Crawfords of Jordanhill

Jordanhill House, Renfrewshire, Scotland, about 1888 and following the improvements by James Smith of Jordanhill

In 1546 Lawrence Crawford of Kilbirnie founded a chaplainry at Drumry, and to sustain it endowed it with the freehold ownership of land at Jordanhill, which then accumulated rent at a rate of £5 per annum. His sixth son Thomas Crawford was a soldier who led the 1571 capture of Dumbarton Castle, who had previously acquired the lands at Jordanhill from the chaplain of Drumry in 1562. There he built a house, possibly on or close to the foundations of an original hunting lodge. In the 18th century, one of his descendants also called Lawrence Crawford extended and refurbished the old house, and laid out the original garden scheme and associated orchards.

Houstons of Jordanhill

In 1750 the Crawford family sold the estate to Tobacco Lords Alexander Houston, whose family was also forced to sell the estate in 1800 after his business got into trouble, to James Smith of merchants Smith & Leitch.^[4]

Smiths of Jordanhill

James Smith of Jordanhill (1782-1867)

The third son of a Tobacco Lord from Craigend, James's two elder brothers having travelled to Virginia and North Carolina in the 1760s had noted the growing civil uprising warning of the forthcoming American War of Independence, and refocused their family's merchant business on trade with the West Indies. By the early 19th century, and after the death of their father, all three sons could afford to retire. As third son, James had no access to the family's landed estate, and so bought Jordanhill for £14,000 in 1800. He then spent a further £4,000 extending and modernising the manor house.^[4] By 1809, the estate was sustained by its four associated farms of Whiteinch, Windyedge, Woodend and Anniesland. Having married Mary Wilson that year (granddaughter of Alexander Wilson and niece of Patrick Wilson), Smith improved access to the main house by gravelling the road to the Anniesland toll road, which is now known as Crow Road. In 1821, with four children and a pregnant wife, after the purchase of Gartnavel farm he remodelled the existing house, and also built a stone pillar in direct line between his favourite window in the manor house library and the spire of Renfrew Parish Church. A keen leisure sailor, in 1827 Smith bought the Baths Hotel at Helensburgh. With seven children, after two of his daughters caught tuberculosis, the family relocated temporarily to Portugal and rented out the house for five years. After the death of both daughters, the family returned to the estate in 1846, but in 1847 Mrs. Smith died of pneumonia. Comfortable but with less of a fortune, Smith devoted his remaining twenty years to church works and supporting his children in their endeavours.^[4]

After the death of his father in 1866, his son Archibald Smith inherited the by now neglected Jordanhill estate. A qualified barrister who lived in London with his wife and three children, he devoted his spare time to working on the problems of the deviation of the navigational compass associated with the newly developed iron ships. In 1862 he published patents and papers to solve these, which brought him the Gold Medal of the Royal Society. Smith left most of the management of the estate to its staff, which generated £4,500 of income across its core 293-acre (119 ha) holding, of which £3,000 came from the quickly diminishing coal mines and ironstone workings leased on the former farmlands to the Monkland Iron and Steel Co.^[5] An 1872 government award of £2,000 for his compass research allowed him to replace the worst houses on the estate with new homes, today known as Compass Cottages in Anniesland Road. On his early death in 1872, to pay off death duties and the accrued debts of the estate, his wife sold of much of the estate's former farmlands for housing development north of the Glasgow, Yoker and Clydebank Railway.^[4]

Archibald Smith of Jordanhill, upon graduation at Trinity College, Cambridge (Senior Wrangler)

After his mother's death in 1913, James Parker Smith inherited the estate. Educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, like his father he qualified as a barrister. After marriage to his cousin, he had devoted himself to politics, becoming Liberal Unionist MP for Glasgow Partick in 1890. In January 1900, Smith had been appointed assistant private secretary (unpaid) to Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies.^[6] After losing his seat in 1906, like his mother he began selling off more pieces of land four housing development, including the former Gartnavel farm to the Royal Lunatic Asylum. Approached by the university which was looking for a site on which to establish a unified teacher training college, in 1913 Parker Smith agreed sale of the residual estate.^[4]

Following the death of Archibald Colin Hamilton Smith in Australia on 5 June 1971, the sixth generation of the family who died without issue, the Smith family papers dealing with the Jordanhill Estate were donated to the Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library. Many of the Smith family are buried in the graveyard surrounding Renfrew Parish Church.^[4]

On 25 June 2007, Lord Lyon King of Arms recognized Michael Babington Smith, the grandson of Archibald Colin Hamilton Smith as successor to his grandfather as Representer of the House of Smith of Jordanhill and therefore, Michael Babington Smith of Jordanhill.