Bell Hornsby & Co Patent Glasgow
— 04/08/2020Found by Michael Fallone in the Glasgow area. Bell, Hornsby & Co, 197 Pollokshaws Rd; Brickfields, Polmadie, Glasgow, Langlands, Govan, Blairdardie, Duntocher. . . . .
Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton, Paisley, Renfrewshire
Dargavel or Dargarvel.
1869 – 1870 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., brickmakers. builders, and contractors, 8 Lyle street. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton. Alexander Whitelaw (of Alexander Whitelaw & Co.), 23 Lynedoch street (page 185).
30/03/1872 – Glasgow Herald – Erection of large sugar stores, situated at the corner of West Shaw Street and Nicholson Street, Greenock … boiler explosion … the main contractor was Messrs Alexander Whitelaw & Co, brickmakers, builders and contractors, 26 Lyle Street, Greenock and Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton …
1876 – 1877 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., builders, contractors, and brick- makers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton.
1876 – 1877 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., builders, contractors, and brickmakers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton.
Whitelaw Alexander (of Alexander Whitelaw & Co.), Upper Mearns St.
28/07/1876 – Invoice – Alex Whitelaw & Coy, brickmakers, builders and contractors. Brickworks, Dargavel, Bishopton. Office 76 Drumfrochar Road, Greenock. Machine bricks, common bricks, fire bricks, sewer pipes and building material of all kinds kept in stock. Boilers and furnaces built on the shortest of notice. All jobbing promptly attended to.
1877 – 1878 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., builders, contractors, and brickmakers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton.
Alexander Whitelaw (of Alexander Whitelaw & Co.), Upper Mearns St.
30/10/1878 – Alexander Whitelaw, brickmaker and builder, died at 49 Mearns Street, Greenock on 30/10/1878.
1878 – 1879 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., builders, contractors, and brick- makers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton.
Below – 24/03/1879 – Glasgow Herald – Brickmaking business and plant for sale at Dargavel Brickworks near Bishopton. Alexander Whitelaw.
Below – 20/05/1879 – Glasgow Herald – Partnership of Alexander Whitelaw & Co is dissolved after the death of Mr Whitelaw. Co partner was John Allison.
Below – 04/06/1879 – Glasgow Herald – Brickmaking business and plant for sale at Dargavel Brickworks near Bishopton as formerly carried on by Alexander Whitelaw.
1879 – 1880 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co., builders, contractors and brick- makers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel Brickworks, Bishopton.
1881 – 82 – Alexander Whitelaw and Co, brick builders, contractors and brickmakers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel, Bishopton p 212.
1882 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co, Bishopton.
1886 – Alexander Whitelaw & Co. brickmakers, builders & contractors, 76 Drumfrochar Road, Greenock (page 1102).
Alexander Whitelaw & Co.Brick and Tile Makers, Bishopton, Houston (page 1121).
1896 – 1897 – Alexander Whitelaw and Co, brick builders, contractors and brickmakers, 76 Drumfrochar Road. Works, Dargavel, Bishopton p.259.
1901 – Clayworkers Directory – Alexander Whitelaw and Co, Drumfrochar Road, Greenock. Brickworks – Bishopton, Renfrewshire.
1903 – Alexander Whitelaw – Brick and Tile Maker, 76 Drumfrochar Road, Greenock.
Below – 31/08/1907 – Paisley and Renfrewshire Gazette – Assault at Dargavel Brickworks.
Graces Guide – I believe this is the same Alexander Whitelaw 1823 – 1879.
Bell, Hornsby & Co. Mason and brickwork contractors – Bell, Hornsby & Co. were a building and contracting firm, and one of many brick manufacturers in the Glasgow area. From the 1860s to the 1890s, local brick was widely used for factories, and for the internal and rear walls of stone-faced commercial and domestic buildings. ). Of the original partners, Alexander Hamilton seems to have been the longest-established, manufacturing bricks at Lilybank off Eglinton Street, on the south side of the city, from about 1852. He expanded into tile making, operating from a second brickworks at Strathbungo in 1858, before becoming a ‘silent partner’ in Bell, Hornsby. Another partner, Robert Bell, possibly ran a bricklaying firm in South Wellington Street c. 1857 (he is not to be confused with the wealthy Wishaw and Broxburn industrialist of the same name, who was also a brickmaker). Other partners were John Thomson Hornsby and Alexander Whitelaw, a Greenock-based builder.
The firm of Bell, Hornsby first appears in the Glasgow Post Office Directory for 1864 as ‘brickmakers, builders and contractors’, based at Hamilton’s premises. Bell, Hornsby and Hamilton at first all lived beside their works, before moving elsewhere. They shed a partner in 1868 when Whitelaw chose to continue on his own.
By 1875, the partners had taken over Polmadie Brickworks, Rutherglen Road, with its clay pits nearby at Mallsmire Burn. Brickmaking was a seasonal activity; since clay digging was impossible in winter when the ground froze, and good weather was important for initial drying. Rather than pay for the upkeep of draft horses over winter, the brickmakers, including Bell, Hornsby, sold them off. As a supplementary activity during the closed season Bell, Hornsby erected one or two blocks of tenements at a time (probably using their own bricks) in the fast-growing working-class area of Polmadie. Of the 46 tenements built there, ‘Robert Bell, house factor, and John Bell, mason’ were proprietors, and therefore the likely builders, of five.
In 1883, Bell, Hornsby were prosecuted for a breach of the Factory Act: ‘Inspectors were very particular in enforcing the law with respect to the employment of young girls [under 16 years] in brickfields’. By the time Robert Bell retired in 1886, the firm was running an additional brickworks at Blairardie, which was beside its own clay pits at Garscadden, and another at Govan. The business was continued into the 20th century by John Hornsby Junior, after his father’s retirement in 1896. Since the late 1860s, it had been based at 197 Pollokshaws Road, and it continued to operate from here until at least the 1920s. Source
Below – Alexander Whitelaw (1823-1879) was an ironmaster and MP.
Whitelaw was connected by marriage to the Baird family, which founded the iron smelting firm of William Baird & Co at Gartsherrie in Coatbridge and became a managing partner in the firm. He was a philanthropist, using some of his wealth to endow churches and schools, including Gartsherrie Academy.
Whitelaw’s interest in education led to his becoming chairman of the Glasgow School Board in 1873. The cartoon shows him having administered a thrashing to John Page Hopps, a fellow Board member with whom he had clashed.
Whitelaw was a Conservative and represented Glasgow as an MP from 1874 until his death in 1879.
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