IF any one family can be cited as exemplars of the entrepreneurial spirit of Glasgow which drove the expansion of the city in the latter half of the 18th century, it was the Stirlings who effectively began the printing and dyeing industries that were a huge contributor to the development of Glasgow and other places.  

There had been Stirlings in and around Glasgow for centuries, but it was William Stirling (1717-1777) who made them rich and famous. Already involved in the clothing trade, records show that Stirling was made Burgess and Guild Brother of the Burgh of Glasgow in February 1745. 

He began his own business in the late 1740s by buying India cottons and having them printed in London for the Glasgow market. 

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He set up his eponymous firm, William Stirling and Co, in 1750 and made his name for innovative marketing, such as newspaper advertising.  

This is his advertisement in the Glasgow Journal of May 10, 1756: “At the warehouse of Mr Stirling, above the Cross, there is to be exposed to sale for a few days, A neat Parcel of printed Cottons, of the newest patterns, lately imported from London, at and below first cost.”

Although it is long gone, we know that the ‘Warehouse above the Cross’ was on the west side of High Street, across the way from Blackfriars Church. The Stirling company bought the adjacent dwelling house and nearly an acre of ground near to where Stirling Road now stands.

In his seminal work, A History of Glasgow published in 1795 by William Paton, one of the city’s first historians in print, Andrew Brown, described what happened next:  “In the meantime the celebrated William Stirling formed a co-partnership with a few of those whom he found best informed and likely to prosecute this plan with success. 

“They erected a work for this purpose on the banks of the Kelvin at Dalsholm (Dawsholm). They began with the printing of handkerchiefs, and with success. They proceeded to the printing of cloth for garments and furniture.”

Brown added: “The printing of cloth has long been one of Glasgow’s staple trades and William Stirling, if not the first printer, was the first to print on a large scale.”

The imports of cotton and exports of cotton goods proved very lucrative for William Stirling.  

Just eight years later, with partners and works of his own as described in a newspaper account in 1764:  “At Dalsholme Printfield, near Glasgow, there is printed, all sorts of work upon linen and cotton cloth for gowns and furniture, by William Stirling & Co., merchants in Glasgow, who have engaged a man of character in the printing business lately in London; from which place he has this season brought a great variety of the newest and most fashionable prints; the patterns of which, and the prices of each may be seen, in a book kept at the shop of Jean M’Neil, Greenock; William Morison, Port-Glasgow; Wm. Wilson, Kilmarnock; Zachary Gemmil, Irvine; David Farrie, Ayr; James Paterson, Hamilton; David Nevary, Edinburgh; John Wilson, Falkirk; James Bredie, Perth; Michael Erskine, Paisley; and at the warehouse, Glasgow who receive the cloth from our customers; and they may depend upon having it well printed, and returned in due time.” 

So not only was Stirling creating an industry he was also supplying the new breed of shops springing up all over Scotland.  Glasgow’s printfields and dyeworks proved so successful that they far outgrew the city. New locations with supplies of fresh water were needed and less than 20 miles from the city was just such a place – the Vale of Leven.

The River Leven empties out of Loch Lomond at Balloch and then flows and meanders to join with the River Clyde at Dumbarton, the confluence becoming a site for shipbuilding where later the famous yard of William Denny would build the Cutty Sark.    

According to the book The Stirlings of Cadder “in 1767, his two eldest sons Andrew and John, having completed their university education, he resolved to enter into a new business of calico printing, which should be on so large a scale as to afford occupation not only for them but for his younger sons when they grew up. He took his elder sons into partnership in the new firm ‘William Stirling & Sons’ , and in 1770 moved out to the Leven where he had purchased a large piece of ground from Campbell of Stonefield and Smollett of Bonhill.”

Glasgow Times: The River Leven The River Leven 

Brown’s History tells us that Stirling erected a large works on the banks of the Leven at Dalquhurn. Brown reported in 1795: “The branches that have sprung from it and grown up in the neighbourhood have been the means of diffusing a circulation of cash in that country to a great amount. 

“The effects of this cause are wonderful. The young women were taken from their spinning wheels, and employed in pencilling the colours in the prints on the calicoes. 

“The boys and girls were taken from idleness to the service of the printers. 

“The wages of industry, diffused among a primitive people in this valley, uncorrupted in their manners, produced an immediate change in their dress as well as of their mode of living for the better. 

“The population about the works on the west side of the Leven his increased so much that they have erected a place of worship at a new-reared village called Renton.”

Stirling died in 1777, leaving behind his family to continue building the business. 

His three sons by his wife Mary, were Andrew, John, and James, all of whom became well-known merchants in Glasgow. 

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His two daughters, Elizabeth and Agnes can be said to have married well, the former to William Hamilton, Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow – her sons included Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh and Captain Thomas Hamilton, author of

“Cyril Thornton” – while Agnes married the merchant Dugald Bannatyne and became the mother of the once well-known writers, Andrew and Dugald John Bannatyne.

In the space of two generations, the Stirling family had become major players in Glasgow and what is now West Dunbartonshire.  We’ll meet their descendants again later in this series.