Walter Macfarlane & Co.

WALTER MACFARLANE & CO., Architectural, Sanitary, and Engineering Art Founders, Saracen Foundry, Possilpark, Glasgow.

    It will be necessary for those of our readers who have not seen the exterior or interior ensemble of the great Saracen Foundry of Messrs. Walter Macfarlane & Co. to dissociate from their minds all the usual ideas that a great iron founding establishment usually suggests. The mass of grimy and dilapidated-looking buildings, the house of smoke and stifling fumes, in whose lurid gloom demonaic-looking Cyclops move to-and-fro, may meet the ordinary idea of a foundry, but finds no illustration in this great representative concern. It would be difficult indeed to imagine from a merely external survey to what branch of enterprise the ornate and attractive buildings of the Saracen Foundry appertained. Covering a square of some fourteen acres in area, regularly and handsomely designed, and presenting a clean cut and unsoiled aspect, it required an effort of the imagination to conceive that this is the great centre of one of the most important branches of the Glasgow iron-working industry and the source of supply of useful and artistic foundings for all parts of the civilised and, we might add, the uncivilised world. Yet such is the case; nor, on second thoughts, is it to be wondered at that the firm, in whose productions the artistic element is supreme, should embody the same element in the architecture of the foundry itself.

    The associations of the firm with the Glasgow iron-founding trade reach back half a century. Founded at first in Saracen Lane, the rapidly expanding enterprise soon found a second location in the architecturally splendid range of buildings, in Washington Street, still standing as a striking monument of the taste of the firm. Twenty years ago the site of the Mansion House and grounds of Sheriff Allison, the historian, were acquired, and thereon were erected the present Works. The founder, the late Walter Macfarlane, personally directed the great enterprise, which, since his decease, has been carried on with the same successful spirit and enterprise that characterized the firm during his lifetime. The members of the present firm have all been in a sense born and bred in the business, while the old lines and reputation are jealously maintained by the present head of the firm, Mr. Walter Macfarlane, nephew and namesake of the late founder.

    The interior of the Saracen Foundry does not belie the promise of the exterior. Entering by an imposing and spacious entrance the visitor finds himself in a range of handsome offices, about 260 feet in length, and fitted up in the most exquisite modern style. Adjoining are the palatial showrooms, the whole covering about three-quartefs of an acre. Passing through these, department after department of the spacious foundries and workshops may be visited till the mind becomes bewildered at the multiplicity of operations being carried on beneath the ten acres of roof that covers the executive portion of the Saracen Foundry. Some idea of the magnitude of the endless variety of castings undertaken by the firm may be gained from the fact that their catalogue extends to some two thousand quarto imperial pages and contains six thousand illustrations. The firm’s castings are well known all over the world as “sharp, clean, and full of character”. They are inventors and patentees of ornamental rain water pipes, gutters, roof terminals, balustrades, grates, ventilators, school fittings, plumbers’ and builders’ castings, sanitary appliances, baths, fountains, troughs, closets, and, in brief, make every kind of light and heavy castings for every purpose of utility or ornament.

    Industrially, Messrs. Macfarlane & Co. have long contributed a large quota of employment to the skilled workers of the City. Their usual staff exceeds 1,200 skilled hands, and the result of their enterprise in the Possilpark district is seen in the phenomenal increase in its population from 10 some twenty years ago to 10,000 at the present time. Such a record speaks for itself, and has no parallel, so far as we know, even in the busy area of the basin of the Clyde.

Back to Index of Firms (1891)