When researching your family history in central Scotland, some occupations crop up again and again. It’s not surprising to find people engaged in the shipbuilding industry, mining, or other heavy engineering. After all, it’s this sort of industry which made central Scotland one of the most important industrial areas in Europe. Recently while compiling a house history for a Glasgow-based client, I discovered that one of the former occupants of the property had been a director at Templeton’s, one of the city’s biggest employers, whose products had been exported around the globe.
Templeton Carpets
The Templeton’s factory was founded in the 1820s in Paisley by James Templeton, who had made his fortune in Mexico. The company was established weaving the shawls which were so fashionable at the time. Technological developments in weaving through the 1830s brought new ways of processing chenille yarn, which Templeton saw as ideal for carpet manufacture. He founded his carpet business in Bridgeton, just to the east of the city centre, in 1839. Advances in yarn dye process also meant that in the 1840s, carpets could be woven with brighter and longer-lasting colours, and Templeton capitalised on this, cornering the market for “picture carpets”
Business boomed, and at its height the company had 3000 people employed across seven separate factories in Glasgow, and exported products across the world. The company’s famous factory building near Glasgow Green was built in the 1880s, and designed to replicate the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Templeton’s carpets were bought by the White Star Line to put into the Titanic – and later reproduced by Hollywood for the famous 1990s film. Axminster carpets made by Templeton are in Windsor Castle, the Houses of Parliament, the White House and parliament buildings in South Africa and Australia. Anyone who has ever visited the upper levels of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow will have noticed the brightly coloured carpets, and unsurprisingly, those are Templeton products too.
Closure and records for your family history
Over the second half of the 20th century the business began to decline from its peak, due to changing fashions and cheap imported products. The final nail in the coffin was the purchase of another local carpet firm, and dropping the Templeton name in favour of “British Carpets”. The Templeton brand name was bought by Stoddard, a Renfrewshire based carpet firm, and the elaborate factory building overlooking Glasgow Green is now a mix of apartments, office space and a brewery.
Extensive records remain of the Templeton business. If you find an ancestor living in the east end of Glasgow and working in the carpet industry, they more than probably worked at Templeton. Glasgow city archives maintain a full back catalogue of the company in-house magazine, where you may find relatives mentioned. For those more interested in heritage or art, Glasgow University has the design library of sketches, samples and photographs. Very little of these collections has been digitised and it’s an important reminder that not all genealogical research can be done online.
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