Records of Monro and Partners, architects, Glasgow, Scotland

Description Records of Monro and Partners, architects, Glasgow, Scotland

Date 1870 to 1957

Collection Records of Monro and Partners, architects, Glasgow, Scotland

Catalogue Number 551 161

Category All Other

Scope and Content The Collection comprises 895 drawings and 397 photographs. There are also 41 manuscripts that include James Monro’s schoolboy sketches from the 1850s. The Collection is by no means complete. Only drawings and papers for projects that were never to be worked on again by the London-based firm of Tibbalds Monro feature in the Collection and very few mechanical copies survive. The majority of projects featured date from 1890 to 1909 and only a few papers, mostly presentation drawings, show work after 1930. The bulk of the photographic material documents building work in progress at various aircraft facilities in England.

Archive History The Monro & Partners Collection (Accession Number 2000/100) was gifted to RCAHMS in May 2000 by William Monro, son of the architect Geoffrey Monro. Prior to this date it had been stored at a private address in the West End of Glasgow for at least six years. Within the practice office in Glasgow the papers had been mostly kept flat in a pre-war wooden plan chest. When Gillean Petrie Small joined the practice in 1965, he moved them to plan chest accommodation in the basement print room of the Glasgow premises. He then began to make an inventory of the drawings to allow retrieval. It is thought that the best drawings were framed and kept at Geoffrey Monro’s St Fillans and Watford houses. Following the merger with Tibbalds Colbourne Karski Williams in 1991, the bulk of drawings and files from the Glasgow and Watford offices went to the Tibbalds head office in London before the Glasgow premises closed in 1994. The Collection was catalogued and conserved as part of the Scottish Architects' Papers Preservation Project (SAPPP) between 1999 and 2004.

System of Arrangement All items for each building are grouped together into projects. Projects are then grouped by decade, with all projects numbered by the earliest decade in which they appeared.

Related Material Related papers can be found in the Buchanan Campbell and Houston & Dunlop Collections.

Access Conditions The collection is held at Glasgow City Archives under a charge and superintendence agreement and access enquiries should be made directly.

Administrative History James Milne Monro (1840-1921) was articled to the Edinburgh architect John Henderson (1804-1862) c. 1855. He became an assistant in the office of Brown & Wardrop around 1862 and moved to Glasgow as assistant to William Spence (1806-1833), 52 Renfield Street in the mid-1860s. He set up his own practice c. 1870, initially at 33 Bath Street, Glasgow and then at 28 Bath Street in 1874. Early projects undertaken by Monro include tenement blocks and villas in Bearsden, notably his own family home ‘Saxonholme’ at Manse Road (1878-79); extensive renovation and extension work for Catholic charity The Little Sisters of the Poor, Greenock, Glasgow and Edinburgh (1880-1907); and work on bars in Glasgow and hotels across Scotland. Monro’s son Charles Ernest (1876-1945) was apprenticed to the firm at some point between 1882 and 1887, becoming an assistant in 1888 and a partner in 1893. In December 1902 he passed the RIBA qualifying exam and was admitted ARIBA (Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects) in 1903. Predominately commercial and industrial commissions in the early years of the twentieth century include extensive reconstructions for Copeland and Lye in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow (1920s); and new premises for the tea merchants D Wright & Co, Clyde Place, Glasgow (1906). In 1912 the practice moved to 134 Bath Street and around this time James retired leaving Charles to run the firm. At this point, the practice was known as James M Monro & Son but after James’ death in 1921 C Ernest Monro began operating from the same address. Until 1957 the practice seems to have operated variously under these two names. It was possibly during the late 1920s that Charles’ son Geoffrey Monro (1907-1985) joined the practice. In 1930 the firm completed Marks and Spencer’s first purpose-built store at 18-26 Argyll Street, Glasgow marking the beginning of a relationship with the retailing giant that would see the practice carry out work on a total of 126 Marks and Spencer stores and warehouses across the United Kingdom by 1984. Further commissions during the 1930s and 1940s came from the aircraft industry and the Glasgow-based Macfarlane Lang biscuit company for premises in England. Around 1943 the practice opened a second office (later becoming head office) on Clarendon Road, Watford and in 1947 a third was opened in London. The Glasgow office moved to 307 West George Street, Glasgow in 1936 and to 25 Woodside Place in 1955. In 1957 the firm was renamed Monro & Partners, Architects and Engineers and the first non-family partners were taken on. One of whom, John Forbes (d.1970), ran the office until his death in 1970. In 1966 Ian Cruickshank and David Samson (ret. 1970) were assumed into partnership, followed in 1972 by Alistair Anderson Taylor and in 1983 by Gillean Petrie Small (ret. 1991) and George Walter Waterston (left 1991). In 1991, Monro & Partners merged with Tibbalds Colbourne Karski Williams to become Tibbalds Monro. The Glasgow office closed in 1994.

Accruals No further accruals are expected.

Accession Number 2000/100

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