John More Dick Peddie (1853 - 1921)
One of the most prolific Scottish architects working at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, he was the son of an architect John Dick Peddie. Born in Edinburgh on 20th August 1853, his baptismal record names him simply as John More Peddie. The Peddie family as a whole seems to have added the second surname Dick about 1870.
After an education at Edinburgh Academy, the Elberfeld Realschule (Germany) and Edinburgh University, and a period as assistant to Sir George Gilbert Scott in London, he joined the family firm ( Peddie & Kinnear) in 1879 as partner to his father and to Charles George Hood Kinnear. From 1886 to 1906 he worked with George Washington Browne
(architect of Edinburgh's Central Public Library), and was joined in the final year of his life by William James Walker Todd.
Peddie's output was prodigious and there are examples of his work in many parts of Scotland. His work can be classified into three distinct groups - public or commercial buildings such as offices and banks; churches; and private houses. All three groups are well represented in Edinburgh
The Caledonian Station Hotel ( now Caledonian Hilton) is undoubtedly the most striking of his Edinburgh buildings. Its prominent location and fine sight-lines show Peddie's work off to great advantage. The office, bank and insurance buildings in George Street and St Andrew Square which Peddie designed are less flamboyant , evoking the solidity and reliability that financial institutions wish to present to the world.
Only three Edinburgh churches (all Episcopal) were designed by Peddie - Holy Cross at Davidson's Mains, St Ninian's Comely Bank (Peddie's church is now the church hall), and the long defunct St Kentigern's in St Peter's Place, but he was responsible for significant alterations and interior design features at St John's Princes Street, St Paul's & St George's York Place, and Palmerston Place Church.
Peddie pursued many interests outside of architecture - adviser to local authorities on housing developments, director of the Edinburgh Tramways Company, Scottish Equitable and the Scottish Investment Trust. He fished, shot and played golf and was active in politics.
On 10th March 1921, Peddie died at his Edinburgh home, and his funeral service was held in St John's Princes Street, the church which had been greatly enhanced by his design skills.
His firm continues as Dick Peddie & Mackay. Its vast archive of plans is with the RCAHMS, Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh.
Edinburgh buildings by J M D Peddie and associates
Longmore Hospital 1879 ( rear extension, 1891)
Bank of Scotland Head Office, Mound (external alterations, 1878 and 1883)
123 George Street, 1880
94 George Street, 1882
4 Laverockbank Terrace, 1883
Bank of Scotland, 97-99 George Street, 1883-85
St John the Evangelist Episcopal Church. ( chancel extension, 1879-82; reredos, 1889;
vestry hall, 1914-16)
Assembly Hall (extensions, 1885, 1902-3)
6 Ravelston Park, 1885
Royal Blind Asylum Workshops, Richmond Place, 1886-88
Caledonian Station Entrance, 1890-93
Corstorphine Hospital (extension, 1891)
22 Queen Street, 1892
St Paul's & St George's Episcopal Church ( new sanctuary and aisleless bay, 1891-92;
furnishings, 1911-14)
Standard Life Assurance building. George Street, 1897-1901
3-4 Hunter Square, (ground floor reconstruction,1898
Cargilfield School, 1899
Scottish Equitable, St Andrew Square, 1899
Caledonian Station Hotel, 1899
Palmerston Place Church ( pulpit and organ case, 1901)
North British & Mercantile 1905
Liberton Hospital & Lodge House, Lasswade Road, 1906
Edinburgh College of Art, 1906 (east wing, 1910)
Edinburgh Life Assurance Building, George Street ( later Commercial Union) 1908
Holy Cross Episcopal Church, Quality Street, Davidson's Mains, 1912
St Ninian's Episcopal Church, Comely Bank, 1921
References
Directory of British Architects,1834-1914 . Vol2. pp343-344 ( Fine Art : wNA 40)
Edinburgh Life Assurance Co Building. Architectural Review, 1909 vol 26, pp 94-97. (Fine Art )
Gray, A Stuart. Edwardian architecture: a biographical dictionary. 1985. p281-2. (Fine Art : WNA 968)
Peddie, J M D. Description of an old timber building, in the Lawnmarket, Edinburgh. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol 18, June 9, 1854, pp 465 -476. (Scottish Library : DA 770)
Terry, George F. Memorials of the Church of St John the Evangelist, Princes Street, Edinburgh. 1911. (Edinburgh Room : BR5346 J65 / G80856)
Obituaries
Scotsman, March 12, 1921. (Edinburgh Room)
Glasgow Herald, March 14, 1921. (Scottish Library)
Builder v120, 18 Mar 1921, p338. (Central Reference Library)
Websites
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE PEDDIE CLAN GROUP ON FACEBOOK
John More Dick Peddie
Designation: Architect
Born: 21 August 1853
Died: 10 March 1921
John More Dick Peddie was born in Edinburgh on 21 August 1853, the eldest son of John Dick Peddie and Euphemia Lockhart More. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy from 1864 to 1868 followed by two years at the Real Schule, Elberfeld. He entered the science faculty at Edinburgh University in 1870 while on a short articled apprenticeship with his father, who by then had been joined in partnership by Charles George Hood Kinnear; and subsequently he obtained a place in the office of George Gilbert Scott before setting off on a grand tour which took him as far south as Sicily. He returned to the Peddie & Kinnear office in 1875 as an assistant and was taken into partnership three years later, the firm then becoming Peddie, Kinnear & Peddie. After his return the practice's church work became consistently English Gothic rather than continental Romanesque. When he became a partner the practice was also joined by Peddie's fifth son Walter Lockhart Dick Peddie, born in Edinburgh on 7 November 1865 and educated at Fettes College. He may have been less academically minded than Peddie's other sons: he did not go to Elberfeld and of all Peddie's sons he was the only one not to go to university, signing drawings at the early age of fourteen.
In 1879 the elder Peddie withdrew from the practice at the age of fifty-five. He did not become a retired Academician, thereby blocking the election of both Kinnear and his son, and retained his membership by exhibiting old projects. He entered politics as Liberal MP for the Kilmarnock Burghs from 1880 and was particularly active in the campaign for Disestablishment; but although it has been stated that this was the aim of his early retirement, in reality it was at least as much for the purposes of repairing the family fortunes and providing for his unmarried sisters and daughters by becoming a fund manager. His sisters were a particular problem to him as his unmarried brother James had never had a particularly successful business and his father had somehow lost his money, probably through acting as a 'cautioner', which compelled him to sell the house his son built for him in Lansdowne Crescent in 1867 and become his son's tenant and pensioner in Chalmers Street.
The reputation of the practice and the financial circumstances of the entire Peddie family were further compromised by John Dick Peddie's chartered accountant uncle Donald Smith Peddie who fled to the USA in November 1882 as a result of the divorce action by one of his clients, and was found to have liabilities of £75,000 and realisable assets of £4,565, chiefly represented by the house the elder Peddie had built for him in Trinity. The elder Peddie's £800 bond on that property was amongst those 'left out of view' and the Peddie family had to subscribe heavily towards the £25,940 missing from the accounts of the Friendly Society of Dissenting Ministers which he had been raiding since at least 1845. Moreover the numerous property, hydropathic and hotel companies in which the elder Peddie had an interest began to become insolvent with frequent calls on the shareholders for more capital. Making money thus became even more important than it had been, and the elder Peddie thereafter concentrated on developing his international business interests and investments with numerous company directorships. It was on a voyage encompassing Australasia and the United States to inspect some of the operations of these companies in 1885 that Euphemia died and her body was brought home for burial in Dean Cemetery on 31 December. The elder Peddie himself died on 12 March 1891, leaving moveable assets of £26,432 2s 10d, liabilities of £10,002 13s 0d, his houses in Buckingham Terrace and Chalmers Street and the heavily mortgaged office building at 122 George Street. His net moveable estate was calculated at £16,429 9s 10d but because of bonds the net worth of his property interests is difficult to guess.
After the elder Peddie's withdrawal the practice became Kinnear & Peddie, Kinnear having become senior partner. Kinnear initially tended to retain the larger public and commercial commissions: or at least that is what contemporary references seem to suggest in relation to Longmore Hospital and Craiglockhart Hydropathic, the Germanic classicism of which is a simplified continuation of the elder Peddie's Alexander Thomson-inspired work of the 1870s. The more ambitious country houses, particularly Drygrange, also followed well-tried Kinnear formulae but John More Dick Peddie and the younger members of staff must have done much of the detailing which had become more academically neo-Jacobean with Aesthetic Movement influences.
Like every other practice Kinnear & Peddie's was affected by the recession following the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. But although the banks had lost money in the Donald Smith Peddie frauds, they remained loyal. The Bank of Scotland's George Street branch, designed by J M Dick Peddie in 1883-4, was the finest the practice built, still very much in the tradition of his father's bank and insurance buildings but with subtly updated details. Its style was reproduced in a simplified form for some provincial branches but his relatively few urban buildings of the 1880s tended to be more free Renaissance or Jacobean. For the Caledonian Station, 1890, a number of very French Beaux-Arts schemes were produced, the variety of draughtsmanship suggesting that outside help may have been brought in. Some of the details suggest the hand of George Washington Browne even if the arched forms were reminiscent of the St Enoch Station proposals of thirty-five years earlier. In the smaller domestic commissions 'Old English' half-timbered gables were adopted from the mid-1880s and at Redholme, North Berwick, 1889, with which Browne's name has been linked, 'Queen Anne' idiom was adopted in red sandstone rather than red brick.
Kinnear's design role gradually declined after he became Colonel of the Midlothian Coast Artillery Volunteers on 29 June 1884. But as soon as the elder Peddie died he sought admission as FRIBA, his proposers being John Burnet Senior and two eminent Londoners, Professor T Roger Smith and his partner Charles Forster Hayward. He was admitted on 8 June 1891, and in the following year the Royal Scottish Academy elected him associate, an honour which 'at the time considerably astonished him and which it is doubtful if he ever fully appreciated'. He did not live to become an Academician, dying suddenly of heart failure after a normal day at his HQ and in the office on 5 November 1894.
John More Dick Peddie never sought admission to the RIBA, preferring to be a member of the Society of Architects. He had little time for his father's radical politics, and seems to have become closer to Kinnear during their years of partnership. Under Kinnear's influence, and perhaps that of his wife Catherine Jemima Stewart who was exactly a year older, born 21 August 1852, he became both a Unionist and an Episcopalian, enabling him to fit comfortably into Kinnear's circle of clients and relations in south-west Scotland. But like his father he was as much a pillar of Edinburgh's business world as architect and it was probably for that reason that he took George Washington Browne into partnership late in 1895 or early in 1896, formalising the loose relationship which had existed between them for several years: the immediate catalyst seems to have been a surge in branch bank building, particularly for the British Linen Bank. As the South Charlotte Street office had belonged to Kinnear, the new partnership moved to much larger premises at 8 Albyn Place late in 1896 or early in 1897. Born in Glasgow on 21 September 1853, the son of an employee of Glasgow Corporation Gas Company, Browne already had a distinguished career behind him. Articled to Salmon Son & Ritchie c.1869, he there found himself in the company of James Marjoribanks MacLaren and William Flockhart. In 1873 on completion of his articles he joined the office of Campbell Douglas & Sellars, from which he won John James Stevenson's measured drawing prize; and in 1875 he and MacLaren moved to London where they shared lodgings at 60 Brompton Square, Browne having obtained a place in Stevenson's office, then Stevenson & Robson. They then joined the Architectural Association, Browne being admitted in December of that year. After two years with Stevenson, Browne moved to the church architect Arthur William Blomfield, and during his time there he won the Pugin Studentship in 1877, enabling him to travel in France and Belgium. He then moved to the office of William Eden Nesfield, by whom he was profoundly influenced. In 1879 Browne returned to Scotland, this time to Edinburgh as principal assistant to Robert Rowand Anderson, then engaged on the Edinburgh Medical Schools; and in 1881 he became Anderson's partner, enabling him to marry Jessie Brownlie, daughter of Robert Brownlie, Glasgow, in that year. In 1883 Anderson & Browne merged their practice with that of Hew M Wardrop as Wardrop, Anderson & Browne, and perhaps unintentionally that was to lead to Browne leaving the partnership to open his own office at 5 Queen Street in 1885: probably because in the recession of the mid-1880s there was not quite enough business for three partners. But Browne's 1887 competition win at Edinburgh Public Library where the assessor was Alfred Waterhouse, followed by the Redfern building on Princes Street in 1891 and the huge Sick Children's Hospital in 1892, brought him election as ARSA in that year, and put Browne's practice on an equal footing with Peddie's in terms of work in hand, enabling him to move to a smarter office at 1 Albyn Place.
The Peddie & Washington Browne partnership was hugely successful, enabling Browne to build a very sophisticated neo-Jacobean house, The Limes, in Blackford Road, and even accommodate Peddie's brother Walter Lockhart Dick Peddie as third partner in 1898. But soon thereafter Walter became ill and emigrated to British Columbia in the hope of recovery. He died there in 1902 and was not replaced. From about 1905 the partnership began to drift apart, although Peddie and Browne were to remain in formal partnership until 1907 and share the same office at 8 Albyn Place until 1908. Peddie had in fact been taking his side of the practice in a more Beaux-Arts and neo-Georgian direction, perhaps influenced by Frank Worthington Simon at the School of Applied Art, and began hiring some very accomplished assistants to help him do it. Of these the most important were John Wilson and James Forbes Smith. Born in 1877, Wilson had been articled to the school architect Robert Wilson and had worked under Wilson's brilliant assistant and successor, John Alexander Carfrae. Whilst in Peddie & Washington Browne's employ he published a major folio on the Petit Trianon in 1907. Smith was a year older than Wilson, born 1876 and articled to George Beattie & Son in 1891. He had obtained a place in Rowand Anderson's office at the end of his articles and had spent three years with him, concurrently taking classes at Anderson's Edinburgh School of Applied Art under Professor Frank Worthington Simon, Stewart Henbest Capper and John Watson. The date at which he joined Peddie's office is not precisely known, but was probably 1897, just slightly ahead of Wilson, and while in the office he distinguished himself by winning the Pugin Silver Medal in 1900, enabling him to travel.
After some two years as sole partner, Peddie took Forbes Smith into partnership in 1909 and Wilson left in the following year to become architect to the Local Government Board. Smith applied for Licentiateship in January 1911, his proposers being John Watson, Ramsay Traquair and Alexander Hunter Crawford. He was admitted in March of that year, his home address then being 3 Hope Park Terrace. By that date he had travelled in France, Belgium, Holland and Italy.
The partnership of Peddie & Forbes Smith was dissolved in 1917. The reasons have not been recorded but Smith seems never to have established a clientele of his own and at that date the practice had little or no business and high overheads retaining the office at Albyn Place. Smith continued in practice on his own account for a few years, apparently unsuccessfully, and it is not yet known what became of him.
In January 1920 Peddie merged his practice with that of Todd & Miller as J M Dick Peddie & W J Walker Todd. The Todd & Miller practice had been founded by Peddie's former assistant William James Walker Todd, born in Glasgow on 6 February 1884, the son of Ruthven Campbell Todd CA. He was educated at Fettes College and articled to Thomas Purves Marwick in January 1902. He travelled in Italy as early as 1903 and attended the Edinburgh School of Applied Art, which merged with Edinburgh College of Art while he was a student in 1902-07. While there he won the Diploma of Merit for his National Art Survey Work and the Royal Institution Travelling Studentship in 1907, these gaining him a place in Peddie's office on his return from a further spell of continental travel. He commenced practice on his own account at 44 Hanover Street in 1909, and was later joined by Sydney Houghton Miller, who had won the Pugin Studentship in that year. Miller was only slightly younger, born in Edinburgh on 14 May 1884 and educated at George Watson's College. He had been articled to Sir Robert Rowand Anderson from 1902, attending Anderson's School of Applied Art where he too won a National Art Survey travelling scholarship. From c.1907 he gained experience as an assistant to Anderson, Alexander Hunter Crawford, Hippolyte Jean Blanc, George Washington Browne and William Thomas Oldrieve at the Edinburgh Office of Works before formally joining Walker Todd in partnership at 19 Young Street in 1914: designs made together before that date appear to have been in collaboration rather than in partnership. What should have been the partnership's major work, St David's Church at Dundee, was never realised despite a reduction in the design. The practice closed in 1915 when the partners were called up: Walker Todd served in France with the Royal Scots, reaching the rank of Captain.