James Ross Gillespie, usually referred to simply as James Gillespie, was born in Dunfermline in 1854 and was brought up by an aunt in Springfield. By the age of 19 he was assistant to John Smith Birrell, who had transferred his practice from his architect-builder father's base at Drumeldrie to St Andrews in 1871, or perhaps slightly earlier; Gillespie had probably been articled to him. Birrell died at the age of 38 in March 1876 and, presumably by arrangement with his executors, Gillespie took over the practice at the age of 21 or 22.
One year prior to that, in 1875, Gillespie had enlisted as a volunteer in the Rifle Brigade, and it was probably through this connection that he soon gained the confidence of the linoleum manufacturer Michael Nairn in Kirkcaldy, and perhaps just slightly later, that of John Gilmour of Montrave. By 1878 he was sufficiently prosperous to marry Christina Wallace Hird Downie, daughter of the St Andrews photographer Archibald Downie. The Archibald Downie who designed the Tom Morris House in 1882 was probably her brother and may have been an assistant in the practice.
In 1885 Gillespie was promoted to Captain, and within a year his practice had moved to an altogether higher level with major additions to Nether Rankeillor for Nairn, and soon afterwards the commission for a very large and completely new house at Montrave for Gilmour. To assist with these projects he engaged James Scott as draughtsman. Scott was born at Kinnesswood in 1861, the son of Thomas Scott, a clerk of works, and his wife Janet Hoey. He was at first apprenticed as a joiner but quickly found a place in Govan Burgh Surveyor's Department from which he continued his apprenticeship as a civil engineer with the Glasgow practice of Martin & Dunlop. On completing his articles Scott became an assistant with James Thomson of Baird & Thomson from January 1882 until June 1883. He then moved to the practice of Robert Baldie and William Tennant with whom he remained until he joined James Gillespie on 11 November 1885. In June 1890 Tennant offered him a partnership. Scott, however, preferred to remain in St Andrews, probably as the result of the promise of a partnership from Gillespie who had a stronger client base and was much less dependent on success in competitions. This event enabled him to marry Jeannie Scott Miller on 7 October 1890, but it seems not to have been until 1895 that the practice title of James Gillespie & Scott was formally adopted.
Gillespie was promoted Honorary Major in 1892. The practice grew rapidly throughout the 1890s with major commissions from the University of St Andrews and St Leonard's School, and substantial additions to the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse. By 1905 the practice had a staff of fifteen, as detailed in William Walker's FRIBA nomination paper. Throughout this period Scott was the actual designer, Gillespie dealing with the clients and the management of the practice. Although like almost every other firm it seems to have suffered a little in the wake of the Finance Act of 1909, its prosperity enabled Gillespie to build a substantial new house, Brooklands, in 1913. He died soon after moving in on 10 July 1914. His son James Gillespie, junior, born 1883, succeeded to his interest in the partnership, but he enlisted in the Black Watch in 1914 and was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The death of Gillespie's son left James Scott sole partner, but although a very able Glasgow-school designer with a sharp eye for detail, his impatient red-haired temperament did not suit all of the firm's clients. The second phase of University Hall was lost in 1911 to Donald Mills, who also took over the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse in the early 1920s. Reginald Fairlie took a significant share of the St Leonard's School work from about 1926, and although the Nairns did commission a monumental factory block in the 1930s they turned to the Glasgow architect James Miller for their new office block. Although still prosperous the practice had gone into a relative decline.
James Scott died at Balgedie, Kinnesswood in January 1944. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he had been assisted by his two sons James Hoey Scott who had trained as an architect, and Alfred George Scott, who had trained as a civil engineer. As James Scott retained an active design role up to the Second World War it is somewhat difficult to form a clear picture of James junior's work, but the New Picture House and a few of the firm's larger houses suggest that he was a very able designer, and in the late 1930s he made a tentative foray into modernism with some flat-roofed houses in St Andrews. His career was cut short by the war and by the severe injuries he suffered in the collapse of an amateur dramatics stage-set in 1946. In the 1950s he retired to Plockton where he died on Christmas Day 1981. He never married.
Alfred George Scott predeceased his brother on 2 August 1975 aged 82. His two sons followed the same architect/civil engineer division. The elder was James L Hunter Scott who was born on 28 June 1921 and was educated at Denstone College, Staffordshire, and the University of St Andrews where he graduated BSc in civil engineering, becoming a partner in 1949. His interests were, however, just as much architectural as he was an active member of the St Andrews Preservation Trust, a Council member of the Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland and Chairman of the Paton Trust for the housing of retired clergy. He retired in 1989/90 and died after a long illness on 12 January 1997, survived by his wife Sheila, two sons and two daughters.
Alfred Scott's second son Michael G Scott was born on 2 June 1925 and educated at New Park School, St Andrews, from which he won a scholarship to Westminster School. He served with RAF Intelligence and with the Royal Navy on minesweeping in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean during the Second World War, thereafter reading French and German at Oxford. He then worked for the contractors Gilbert Ash to gain practical experience of building prior to taking the architecture course at Edinburgh College of Art. He joined the practice in 1957 and remained with it until his retirement in 1994 when he presented the practice's records to St Andrews University Library. His interest in the Navy continued in the RNVR of which he became Commander of the Tayside Division in 1968. He died suddenly on 27 August 1998, survived by his wife Barbro whom he had married in 1957