Alexander Dennistoun’s father, James, was born in 1758. In the early 1800s, James Dennistoun took the step for which he is best remembered – he founded the Glasgow Bank.
James and his brother also established a fine mercantile company. They did not go east to India and China but headed to the USA. They established themselves in New Orleans, the first British firm to do this. Alexander joined the family firm in 1815 and he was in New Orleans by 1820.
On returning to the UK, he took charge of the Liverpool office, residing in Cheshire. Alexander managed the offices in Le Havre, going from there to Paris. He returned to Glasgow in the 1830s and on his father’s death in 1835, he moved to Golfhill.
Very soon, Alexander became involved in the banking business. Realising that the days of small, private banks were over, in 1836 they amalgamated with the Ship Bank and in 1843 brought in the Glasgow Union Bank. Together these formed the Union Bank of Scotland, the most powerful institution in Glasgow for several decades.
In 1857, Alexander had to face the worst business crisis in the family’s history. The Borough Bank of Liverpool, in which the Dennistouns were large investors, failed with liabilities exceeding £3m. The Union Bank itself was badly shaken. “None who were in Glasgow then will ever forget the day when distrust was universal and panic reigned supreme,” says a report in our city archives at the Mitchell Library.
The Glasgow creditors had sufficient faith in the Dennistouns, however, to believe that the Union Bank was “sound at bottom.” They granted the bank a year’s grace and long before the end of the year they had all been paid in full, with 5% interest.
This threatening situation came at the worst possible moment for Alexander Dennistoun as he had just embarked on the finest venture of his life.
Twenty years earlier, a Glasgow merchant, John Reid, had a notion for building a model suburb, north east of the Cathedral. John did not succeed in getting his project off the ground and when he died suddenly in 1851, Alexander Dennistoun took over.
It was to incorporate several existing housing estates, including Golfhill, Alexander Dennistoun’s own home. In order to achieve his goal, using his large wealth he acquired most of the neighbouring estates – Craigpark, Whitehill, Meadow Park. Broom Park, Annfield, Bellfield and Westercraigs.
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Mr James Salmon, the Glasgow architect, surveyed the whole estate, drew up the feuing plans, laid out the streets, and was responsible for the supervision of the development of the suburb. The ground was broken in 1857, just before the banking disaster, and building proceeded with the first feus being sold off in 1861.
The Corporation co-operated by buying the Kennyhill estate and laying out Alexandra Park, with Alexandra Parade as its approach.
The park itself was laid out by the City Improvement Trust between 1866 and 1870 on 30 acres of land at Wester Kennyhill.
An army of unemployed labourers was engaged to landscape the site. Alexander Dennistoun added an extra five acres of land to provide a main entrance from Alexandra Parade.
Behind the wealth and grand gestures, Alexander had tragedy in his family life.
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In the 1820s he married Eleanor Jane Thomson of the Bahamas, who was living in Liverpool at that time. They had eight children, five sons and three daughters, four of whom did not to live to adulthood.
Mrs Dennistoun lost all interest in life. She died in 1847 at Golfhill House from consumption shortly after her son Walter died from the same disease.
Alexander Dennistoun died in 1874 at the age of eighty-four. He was said to have been “affable and courteous to all, he was endeared to his intimate friends by his high-toned honour, his kindliness of disposition, his clear head, and his capacity and willingness to give sound advice to all who asked for it.”
