This is a picture drawn by Geoffrey Jarvis who I first met because my parents employed him as an architect to alter the hall at Boghall. The hall was a dark dark room, we used it as an air raid shelter in the war, I probably mentioned it to you before, with the big sofa none of us wanted to keep [this was in no 9], and the hall included a portrait of my great grandfather Harold Brown. This picture is the only physical memory I have of Geoffrey. After he died Ros, his widow, put on a sale of the pile of his pictures and drawings and paintings she had come across. She decided that she would make high quality copies, and it brought back so many memories of his exploits. The New Glasgow Society was always involved with this pumping house, which has been through various phases and now is a distillery and restaurant. The warehouses on the side of the Clyde, you used one for your rehearsal studios at one stage, and this is the Tall Ship, and he has got this dramatic view of its bowsprit … it just shows how powerful the big sailing ships were.
I suppose he would now be in his late 90s so he would have been late 60s when he did this. Right from the start, he did the conservation of Culzean, a lot of work for the National Trust, he was never in commercial architecture, always a conservationist. He started with Lothian Barclay, a friend of my parents, and it would have been through him that they employed Geoffrey. Their office was just along from here at Woodside Place. He did a lot of work for Chivas and lots of the distilleries up Speyside. He was an enthusiast for GLASGOW. His father had been minister of Wellington Church so he was a well known figure.
So he started the New Glasgow Society as an architect. They were a heritage and conservation society, and a major task in the early years was to get the local authority to appreciate the quality of Glasgow and its Victorian heritage rather than, “it’s old, it should be demolished”, and its total purpose was to get this new thought of the quality of Glasgow and how much better it would be to preserve and save what was there rather than put up these horrible buildings that were going in their place. The ‘new’ was to get enthusiasm for the future. It was much younger and more enthusiastic than other societies. They were the main promoters of Gillespie Coia and Kidd. They were the first to recognise Mackintosh.
Must have started about 1964, and it had just started by having the inaugural victorian walk, but I also met them because Geoffrey and lots of girls who were violinists in the Scottish National Orchestra all lived in the Floundery which was middle class lodgings for single people in the West End of Glasgow, owned and run by Miss Floundery. That was in Lilybank Terrace off Byres Rd, now a car park. I was often invited there for a meal, but more often, since the management of the place didn’t go in for a lot of entertaining it was much more to pick people up there or go in for a coffee. (The NGS)… it met regularly and had monthly meetings, more likely walks in the summer. Usually met in churches or buildings they hoped to save or influence. The most likely place I remember meeting was the church in St Vincent Street, the Greek Thompson one. Really it was just Geoffrey Jarvis I thank for introducing me to some form of social society in Glasgow. I’d spent my first few years after I started work living back home at Boghall. I was a very stay at home backwards sort of person and I didn’t meet a lot of people at all and work took me away from Glasgow often enough and I was at a loose end. I’d occasionally lunch at the Western Club and meet that sort of person, but the New Glasgow Society people were not Western Club people.
This was before the influence of Alison, so influenced by the New Glasgow Society I started to visit art galleries. I think I bought my first Bet Low when I was still living at Boghall so the germs must have been there before I met Geoffrey but it was all strengthened by Geoffrey and others around him. I probably saw more of Robert Clow than Geoffrey. I always slightly disapproved of Robert, him and I didn’t agree on anything to do with business. He was a bit megalomaniac about it. He tried to prevent competitors coming to Glasgow by negative acts rather than by making John Smiths so good nobody would want to. There was something negative in his character. I saw more of him, because he lived in Glasgow. I lent him the money to buy a flat in St Vincent Crescent, but here was me without real friends in Glasgow, one or two posh people, the Stephens, the parents friends, the tennis club, but no real friends.
[dressing] I was much more influenced by the image of a businessman running a factory in Glasgow and fitting in with that concept, and although I went to become Governor of the RSAMD….. I had a season ticket at the concert hall and they were looking for additional governors for the RSAMD and I was asked if I would be interested in becoming a Governor. He knew my father, he’d seen me at a concert, and so that whole field started and that was 1969 or thereabouts.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jun/15/obituary-geoffrey-jarvis
The Royal Collection 