IN THE nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Walter Macfarlane & Co’s Saracen foundry manufactured cast iron products that were shipped to India, Japan, Jamaica and more.
The firm’s trade catalogues - which we are fortunate to hold here at Glasgow City Archives - include designs for grand ornamental pieces, like lampposts, drinking fountains and bandstands, as well as the likes of gates and even urinals. Some of their work remains - the Saracen Fountain, the Bailie Martin memorial drinking fountain and the lamppost stands outside the Mitchell Library.
Fountain design, from the 1883 catalogue. Picture: Glasgow City Archives
Born in 1817 in Torrance of Campsie, East Dunbartonshire, Walter Macfarlane was a jeweller in Glasgow initially, and then a blacksmith’s apprentice to James Buchanan in Stockwell Street. He acted as foreman at the Moses, McCulloch & Co. Cumberland foundry for ten years.
In 1850 at Saracen Lane, Gallowgate, in partnership with his brother in law MP Thomas Russell and businessman James Marshall, Walter set up his own foundry which quickly diversified from plumbing parts into ornamental and sanitary cast ironwork.
The Saracen Foundry c 1960s Picture: Glasgow City Archives
In 1862 the expanding business moved to Washington Street, and less than ten years later, to the former Possil estate. Walter Macfarlane purchased the estate from Sir Archibald Alison, eventually creating a 14-acre purpose-built foundry and showroom, with its own railway network and grand entrance gates at Hawthorn Street. Despite the location change, the name - Saracen Foundry - remained. A whole new suburb named Possilpark was established for foundry workers, and the local population was said to have dramatically increased to around 10,000.
The town council praised the ‘skill and intelligence’ of the site’s arrangement, although others were dismayed by the pollution, nicknaming the area ‘Fossiltown’. By the 1890s, some 1200 workers were employed there and Macfarlane’s had become the largest architectural iron founders in Scotland.
The foundry showroom as pictured in an 1883 catalogue. Picture: Glasgow City Archives
Walter became involved in politics and was a city councillor before his death in 1885. His nephew, Walter Macfarlane Junior became a partner in 1880 and the firm eventually passed to his son, another Walter. Post war and with the decline of the British Empire, the market for architectural cast iron fell sharply. In 1965 the firm was taken over, and the once proud Saracen Foundry buildings demolished isn1967.
Sadly, the requisitioning of ironwork during the Second Word War obliterated many Macfarlane structures, but the firm’s remaining work is held with more regard today.
The Saracen Foundry had a huge impact on Glasgow and its memory is preserved in the city archives.
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