St Vincent Street Church (detail)

St Vincent Street Church

Caledonia Road Church

Thomson’s life

Alexander Thomson was born in Balfron, Stirlingshire, on 9 April 1817. His father, John Thomson, had been a bookkeeper at the Carron Ironworks near Falkirk but had resigned on religious grounds when the firm’s partners wanted to examine the books and conduct business on Sundays. Now, as an accountant at Kirkman & Finlay’s cotton spinning mill in Balfron, just 15 miles north of Glasgow, he rejected promotion to a manager's job because it would have required working on a Sunday. John Thomson married twice: his first wife died in 1798, having borne him eight children. Alexander was his 17th child, one of 11 born to Elizabeth Cooper.

Religious faith

Religious faith loomed large throughout Alexander Thomson's life. It not only shaped his personal beliefs but brought him work, through commissions for churches. His older brother Ebenezer was a church elder, his younger brother, George, first trained as an architect then as a missionary. Thomson's public writings and speeches are littered with references to religion and to the idea of architecture as a means of praising God.

Large families, too, were important in his life. Thomson had twelve children. The early deaths of his brothers, sisters and several of his own children played a significant part in developing Thomson’s commitment to architecture as a way of improving public health. Between 1828 and 1830, when Thomson was barely a teenager, his eldest sister and three brothers died. So, too, did his mother.

As a result, Thomson went to work early, but he did not set out to become an architect. But in 1834, at the age of 17, he was working in a lawyer’s office when his sketches were noticed by a visitor, the architect Robert Foote, who suggested Thomson become his apprentice.

Foote was a well-established architect but he had a spinal complaint and within two years he retired. Before he did so he transferred Thomson’s apprenticeship to John Baird, who ran one of the two largest architectural practices in Glasgow.

Into business

Over the next few years, Thomson was promoted from apprentice to chief draughtsman, creating finished architectural drawings from Baird’s initial designs (including plans - never realised - for the new Glasgow University buildings). He began to develop his own designs. Aged 30, and now well established in John Baird’s office, Thomson married in September 1847. His wife was Jane Nicholson.

Thomson married in a double ceremony. His fellow-bridegroom was another John Baird (‘John Baird II’, but no relation), also an architect, who married Jane’s sister Jessie. A year later, Thomson left John Baird I’s office, and he and John Baird II set up in business together. At Baird & Thomson, it was Thomson who seems to have provided the creative spur, while Baird organised and supervised the office and the buildings Thomson designed. Work came rapidly to the partners. First came a variety of domestic projects, including villas in Cove, Kilcreggan, Pollokshields. Then came larger houses, tenements, terraces, offices and churches.

Church design

When it came to designing churches, Thomson worked at a fortunate time. The Disruption of 1843, when 40 per cent of ministers and a third of church members broke away from the Church of Scotland, meant that great numbers of new churches were required for worship. Some were simple wooden or stone structures, others were large and impressive buildings.
Thomson and John Baird II were involved in several church schemes. In 1856 they became Trustees when the Caledonia Road United Presbyterian congregation planned its new church. Baird & Thomson were given the commission, but they ended their partnership around the same time, so Thomson did the work himself.

Thomson’s elder brother Ebenezer was an elder of the Gordon Street congregation before his death in 1847. Ten years later, Thomson, now in partnership with his younger brother George not only created St Vincent Street Church but became developer/architect and turned the old Gordon Street church site into offices.

New partnership

When Thomson ended his partnership with John Baird II, it was to go into partnership with George, who had also trained with John Baird I. Again, Thomson seems to have undertaken the design side while George ran the business: engaging contractors and dealing with suppliers. It was the same when, after George had left for Africa, Thomson, now seriously ill with asthma and bronchitis, took on his final partner, Robert Turnbull. Turnbull was a fellow church-member. Thomson may have been ill, but he could still adapt to meet changing trends – adding fashionable bay windows to what would earlier have been flat-fronted terraces – and even innovating, using glazed white bricks to reflect light in stairwells for a five-storey office building of 1875. After Thomson’s death, Turnbull took many of his designs and simply altered them to fit different ground-plans.

On 22 March 1875 Alexander Thomson died at his home at 1 Moray Place, Strathbungo – the house he had designed some 16 years before. His wife Jane lived another 24 years, but by then five of their 12 children had already died. Sadly when his son John, now trained as an architect, returned from London to join his late father’s business, Turnbull turned him away.