was Chairman of the New Kilpatrick School Board in 1885. Given Thomas Stirling’s interest in local education, this could be where they met. He bred and showed Irish setters and was a keen curler (there is a cup named after him). When he died his estate was worth £18,438, roughly £2 to 3 million today.
The shopkeepers
Most of what we know about the shopkeepers is from the Census every ten years – and access to this ends with the 1921 survey. Thus I can find more about the occupant of the baker’s shop on the corner of New Kirk Road in 1880 than I can about the occupant of the same shop in 1940!
Ralph Abercromby – the first baker at Bearsden Cross
Ralph Scott Abercromby was born in 1857, the son of a master baker He married Christina Bogle on 6th January 1880 at 15 Ruthven Street, Byres Road (her family home) – Ralph gave his address as Stewart Place, Bearsden. They had two children while living there: Esther, born December 1880, and John Ruthven, born 1882.
Ralph’s work was well-received, as the following article from The Reporter, a Stirling-based journal, dated 31st December 1881 shows:
The family emigrated to Australia in 1884 where Ralph began work in a bakery. He started an affair with a woman he met there, and invented a story that he had taken a job as a travelling salesman so he could live with her. Christina suffered from asthma and when he was at home he accused her of inventing her illness and refused to pay for treatment. She found out about the other woman, confronted him and he promised to end the affair. Of course, he reneged on this and she divorced him in 1894. Both of them (and their children) lived out their lives in Australia.
Thomas McCubbin – the second baker at Bearsden Cross
Thomas was a Londoner, born in Southwark in 1850. His parents were both Scottish, from Port Glasgow (father) and Pollokshaws (mother) and he was the only one of his siblings to be born in London – it’s not clear why the family were there.
His father was a baker and Thomas would have learned from him at their shop at 25 King Street, Tradeston. In 1871 he married Mathilda Maxwell McNeillage. They moved around: Tradeston, Thornliebank, Beith and Killearn. Thomas probably took over the shop at Bearsden Cross in 1884 but it’s unclear if the family ever lived there. In 1887 they were definitely living at Lindsay Place, which was subsequently renamed Melville Place, by the station (in modern terms the south end of the row with Peter Ivins and Clyde Property).
Four years later they had settled at a villa called Hill Crest, probably 4 West Chapelton Crescent in modern terms; Thomas was doing well enough for them to have a domestic servant living with them.
All of this conceals the tragedy of their children. They had eight, two of whom (twins) died in Tradeston within a few days of each other. Four more died in Bearsden, aged 7, 19, 12 and 27 – the three eldest all died of tuberculosis.
For whatever reason, by 1900 the family was staying in a flat in Douglas Park Terrace (on Milngavie Road, the row of shops containing the former Hillfoot Café). Thomas’s occupation was still given as “baker” possibly at Douglas Park Terrace; another possibility is that he worked for the baker who took over the shop from him (see below).
Thomas himself died of TB on 4th May 1904. When Mathilda died in 1925 she had buried her husband and seven of her eight children.
Gabriel Hamilton – the third baker at Bearsden Cross
Gabriel was born in Tradeston in 1855. His father was a shopkeeper but he was a baker by the time he was 15. He married Mary and continued to live in the Gorbals but by 1891 they were at 2 Stewart Terrace (now Okome’s premises). Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, lived with them but is recorded as a servant. By 1901 they had moved out to a villa called Thornlea on Thorn Road (now number 44).
This is an advert in the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 26th June 1903:
In 1916, during World War One, he was a party to a plea for a man who worked for him to be exempt from military service:
Gabriel explained that in 1914 he had three men working for him, but by 1916 two had joined up only leaving this one man.
Gabriel continued to work until at least 1925 but was no longer recorded in the 1930 Valuation Roll. Gabriel died at Thornlea aged 80 in January 1936.
Isabella Langlands – the first draper at Bearsden Cross
Isabella ran the draper’s shop (now Rose ‘n’ Thyme) from at least 1885 to 1901. She was born Isabella Brown Langlands around 1853, probably in Hutchesonstown. Her father was a commission agent in cotton goods (i.e. a salesman who earned money on sales only). She had seven younger siblings (Maggie, Ruth, Sarah, Jessie, James, Edward, Abigail).
Aged 18, Isabella was working as a teacher. She lived with her family at 221 Sauchiehall Street (just by the current Mackintosh at the Willow tea rooms). Seven adults and two children lived in a 4-room flat. Ten years later (1881), both her parents had died but all the brothers and sisters lived together, now at 139 St George’s Road. Her younger sister, Margaret, was a ladies’ outfitter, but Isabella had no paid occupation (so was probably running the household).
As so often with the biographies we have a gap where we can infer motivation or necessity but at some point between 1881 and 1885 Isabella took over the rental of the shoemaker’s shop and converted it into a draper’s. From the 1881 Census we know her younger sister, Maggie, had experience as a ladies’ outfitter, so Isabella may have worked in the shop or Maggie may have guided her on running the shop in Bearsden. Isabella also moved to Bearsden, living ‘above the shop’ at Stewart Terrace; her younger sister, Jessie, lived with her and assisted her in the shop. On Census Day 1891 Maggie was visiting them (she was a widow, her husband having died suddenly after four years of marriage) and gave her occupation as “draper”.
By the 1901 Census, Maggie was living in the flat full-time and was described as the head of household. Isabella ran the shop and may have employed her neighbours Maggie McPhail and Annie McPhail as dressmakers.
Isabella gave up running the shop when she was about 60 years of age. In 1911 she lived with her sister Maggie at Heyburn Crescent, Partick; their sister, Jessie, was a visitor on Census Day. Isabella died in 1926 in Cathcart.
Maggie McPhail – the second draper at Bearsden Cross
Maggie took over the drapers shop from Isabella Langlands somewhere between 1901 and 1905, and continued until between 1925 and 1930. Prior to taking over the shop, the family had lived in Bearsden for at least ten years: in the 1891 Census they were renting one-half of number 12 Stewart Terrace (roughly where Greggs is today). The father, Stuart, worked as an accountant; his three adult daughters Margaret, Annie and Mary (32, 27 and 25 years of age) all worked as dressmakers.
Ten years on and the 1901 Census shows the only change was that Mary, the youngest sister, was no longer at home. Curiously, on neither occasion is the mother recorded, although Stuart states that he was married.
By 1905 Maggie had taken over the draper’s shop and in the 1911 Census her widowed mother, Maria, aged 74 and from Mauchline, makes an appearance; they also had a lodger.
Maggie is mentioned in a couple of adverts as a local stockist for a brand. The first example is from 1905 (Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 26th May):
The second example is from 1911:
It may have been “the novelty of the season” but I cannot find any evidence of it being a commercial success.
Finally in the 1921 Census, she was at the same address with her two sisters, Annie and Mary, but without their mother. They now had two lodgers.
Maggie’s life after this is unclear. She was probably born in 1859 and in Liverpool, although what her Scottish parents were doing there at the time is also unclear.
Robert White – the second butcher at Bearsden Cross
Robert White took over the butcher’s shop at 6 Stewart Terrace (in modern terms, the south end of the Marie Curie shop) by 1903. He also rented a butcher’s shop at Douglas Park Terrace; these are the ones on Milngavie Road, north of the junction with Boclair Road and Roman Road, just before the railway bridge. Robert’s shop was the right hand one (the much lamented Hillfoot Café).
(From the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 23rd January 1903)
Robert was born on 25th September 1870 at 18 Stuart Street, Millport on Cumbrae. When he was three, his mother developed TB; six months later, his father had the same disease. Janet died six months later and his father a year after that. He was a boarder in the 1881 Census and by 1891 he was living in Shamrock Street, Glasgow, working as a butcher.
(From the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 20th March 1903)
In the 1911 Census he lived on Campbell Drive with his wife, Elizabeth Scott Meldrum, and their son, Bertie (christened Robert, like his dad, born about 1904). They also had a live-in servant, 20-year old Bessie Neilson. Elizabeth was the daughter of James and Grace, of Meldrum’s Stables and Meldrum’s Tree fame (see this link to my post here), and she featured at the start of this post as the first child born at Eaton Stables on Christmas Day 1879. At the time of her marriage she was a baker’s assistant so probably working for Gabriel Hamilton, two doors along from Robert’s shop.
By 1915 the shop at Douglas Park Terrace had passed to Louis or Lewis Fargnola, ice cream dealer, and Robert was concentrating on the Stewart Terrace shop.
Financial problems are one possible explanation for what happened next: on 18th February 1918, Robert was found dead with a cut throat, determined to be suicide. As you might have read in the text below the photo from Sheena Peters’ book, she believed he was involved in a scandal involving food coupons (meat was rationed in the first world war). I cannot find any reference to a scandal but I also cannot find any mention of Robert’s death in a newspaper.
The 1921 Census shows Elizabeth still at the house in Cambell Drive, now living with her two younger sisters, Cecilia (a teacher) and Jane.
Strange to record, the 1920 and 1925 Valuation Rolls still reported the shop’s tenant as Robert White; in 1930 the tenant was Elizabeth, Robert’s widow.
From the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 23rd September 1927.
Elizabeth seems to have given up the business in the early 1930s. She died aged 68 at 49 Roman Road on 6th January 1948; her sister Cecilia registered her death.