John Robb was born at Gaberston, Alloa on 25th April 1862, the eldest son of Andrew Robb (1825-1900), and Mary Bennie (1838-1891), daughter of John Swanson, a distillery manager. John had three brothers who would, like himself, all become road surveyors, and a sister Janet (1864-91), mother of the classical composer Dr. Edward Norman Hay (1889-1943).
His father Andrew Robb was foreman, and later manager, of Gaberston Woollen Mill owned by the Lambert family. After it closed in 1877 Andrew moved to Peebles to manage Tweedside Mill for the Thorburns, and the family followed him in late 1881.
Alloa’s 1881 census shows the 18 year old John working as an architect’s apprentice. He had likely served his articles with John Melvin & Son as the family rented their Alloa house from Melvin.
The following year John moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne as an assistant to the architect Joseph John Lish MSA (1841-1922). Lish specialised in ecclesiastical work but also had an interest in innovative reinforced concrete construction.
Whilst with Lish Robb wrote the specification of works and supervised the erection of the Clayton Road Wesleyan Methodist Church, Lecture Hall and vestries (demolished in 1981). The family retain the handwritten contract, specification and some construction drawings. He was also involved in designing stonework and joinery details, along with alternative designs for the spire and church hall. He may also have been involved in another Lish church at Gosforth in 1883, and drawings in the family’s possession suggest that he designed both terraced housing and an office building in Newcastle around this time.
Sometime thereafter he returned to Scotland, and it appears he worked as an architect until the latter 1880s. It is likely he was the ‘J.Robb, architect’, who designed brick offices and workshops for Duncan Buchanan at 1009 London Road Glasgow in 1889 (demolished).
He then worked at the Assessor of Railways and Canals in Duke Street, Leith before, around 1891, he joined Midlothian County Council, where he was appointed Assistant County Surveyor.
Midlothian County Council was established under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 and was split into four district committees, Suburban, Gala Water, Calder and Lasswade, that administered, amongst other functions, the responsibility for roads. The County was much larger than today, covering the suburbs of Edinburgh and parts of current day West & East Lothian and Scottish Borders. Midlothian was at the forefront of Scottish road management, and was the first Council in the country to employ a County Road Surveyor to oversee the entire county, alongside each district’s road surveyor.
From March 1893 Robb served under Thomas Forbes, the Suburban District Surveyor, who was given additional responsibilities for the County that month. On November 3rd 1896 Forbes was found dead at the bottom of a set of kitchen stairs at the Royal Exchange Hotel, (now the City Chambers), in Edinburgh where Robb had been living. Forbes and Robb had been working late on a plan to transfer Suburban roads to the City and when Robb went outside to hail a taxi for Forbes, it is thought Forbes had a heart attack, leant against a swing door and fell down a flight of stairs. Another report suggests he was lying in wait to play a joke. As it was assumed Forbes had left the hotel himself his body wasn’t discovered until the following morning.
Soon after Robb was appointed Suburban District Surveyor at a salary of £220 per annum and also took over Forbes’s County work, with an assistant. Later the Council again decided to appoint a County Surveyor and in October 1897 Robb was appointed from a short list of fifty on an annual salary of £450 (inc. travelling expenses). He had had a team of four district surveyors and additional office staff reporting to him. Initially the Road Surveyors office was in St Andrew Square, but they moved to the second floor of the new Midlothian County Buildings on George IV Bridge in the early 1900s.
In 1902, when Midlothian had over 530 miles or road and over 300 bridges under its care, Robb prepared a new large scale map of Midlothian and its roads system, published by W&AK Johnston, along with a booklet noting all the roads and bridges under Midlothian's stewardship.
John Robb ensured that much of the Midlothian Roads Office was staffed by the Robb family in the early twentieth century. This nepotism was addressed by a 1908 Report into his department which insisted new appointments had to be agreed by the Road Board. From 1905 he employed his brother Andrew Robb (1869-1926), who later became Chief Clerk or Assistant County Surveyor. (Andrew’s son, Graeme Lambert Robb AMICE (1906-58), would work with his father as a Road Surveyor for Midlothian in the 1920s). John’s younger brother David Haig Robb (1875-1946) also worked under John as a Road Surveyor before becoming the surveyor for Machars District, Wigtownshire in 1903. Another brother James Robb (1872-1916?) worked for Edinburgh City Council, and later emigrated to Canada working as a Road Surveyor for Calgary Corporation.
Robb was a leading member of the Road Surveyors’ Association of Scotland founded in 1884. He held several posts within its Committee including Vice President in 1905 and President the following year. In 1904 he was a delegate in the Association’s trip to France to report on French road management, widely seen as the most progressive in Europe. He had been voted £15 by Midlothian Council’s Road Board to assist him in the trip and to report back on how French practice could be successfully adapted to Midlothian’s roads, specifically finding a solution to acute angles and sharp corners. In 1907 he took the forty members of the Association around Midlothian showing then new road surfacing work and, at Kaimes Quarry, a ‘monster blast’ that dislodged 8000 tonnes of rock.
Robb was also heavily involved in the East of Scotland Engineering Association, founded in Edinburgh in 1885, and was Honorary Secretary in 1891 when he corresponded with Professor Patrick Geddes. He also served as vice President and gave several talks to the group.
In 1909 he was a delegate at the inaugural International Road Congress held in Paris, and was due to attend the third congress in London with his brother David in 1913. He had contributed a paper on Foremen and Roadmen.
In January 1912 he became an Affiliated Member of the Institution of Municipal Engineers. He attended their Scottish conference later that year, being elected to the Roads Committee.
Widening and reconstructing roads was a major part of the job, as was repairing and renewing bridges on the road network. Robb prepared reports on the conditions of several bridges and reconstructed or widened many throughout the county.
A major project involved the bridge over the Water of Leith and Caledonian Railway line crossing at Colinton. By the early 1900s the stone arched bridge, built in 1874, was seen as too narrow and Robb prepared plans to widen it in 1903 and 1909, the latter scheme with the addition of reinforced concrete piers. After passing plans to Sir Thomas Hudson Beare, Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, for comment, the Council, at Robb’s suggestion, decided instead to demolish the existing bridge and provide an entirely new crossing. In 1912 Robb designed a two-span structure using the Hennibique reinforced concrete system, advanced by LG Mouchel & Ptrs. Had it been built it would have been, at 360ft, one of the longest ferro-concrete bridges in the UK. However, in 1913 a powerful and concerted campaign against it began, headed by Colinton resident Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. Anderson judged the concrete as ‘ugly and soulless’ and noted the ‘fatal injury’ it would cause to the valley. By the end of the year the project was abandoned. Eventually in 1923 the bridge was widened by the City of Edinburgh who had then absorbed Colinton from Midlothian.
Alongside road works, Robb could still turn his hand to architecture. In his 1900 Annual Roads Report he argued for the Council to provide houses for roadmen to keep them in the Council’s employ and prevent them walking five or six miles before beginning work. The following decade saw dozens of these distinctive and diminutive buildings built, all designed by Robb. They were situated mainly at junctions with trunk roads, on the boundaries of existing villages or near quarries.
Housing was either for one or two roadmen and their families. Single houses are one storey three bay cottages with central doors. The roofs are hipped in slate rising to a central red brick chimney with overhanging eaves and visible rafter ends. The walls are harled with red brick corner quoins and arched window and door dressings. The variant design for 2 roadmen is a semi-detached hipped roof dwelling, to a similar design, the houses in Silverburn village still retaining their enamel ‘County Roadman’ sign. The use of red engineering brick may reflect Robb’s Newcastle training.
A unique example is at 23 Spylaw Street, Colinton (1906), described rather uncharitably in the Buildings of Scotland as a ‘much less decorous entry’ to the street. It was a bespoke design taking account of contemporary Arts & Crafts architecture in Colinton. Uniquely, it is two storeys high addressing the tight site and high land value of the location, housing a roadman and their family on each floor. Although built of harled brick with red brick dressings, it differed from usual designs by having half-timbered dormers, red clay tiles instead of slate and casement windows within a mullion and transom arrangement, rather than sashes.
Robb also repaired and converted existing toll houses and cottages for roadmen’s accommodation and designed other buildings associated with road works. There was also significant work at the numerous quarries under the Council’s control. e.g. Blackford, Kames, Cortleferry, Ravelrig and Barnton where stores, housing, railway lines and quarrying equipment were provided.
In 1903 the Council highways extended to over 536 miles and over 55 thousand tons of road metal was quarried and applied. Less than a decade later in 1912 the figure had risen to over 96 thousand tons with £49,316 expended on maintenance.
Like his father and younger brother Andrew, Robb was a keen member of the Volunteer movement. He served as a Sergeant-Instructor of Musketry for the Lothian and Borders Yeomanry and competed successfully in the numerous local Volunteer shooting competitions. He also took part in the national competitions held by the National Rifle Association at Bisley in Surrey, winning at individual distances and being within the top 100 competitors there in both 1892 and 1893.
Not surprisingly he was a keen motorist and member of the Scottish Automobile Club, but was also a member of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society.
Robb had suffered poor health issues for some time, and later lived in Craiglockhart Hydropathic. He died aged only 50 at Craiglockhart on 15th January 1913. He was unmarried, and left his estate of £1000, gold watch and seal, and drawing equipment to his brother Andrew.
There was a short obituary in the Scotsman newspaper on 16th January 1913 and in the Institution of Municipal Engineers journal. The Chairman of Midlothian County Council, Colonel Trotter of Colinton, ‘made sympathetic reference to the late Mr John Robb, the County Road Surveyor, and enumerated the appointments he had held, and many of the important schemes he had carried through’
Andrew Robb took over much of his brother’s workload, receiving several salary increases. Eventually, a new County Surveyor, Robert Moir, was appointed. In what seems like a cursed position Moir only lasted a few years in the job and in 1922 tragically took his own life.