Basic Biographical Details

Name: John McDonald Contractors (or J M Contractors)
Designation:  
Born: 1930s
Died:  
Bio Notes: Sir John McDonald (not 'MacDonald', 1874–1964), was a major building contractor in the Glasgow area in the first half of the twentieth century. He was the archetypal self-made businessman from humble origins, who in the 1930s became a government advisor on the transport industry.

McDonald, a trained wright and one Robert Graham opened ‘Graham & McDonald, joiners’ at 78 Adelphi (now Poplin) Street, Bridgeton around 1899. The partnership ended in August 1899 but McDonald retained the premises. Trade rapidly expanded and by 1904, his ‘wright works’ encompassed Nos 78-100 Adelphi (now Poplin) Street, Bridgeton.

In May 1910, a serious fire caused £2,000 of damage to the wood-store, sawmill, timber stock and machinery, and probably hastened the office’s removal to 12 Old Dalmarnock Road, Bridgeton. The sawmill and joinery relocated to Brown Street.

Although it was unusual to launch a new firm during wartime, by early 1917, McDonald had established the Sunlit Building Company. Their products were nonetheless suitable to the times – rapidly-erected prefabricated and multi-purpose structures. They made ‘export buildings … permanent or temporary, construction to suit requirements’. In 1918, Sunlit Building were supplying mass-produced units, ready to assemble, eg building-site huts, to the Admiralty, War Office, and Ministry of Munitions. Their logo showed a radiant rising sun, illuminating a flat-roofed factory, trees and steeple.

Sunlit supplied labour and materials to London contractors Topham, Jones & Railham Ltd in December 1917, to convert Glen Albyn Distillery, Inverness into barracks for the American submarine base nearby. The two firms also jointly undertook other contracts for the Admiralty.

The 1919 Housing Act placed the onus on local authorities to provide working class housing with a new government subsidy, and consequently, Glasgow established a Housing Department, under a Director of Housing. Rather than tenements with a common entrance passage, ‘four in a block’ flats were built, with individual entrances. The actual construction was a mix of the council’s own workers, or ‘Direct Labour’, and private companies. The principal developments were Mosspark, Riddrie, Knightswood (the largest scheme), Carntyne and Scotstoun.

After the war, Increasing trade caused McDonald to formalise his businesses. In September 1920, John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd was registered as a private joint-stock company acquiring the businesses of the Sunlit Building Co, and John McDonald, ‘wright and contractor’. They were listed as ‘timber importers and saw millers, builders, wrights, joiners’, with share capital of £40,000. The new firm also acquired his existing joiner’s yard.

As a publicity stunt in September 1920, the newly-formed John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd moved intact their temporary 2-storey site offices in Burnside, Glasgow. The Sunlit structure, weighing 150 tons, was winched 80 feet to a new site. McDonald was always acutely aware of the value of advertising and promotion, as well as being keen to promote new technologies and materials.

McDonald’s was contracted for ‘Sunlit’-style houses on the city’s peripheral estates, as part of the post-war drive to employ and house returning ex-servicemen. In February 1922, McDonald (Contractors) Ltd were at Parkhead Tramway Depot (presumably working there), and from early 1924 at Knightswood, where they continued until the early 1930s along with competitors McTaggart and Mickel.

Traditional materials like stone, and the requisite skilled tradesmen were scarce due to wartime losses, and emigration. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin visited Glasgow in October 1925, to advocate the use of steel and other mass-produced components to increase construction – measures passionately supported by McDonald. Houses which already attracted a £120 subsidy under the ‘Wheatley’ Act 1924 were offered an additional £40 grant in 1925, but the offer was withdrawn in December 1925. At this time, Glasgow had over 30,000 applicants for new council housing, and totally insufficient stock. Both McDonald and his rivals McTaggart & MIckel Ltd won contracts for hundreds of additional homes at Knightswood in early 1926.

McDonald constantly promoted the advantages of his own ‘Sunlit Homes’, in line with the 1920s fashion for ‘sun baths’, and physical wellbeing. He claimed that flat-roofs admitted more sunshine at ground level than traditional pitched-roofs. Sunlit’s level roofs were imaginatively, if improbably, advertised as ‘putting greens, gymnasiums, [or] rifle ranges’, which would double the value of the investment.

As labour shortages were delaying building progress, McDonald wanted a spectacular demonstration of how rapidly his factory-made units could be put up. In September 1927, a Sunlit House was erected at Burnside in just 12 days. Glasgow Corporation were so impressed that they ordered 500 similar 3-apartment homes for Carntyne and elsewhere.

The council accepted another McDonald tender in late summer 1928 for 852 houses constructed by their patent (flat roof and cavity wall) system at Knightswood, worth £306, 940. In another show of self-confidence and belief in his products, McDonald guaranteed to pay the rents of any houses not finished within the stipulated 14 month contract. He boasted that he had ‘adopted the methods of tomorrow rather than those of today’.

Throughout 1927-9, McDonald’s men worked on Areas No 6, 7 and 9 at Knightswood. In 1930, they were working on ‘Archerfield’ (probably Archerhill’) Road, and their progress can be traced by the successive site offices in the annual telephone directories. Glasgow Housing Dept could lay out Knightswood, a greenfield site, with open spaces unequalled on later projects.

The firm also had a joinery factory at Burnside, producing its own patented ‘Sunlit’ doors and staircases, as well as general joinery products. Three new subsidiaries were created in mid-1929 starting with the Glasgow Estates Development Company Ltd. This was a housing and public works contractors and estate agency, created as a private limited company.

In July 1929, Sunlight Ltd, (frequently confused with the similarly-named but older concern, the Sunlit Building Co), and Stronghold Ltd were both registered. Sunlight Ltd were timber merchants and builders, with £1,000 share capital, and Stronghold undertook ‘work in rock asphalt, bitumen, tar macadam and undercoating’, presumably concentrating on their own roofing products. During the 1930s, Sunlight Ltd traded from the ‘Sunlight Buildings’ in Burnside, presumably built by themselves. Various sources suggest Sunlight Ltd was ‘Sunlit Homes Ltd’, but they officially advertised as ‘Sunlight Ltd’, and just produced buildings under the ‘Sunlit’ brand-name, although newspapers tended to use the various company styles interchangeably.

John R H McDonald junior (1907-1996), had met his fiancee, American Dorcas Anne Hutcheson, in Glasgow in 1928, while she visited her uncle (later Sir) Stephen Piggott, the managing director of John Brown & Co, shipbuilders. Dorcas’s father was a wealthy woollen-mill owner in Tennessee.

J R H McDonald was not a formally-trained architect, holding a BSc degree, but he was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers and several town planning bodies. He attended either the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925, or the Deutscher Werkbund show in Stuttgart in 1927, which both showcased the work of Le Corbusier, whom he admired. Additionally, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he visited Belgium, Holland and Germany to study modern construction methods, and met Dr Josef Frank in Vienna.

In May 1931, J R H McDonald published ‘Modern Housing: A Review … at home and abroad, and some practical suggestions’. The book was a thinly-disguised promotion for Sunlit Homes, flat roofs and the technical methods patented by McDonald and his father. He pictured specimen modernist dwellings built of their own precast concrete blocks.

One of McDonald senior’s ‘Sunlit’ brand houses was erected at the 1931 ‘Ideal Homes’ exhibition at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow which ‘thus predated Wells Coates’ Ideal Home ‘Sunspan’ House … by two years’. In 1932, the exhibition’s sponsors, the Daily Mail ran a competition (‘The House that Jean Built’, as opposed to the nursery rhyme’s ‘Jack’) for ‘sketch plans’ for a dream-home costing £1500. This was finished for the second Scottish Ideal Home Exhibition, on 5-29 October 1932.

The £250 prize-winner, Glasgow teacher Elizabeth M Reid of Maryhill, suggested an efficient, all-electric flat-roofed modernist dwelling. It had a sunken bath, shower, fitted kitchen and externally-vented pantry, flush doors and concealed drainpipes. Reid’s ideas were incorporated and adapted into the exhibition’s model home built by McDonald. The reviewer’s only reservation was ‘the great expanse of glass … in our climate the home may prove … cold’. McDonald further offered to erect a similar house for only £1,000 at Burnside, and £100 deposit. It is not known if he received any commissions.

In November 1932, John McDonald senior purchased the 117 acre Kilmardinny estate, Bearsden, and rapidly resold it to his subsidiary, the Glasgow Estates Development Co Ltd, (founded in 1929). The ground was sold to another daughter firm, the Plewlands Investment Co, in February 1937, possibly to keep the estate, where McDonald took up residence, entirely separate from his other business assets. He built upon the land over the next decade.

In early 1933, the McDonalds were contracted for one of Glasgow’s largest council schemes, at Cardonald, where the Western Heritable Investment Co and Glasgow Estates Development Co erected 2512 dwellings. The council had already laid out roads and sewers, and then feued it for private developers, despite objections on principal by Labour councillors. The project cost £1million, and consisted of four-in-a-block flats, rented at £32 or £35. This huge windfall may have financed the McDonald’s lavish family homes on the former Kilmardinny grounds.

Kilmardinny provided an opportunity to construct the McDonalds’ own designs, without any thought of budgetary restrictions. The Plewlands Investement Co Ltd, newly formed in January 1937, seems to have been specifically created to own Kilmardinny for purposes legally beneficial to McDonald either personally or commercially. Plewlands had capital of £50,000 and only two shareholders, McDonald’s private secretary Jean Galbraith, and his manager J M Rankin. In October 1937, book-keeper Christina McLachlan was appointed as a director and company secretary of Plewlands. Sir John McDonald later married Miss McLachlan in 1955.

Simultaneously with the showpieces at Bearsden, the Sunlight Building Co were negotiating with Lanarkshire County Council in 1933 to build 404 ‘working-class houses’ overlooking Duke’s Road, Burnside. In November 1933, the Dept of Health for Scotland refused Sunlight’s application for the government rent subsidy of £9 per house per year. Sunlight was forced to abandon their prepared foundations and unused building materials, while they proved to the department that the houses were required locally, and reduced their planned rents.

The large housing developments continued, their site offices at ‘Cardonald & Hillington Scheme SW2’, and ‘Carntyne E2’ from January 1933, until after January 1935. Adverts show that the ‘Glasgow Estates Co’ promoted 4- and 5-apartment terraces at Cardonald ‘Areas 1 and 2’, pitched tiled roofs, and timber-gabled bay windows. A private letting office was listed, but the conventional tiled roofs normally expected by tenants were entirely contrary to the McDonald ethos.

The Glasgow Estates Development Co built shops and garages off Paisley Road West in 1935, and in 1936 extended the Rutherglen Girl Guides HQ. The contactors were also building for private owners, and in 1935-7 had Bearsden sales offices at both Douglas Park and Kilmardinny, and a show house at Burnbrae Estate, Bearsden.

They sold at Mosshead Road, Bearsden, and Woodlands Road, Rouken Glen (‘by Thornliebank’) in 1938, the latter combining ‘maximum comfort’ at minimum cost, with electric fires, and a large ‘dinette’. The same types of conventional semi-detached 2-bed properties were available in 1939 at Burnside and Bearsden, at ‘£5 down payment and from 19/10- weekly’.

It was in the 1930s that McDonald saw his greatest influence in public life, and was involved with the Scottish Unionist party (later the ‘Conservatives’). He was knighted in February 1937, for ‘political and public services in the south west of Scotland’. He was by this time, vice-president of the Institute of Patentees, holding his own walling and roof technical patents. McDonald was president of the Scottish Commercial Motor Users’ Association (SCMUA), on the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Transport, and was very active in Glasgow civic life.

The new Sir John and Lady McDonald moved to the grand Victorian mansion at Kilmardinny House in 1937. McDonald campaigned on the need for better organisation in the road transport industry in competition with railways and shipping, and in 1939 was elected as the Scottish representative to the National Labour Organisation.

During the war Sir John McDonald as president of the SCMUA raised money for Glasgow’s War Relief Fund. The haulage industry members of the Motor Users’ Association contributed 2d per week from their wages, matched by employers like McDonald, which raised about £1,000 for Glasgow’s fund each month, and was copied by other industries. By 1942, Sir John’s Scottish Commercial Motor Users’ Association was suffering from shortage of manpower, and heavy taxes on petrol, despite having to supply the forces with munitions and fuel for tanks and planes. His deputy A Henderson, stated that ‘Nobody except ourselves realised how important we were until it was too late’.

The various McDonald enterprises continued during the war, although J H R McDonald had evacuated his family to the USA in June 1940, while he remained behind. Stronghold Ltd, their asphalt and bitumen suppliers, retailed dovetail waterproof sheeting to government contractors. In June 1944, as part of a restructuring operation, John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd entered voluntary liquidation, although the other firms continued. This was in order to make John R H McDonald the director, and Dorothy Gallacher the new company secretary. In March 1945, before the end of the war, the new incarnation of John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd registered as a private joint-stock company, with £60,000 in share capital. McDonald junior shortly afterwards lodged two new patent applications for bituminous sheet roofing to ensure waterproof joints, and prefabricated wall-panels, in April 1945.

The 1950s were more difficult for the McDonalds. Lady McDonald died at Kilmardinny in June 1954, aged 79. Sir John only waited a very short while before remarrying, to his longterm book-keeper and Plewlands company secretary Christina McLachlan (c1898-1986) in early 1955. She was about 24 years his junior, and they had 9 years together before Sir John’s death.

A group of tenants of the Glasgow Estates Development Company took the firm to court in February 1955, protesting against rent rises under the Housing (Repairs and Rents) Scotland Act. The company owned 1340 dwellings across Glasgow, and engaged their own subcontractors, Sunlight Builders of Bridgeton, for repairs. The company had spent about £10,000 on maintenance in 1954, but had allegedly overcharged and tenants’ expected contributions were excessive. They received some compensation from the Sheriff Court.

Sir John McDonald died at Kilmardinny House, aged 89, in January 1964. His obituary said that he was ‘ambitious, industrious, technically able, and combined commercial shrewdness with marked receptiveness to promising new ideas’. His firms had built around 10,000 houses around Glasgow, and had innovated with streamlining production, prefabrication and new materials. McDonald had pioneered cavity walls and flat roofs in Scotland. Plewlands Investments, Glasgow Estates Development Co, and John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd were dissolved between 1965 and 1970.

John R H McDonald returned to the USA after World War II, and lived in Georgia and Pennsylvania with his American wife Dorcas (1908-2001) and three children. He retired to Chattanooga in 1970, where he and his wife became major philanthropists, McDonald died in 1996, and when his wife Dorcas died in 2001 she left most of her $8.7million dollar estate to charity.

Private and Business Addresses

The following private or business addresses are associated with this :
 AddressTypeDate fromDate toNotes
Item 1 of 21Burnside, Glasgow, ScotlandBusiness   
Item 2 of 2114, Old Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate10121914 
Item 3 of 21156, Bogden Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate1881  
Item 4 of 2137, Dale Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate1891  
Item 5 of 2178, Adelphi (now Poplin) Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandBusiness18981903 
Item 6 of 2190, London Road, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate1900  
Item 7 of 21286, Main Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivateEarly 1900  
Item 8 of 2112, James Street, Greenhead, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivateEarly 19011903 
Item 9 of 21Wardlaw Avenue, Rutherglen, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate1904  
Item 10 of 21Wright Works/78-100, Adelphi Street (now Poplin) Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandBusiness19041910Premises destroyed by fire 1910
Item 11 of 2197, Greenhead Street, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate19051909 
Item 12 of 21155, Greenhead Street, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate19101911 
Item 13 of 21Wright Works/19, Brown Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, ScotlandBusiness19101919 or 1920 
Item 14 of 2112, Old Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow, ScotlandBusiness19101934Head office 1917-1919
Item 15 of 21Nerston, East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, ScotlandPrivate1915 Address for Janet C McDonald as owner of tenement at 12-18 Old Dalmarnock Road in 1915 Valuation Roll
Item 16 of 21Epalet/250, East Kilbride Road, Carmunnock, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate19151935 
Item 17 of 21Mossend Station, Mossend, Lanarkshire, ScotlandBusiness19161919 or 1920 
Item 18 of 21Works, East Kilbride Road, Burnside, Lanarkshire, ScotlandBusiness1917After 1940 
Item 19 of 21Sunlit Building Company/12, Old Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow, ScotlandBusinessEarly 1917 Head office shared by John McDonald's main building business
Item 20 of 21Kilmardinny House, Bearsden, Glasgow, ScotlandPrivate1936 or 19371964 
Item 21 of 21Stronghold Ltd, builders merchants/19, Bucklaw Place, Glasgow, ScotlandBusinessJanuary 19381939Branch office

Employment and Training

Employees or Pupils

The following individuals were employed or trained by this (click on an item to view details):
 NameDate fromDate toPositionNotes
Item 1 of 2John Robert Harrison MacDonald  Partner 
Item 2 of 2(Sir) John McDonaldSeptember 1920June 1944PartnerPrivate company, acquired business of John McDonald, wright, East Kilbride Road, and Sunlit Building Co., 12 Old Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow; dissolved voluntarily by chairman Sir John McDonald June 1944 and business continued in a new form as John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd as of March 1945.

Buildings and Designs

This was involved with the following buildings or structures from the date specified (click on an item to view details):
 Date startedBuilding nameTown, district or villageIslandCity or countyCountryNotes
Item 1 of 281915EpaletBurnside LanarkshireScotland 
Item 2 of 28December 1917Glen Albyn DistilleryInverness Inverness-shireScotland 
Item 3 of 28April 1920Copelawhill Housing SchemeQueen's Park GlasgowScotland 
Item 4 of 28February 1924Knightswood Housing Scheme  GlasgowScotlandContractors for part of the scheme
Item 5 of 281927Specimen Sunlit Home Burnside GlasgowScotland 
Item 6 of 28c. 1929500 Sunlit Homes, Warriston Crescent, Carntyne Housing DevelopmentCarntyne GlasgowScotland 
Item 7 of 281931Scottish Ideal Home ExhibitionKelvin Hall GlasgowScotlandSpecimen Sunlit Home exhibited
Item 8 of 281932Scottish Ideal Home Exhibition, Daily Mail competition, Model/demonstration houseKelvin Hall GlasgowScotland 
Item 9 of 281933404 homes, BurnsideCambuslang LanarkshireScotlandBuilt by Sunlit Ltd
Item 10 of 2819336 Carse View DriveBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 11 of 2819337 Carse View DriveBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 12 of 281933Buckfast, Carse View Drive  GlasgowScotland 
Item 13 of 281933Cardonald and Hillington Housing schemeCardonald and Hillington GlasgowScotland 
Item 14 of 281933Carntyne Housing DevelopmentCarntyne GlasgowScotland 
Item 15 of 281933Craigmillar, 8 Carse View DriveBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 16 of 281933Glen HavenBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 17 of 281933Green RidgeBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 18 of 281933HighhoweBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 19 of 281933White LodgeBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 20 of 28193410 Carse View DriveBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 21 of 281934OverdaleBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 22 of 281935Block of shops and garages, Paisley Road West and Lammermuir Avenue  GlasgowScotland 
Item 23 of 281935Houses at Douglas ParkBearsden GlasgowScotlandBy Sunlit Ltd.
Item 24 of 281935Lock-up garages, Gladsmuir Street and Talla RoadCardonald| Hillington GlasgowScotland 
Item 25 of 2819361 Carse View DriveBearsden GlasgowScotland 
Item 26 of 281936Girl Guide HeadquartersRutherglen LanarkshireScotlandExtension
Item 27 of 281936Houses, Brownside Road, BurnsideCambuslang LanarkshireScotland 
Item 28 of 281938Houses at Mosshead RoadBearsden GlasgowScotland 

References

Bibliographic References

The following books contain references to this :
 Author(s)DateTitlePartPublisherNotes
Item 1 of 2McDonald, J R H1931Modern housing: a review of present housing requirements in Great Britain Glasgow: Carson & Nicol 
Item 2 of 2McKean, Charles1987The Scottish Thirties: An Architectural Introduction Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Presspp171-173

Periodical References

The following periodicals contain references to this :
 Periodical NameDateEditionPublisherNotes
Item 1 of 4Country Life8 June 193577, no2003 Article entitled 'A Modern House in Scotland'
Item 2 of 4Edinburgh Evening News6 October 1932  p3
Item 3 of 4Motherwell Times26 August 1932  p3
Item 4 of 4Motherwell Times21 October 1932  p6