124 Craighall Road

124 Craighall Road is a two-storey, eight-bay, rectangular-plan former sawmill office building in red brick, fronting a principal road through Port Dundas, a largely industrial area to the north of Glasgow city centre. The building was designed in 1893 by George Bell II of Clarke and Bell Architects and built at a cost of £3,000.

The ground floor of the principal entrance (west) elevation has wide shallow-arched windows recessed within shallow brick pilasters and sandstone cills. There is a timber panelled entrance door to the second bay from the right and a bricked up former entrance to the far left bay. The first floor has paired windows with a continuous sandstone cill band course and shallow corbelled brick dentils to the broad eaves band course. There are glazed bricks to the first floor window surrounds and some doorways. The rear (east) elevation has a door at the outer right bay of the ground floor but otherwise largely mirrors the design of the west elevation. The opening to the left of the door at the ground floor has been infilled with brick, as have two of the windows on the first floor. The two-bay south elevation has later 20th century brick facing and a central doorway. A later 20th century brick building adjoins the former office at the north elevation.

The building has a piended slate roof and large corniced brick chimney ridge stack to the north. The eastern pitch has rooflights, two of which are cut in to form windows. The ground floor windows have four-pane timber sashes with patterned margined glazing to the upper arches. The first floor paired brick mullioned windows are plate glass timber sash and case.

The interior retains a number of late 19th century features including a turned open staircase with arched panelled frieze and coloured glazed section. The entrance lobby has a mosaic tiled floor and the public hallways have diamond pattern parquetry to dado height. Three of the first floor meeting rooms have panelling to dado height, parquetry edged floors and detailed art nouveau style fireplaces with coloured brick tiles. The timber architraves are stepped with fluted pilaster details, and the timber doors have a detailed panelled pattern design. The first floor corridor has panelled and opaque glass panels to the former office rooms.

Historical context

Port Dundas developed between 1786 and 1790 on high ground over Glasgow as the terminus of the Forth and Clyde Canal Glasgow Branch (a Scheduled Monument). Through the early 19th century, the area evolved into a vibrant industrial area including engineering, sugar and distilling. Several sawmills were serviced by a large timber seasoning basin located opposite the building on the west side of Craighall Road.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1857, published 1860) shows Rockvilla Sawmills to the north of the basin and two large buildings that formed the City Sawmills between the basin and Craighall Road. The Ordnance Survey name book of 1858 describes the City Sawmills as "A large sawmill on the west side of Craighall Road". The City Sawmills was founded by James Brownlee in 1848 and grew rapidly, expanding into 14 acres of land on the east side of Craighall Road in 1870. The earlier Rockvilla Sawmill (Dunn and Co.) was taken into its ownership around this time. The City Sawmills became the largest firm of timber merchants in Scotland, with shipments forming a major part of the Forth and Clyde Canal trade. James Brownlee died in 1890 and following his death the City Sawmills was set up as a public company, with share purchases heavily oversubscribed.

The building was designed in 1893, presumably shortly after the firm became a public company, and first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey Map (surveyed 1894, published 1896). By 1914 "Brownlee and Co, timber merchants and sawmillers" owned two further sawmill sites at Kilmarnock Sawmills and the Caledonian Sawmills in Grangemouth. The firm had 500 employees and were importers of American and Baltic timber as well as manufacturers of windows, doors, architraves, mouldings and other finishes.

The Brownlee company ceased trading in 1968 and the majority of sawmill buildings on the site were cleared around 1990. It is likely a single storey entrance block that was attached to the south of the former office building was demolished around the same time as the wider site was cleared. The building was later taken over by a Glasgow jeweller and some internal partitions appear to date from this use in the late 1970s or 1980s. A brick range was added to the north gable in the late 20th century.