Since 2020, I have been researching the architect of my own house, Robert Duncan (1841-1928). What began as a search for plans in the Mitchell Library which might show my drains, has now become a project to restore to public view a prolific but little-known architect, whose buildings have created the character of both suburban and city centre streets of Glasgow. Duncan designed all types of buildings, from stables to tenements, warehouses to churches, and most of my street in Crosshill. I have discovered ninety-five buildings or alterations by him, and seen the plans for most of them in local archives. Many of his buildings are familiar Glasgow landmarks, eight of which are designated as Listed buildings.
Robert Duncan was born 21 March 1841 in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, the second of five children of Ebenezer Duncan, a master builder, and Agnes Meikleham. His father died at some point before 1851, for that year’s Census records that Robert is staying with his grandfather Robert Meikleham, a proprietor of houses, in the same street as the rest of his family. By the Census of 1861, Agnes had moved them all to Glasgow, and they are living at Pitt Street, Anderston, where 19-year-old Robert is already an architect. By the next Census in 1871, the family are in Victoria Road in the rapidly expanding south side of Glasgow. Robert is living with his elder brother Andrew (a warehouseman in the fancy drapery trade) and his family, their mother living across the road with younger siblings Ebenezer (a GP of medicine) and Isabella. Their flat was next door to the Gemmell family, and in 1876, at the age of 36, Robert married 37 year-old Agnes Gemmell, just at the time his architectural career was taking off. By 1881, they had three surviving children, all boys, and were living around the corner at 6 Crown Place (later 73 (now 346) Langside Road).
Duncan had begun his working life in Hamilton, with slightly older architect John Grahame Peat (1829-1890). They went into partnership as Peat & Duncan in about 1873 that lasted until Peat’s death, with an office at 9 then 60 Cadzow Street, Hamilton. The Hamilton Dean of Guild Court archive holds plans for twenty-one buildings by Peat & Duncan between 1875-1887: villas, cottages, many tenements (some with shops on the ground floor), workshops, addition of a church vestry, alterations to shops, coach houses and workshops. In Hamilton they were building single-ends for the workers at the coal mines, larger houses for local businessmen, and altering existing buildings for artisans to live and work, all indicative of the growth of the town along with the coal mining industry.
In 1886, Duncan was undertaking his first work in Glasgow, for the grocers Bishop & Henderson. The previous year he had done a couple of building alterations for the firm in Hamilton, and throughout 1886 they kept him busy with expansions to their warehouses and shops in Glasgow, culminating in his design for their flagship store on Great Western Road. The next year Duncan began building on his own account, beginning with a terrace of semi-detached villas in Crosshill. He would continue to build many villas in this area and in the newly developed suburb of Pollokshields, until 1904, often with the builder Walker & Dick. Twice he lived in the villas he built, at 92 Dixon Avenue (c.1889-91) and 37 Albert Road East (c.1895-1921). The Glasgow business address of Peat & Duncan was 205 Hope Street from 1877-1900 and 102 Bath Street 1901-1905. He was also building church halls for non-conformist sects, commercial buildings and the Deaf & Dumb Institute in West Regent Street.
Duncan’s largest building was the Ochil Hills Sanatorium, Kinross-shire, completed in 1902. This was a convalescent hospital for tuberculosis patients. It was a large red sandstone building, with turrets at either end of the wings and a wooden lantern above the central pavilion, all looking out over a lake. The opening ceremony was presided over by the architect’s brother, Dr Ebenezer Duncan (1846-1922), a physician and energetic public health campaigner who had been instrumental in the building of the Victoria Hospital in the south side of Glasgow in the 1880s. There is research to be done in the relationship between the areas of architecture and public health, through the careers of these two brothers.
Duncan wound up his architectural practice in around 1909, and later described himself as a House Factor, owning several properties in the Gorbals . By this time, his middle son William had emigrated to the United States in 1905 where he was a foreman in the meat-packing industry in San Francisco. Elder brother Robert followed him in 1912 and despite having been an architectural draughtsman in 1891, his father’s career was not for him and he became a bricklayer in Danvers, Massachusetts. The youngest, James, had been a grocers’ bookkeeper and was later a commercial traveller selling wholesale sweets. Agnes died in 1920, and on 21 May 1928 Robert died of arterio-sclerosis myocarditis aged 87 at his son’s home, 31 Windsor Terrace, in the north of Glasgow.
Researching the life and work of a busy, but not very well-known, architect requires examination of Census records, Post Office Directories, maps, Valuation Rolls, and walking the streets to put the story together. I have found connections between villas in Helensburgh and hoists in Sauchiehall Street; missionaries in Crosshill and meeting rooms in West Regent Street, revealing the social and business connections typical of the industrious second city of the Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. The following posts will discuss a few of the most recognisable of Duncan’s buildings that are still standing in Glasgow today.
References
Glasgow Post Office Directories
Census returns, Valuation Rolls, Statutory registers at Scotland’s People
Although Robert Duncan does not merit an entry in the Directory of British Architects 1834-1900, there are two listings for ‘Robert Duncan’ in the Dictionary of Scottish Architects. My research indicates that these should be combined as the one person, the brief article and and the more detailed one.
Duncan’s partnership with the Hamilton-based architect John Grahame Peat (1829-1890) is in the dictionary but it only lists buildings they built together up to 1888, whilst the company name, more usually ‘Peat & Duncan’, appears on plans and in Post Office Directories between 1873-1890.
Dr Ailsa Boyd 
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