Basic Biographical Details Name: | Waddell & Young | Designation: | | Born: | c. 1925 | Died: | 1941 | Bio Notes: | John Jeffrey Waddell was born in Glasgow in 1876, the son of Robert Gillan Waddell, railway branch manager and his wife Jane Jeffrey. He was at first educated privately and then at Glasgow High School. He was a nephew of Peter Macgregor Chalmers's formidable wife, Barbara Greig Steel, and so far as is known, was articled to him c.1891, studying at Glasgow School of Art under William James Anderson and at the Royal Technical College under Charles Gourlay. Whether he had any experience elsewhere is not yet known, but he first came into prominence in 1919-21 as a designer of picture houses, mainly in Glasgow. When Chalmers died on 15 March 1922 Mrs Chalmers and John Jeffrey Waddell took over the practice. They did not succeed in retaining the Paisley Abbey commission, whereafter Mrs Chalmers seems to have had no more than a financial interest in the practice, but Waddell did succeed in retaining Chalmers's Church of Scotland connections, mainly for the re-ordering of Georgian and Victorian churches on ecclesiological lines by the addition of chancels. He built relatively few churches completely anew and his only significant restoration was St Bean's (or St Beanus's) at Fowlis Wester which was his best work.
Waddell married Jean Leadbetter Swan in 1903, their first house being at Uddingston. They had two daughters, both active in the Travelling Children's Theatre and the publication of children's books, the better known being Bertha, born 1907. Waddell himself had a literary and antiquarian bent, being the author of 'By Bothwell Banks, Rambles through Lanarkshire' and a pioneer study of Alexander Thomson, published in the Transactions of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society, 1925, v.III part 31-35. In later years the Waddells lived in considerable style at Caldergrove, a sizable late Georgian country house near Cambuslang.
From c.1925 Waddell was in partnership with Thomas Peach Weir Young as Waddell & Young. Young had been born at 172 Pitt Street, Glasgow on 6 February 1892, the son of Thomas Shaw Young, iron merchant, and his wife Mary Scott whom he had married at Holmfield, Manitoba, Canada on 7 September 1888. He had studied at Glasgow School of Architecture from 1909 to 1914 and had been appointed assistant to Peter Macgregor Chalmers in or shortly before the latter year.
The practice ended in tragedy. Around 1940 Waddell instructed an ill-advised lawsuit which he won but subsequently regretted. Although at the time there were rumours that his sudden death was suicide, the death certificate shows that he died of a cerebral thrombosis at 4.10am on 4 December 1941, at Caldergrove. His death was reported by his daughter Jenny. | Private and Business AddressesThe following private or business addresses are associated with this : | | Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes | | 95, Bath Street, Glasgow, Scotland | Business | Before 1925 | After 1937 | |
Employment and TrainingEmployees or Pupils
Buildings and Designs
ReferencesBibliographic ReferencesThe following books contain references to this : | | Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes | | Pride, Glen L | 1999 | The Kingdom of Fife | 2nd Edition | The Rutland Press | p138 |
|