William Clarke was born in Ayr in 1809, the son of Marion Paul who gave him the surname of Clark, that of his reputed father William Clark. The Clarke spelling was adopted later. In or about 1823 he was articled to William Burn and remained with him as a draughtsman. George Bell, born on 31 July 1814 in Lanarkshire, the son of John Bell and Agnes Donaldson, joined Burn's staff from the London office of Archibald Elliot II and his brother Alexander. In 1841 while still in Burn's employ they entered a joint competition for Lanarkshire County Buildings and the Merchants' House of Glasgow in which it was 'a condition … that each of the buildings was to have its individuality, but that together they would be in harmony'. Their design - what seems to be their perspective is now in NMRS - appears to have drawn inspiration from Harvey Lonsdale Elmes's original designs for St George's Hall and The Assize Courts in Liverpool when these were separate projects: Bell may have seen these when still in London. As a result of their success in the competition they formed a partnership which at once attained a place in the foremost rank of Scottish architects, a position consolidated by being premiated in the Edinburgh Free Church College competition two years later. The commission for the latter was, however, given to William Henry Playfair. By at least 1843 Clarke and Bell had opened an office in Glasgow at 135 Buchanan Street which seems to have also been their home address, a move further encouraged by the first of several commissions for the reconstruction of the Justiciary Courts in 1845. Together with Baird and Wilson, Clarke and Bell were the principal beneficiaries of the collapse of the D & J Hamilton/James Smith partnership in 1844.
Of the two partners, Clarke was the more active in public affairs. He was one of the leading members of the Architectural Institute of Scotland founded in 1850, contributing a paper on Scots Pictorial Architecture delivered on 27 February 1851. In 1855 he designed the Italian Renaissance Room in that body's Scottish Exhibition Rooms in Bath Street (the building itself was by Alexander Thomson) and, although not one of the leading founding members in 1858, he became a prominent member of the Glasgow Architectural Society, delivering the 1864 opening address. It was, however, Bell who sought membership of the RIBA during the Charles Barry Jun. - John Honeyman recruiting campaign, Clarke being by then sixty-nine and nearing retirement. Bell was admitted FRIBA on 16 December 1878, his proposers being John Baird II, John Honeyman and James Thomson.
Clarke's is the more readily identifiable architectural personality, with a marked predilection for shallow relief and Corinthian pilasters, his style changing little during his long career. The more three-dimensional columnar treatments and richer detail of the Caledonian and North British Insurance buildings were probably Bell's. In contrast to their refined classicism their Gothic buildings were spiky, angular and hard-edged, perhaps influenced by the work of Billings.
Bell died on 4 January 1887 at Invereoch Cottage, Kilmun, and Clarke almost exactly two years later of apoplexy on 5 January 1889 at his house at 12 Ballantine Drive, Ayr. Bell left moveable estate of £2,410 19s 2d, but both partners probably had significant heritable property. Clarke's obituarist described him as 'simple in manner, kindly of heart, genial in social intercourse, full of curious anecdote and reminiscence and with much humour of a peculiar quaintness' - evidently part of the Glasgow architect's stock-in-trade since John Keppie made a similar observation on Sellars's 'quaint repartee'.
Prior to their deaths Clarke and Bell had taken into partnership George Bell II, born in Springburn in 1854, and had come to some sort of arrangement with Robert Alexander Bryden. Bryden was born in Glasgow in 1841, the son of Robert Bryden, Royal Bank Place, and Margaret Ramage of Kirkurd, Peeblesshire. He was educated at Arthur's Academy Dunoon and Kirkcaldy Grammar School. Articled to Clarke & Bell, he was allowed to insert his name in The Glasgow Directory as 'at Clarke and Bell's' by 1864 and in 1865 he made an influential marriage to Elizabeth Robertson, daughter of Alexander Robertson, a Glasgow ironfounder who retired to Dunoon, consolidating the connections Bryden already had there. Like George Bell II, who rose to the rank of Lt Col in the Lanarkshire Artillery Volunteers, Bryden had military connections, as a major in the 1st Lanarkshire volunteers. In the Directory of 1875-76 Bryden appears as 'of Clarke and Bell', implying a very senior position within the firm if not an actual partnership; and from 1876 Bryden seems to have run a simultaneous practice within the same office at 37 West Nile Street, a situation which persisted until 1891 when he was again described as 'of Clarke and Bell' and is known to have been in a formal partnership with the firm (see separate entry for Clarke & Bell & R A Bryden). The partnership was a loose one, with the two practices sharing an accounting structure but carrying out much of their work separately. The office was said to be divided with lettered glazed doors to their separate chambers. When this partnership dissolved on 31 December 1903, Bryden set up practice on his own account at Richmond Chambers, 147 Bath Street and George Bell II continued the practice under the previous name at 212 St Vincent Street.
By 1902 Bell seems to have been concerned to assume into partnership James Hoey Craigie, then his principal assistant, as the latter's Graeco-Baroque was more in touch with the times than Bryden's free Renaissance and better able to compete with Burnet, Campbell and Sandilands. . On 1 January 1905 Craigie was formally taken into partnership by George Bell, the firm's name changing to Clarke & Bell & J H Craigie (see separate entry).
'Biography authored by the Dictionary of Scottish Architects Compilation Team.'