Architect behind Stirling’s most striking buildings
Batterflats and John Allan
This summer, the Stirling Smith hosts an exhibition on the architect John Allan (1847-1922) who created some of Stirling’s most striking and unusual buildings. His designs used red brick, steel and lead combined with carved creamy stonework to create distinctive tenements, shops and dwellings.
His use of symbols and mottoes make his buildings particularly memorable and perhaps his best known building is Wolfcraig in Port Street/ Dumbarton Road.
He lived in a house of his own design at 34 Albert Place. Numerous villas in King’s Park and the Batterflats mansion, built for a member of the Drummond family (1893-5), on Polmaise Road show the incredible range of his design skills.
The tower and decorative cast detailing of the red Ruabon bricks below the black and white timbered upper stories of Batterflats make the building particularly distinctive. In 1929, the house was bequeathed to the Church of Scotland as a residential home and in 1954 it was sold to Stirling Council for use as an old folks’ home, accommodating 30 people.
In the 1980s it was converted to private housing, and the six-acre site is now covered with a housing development.
There will be a talk in the Smith by Stirling archivist Pam McNicol at noon on Wednesday, May 10 on Stirling’s Dean of Guild plans, for those who would like to know more about John Allan.