Call to honour legacy of Kate Cranston in Glasgow

Now, efforts are being made to honour the legacy of a woman who defied convention and championed female workers' rights.

Stephen Millar, who co-authored Secret Glasgow, is hoping to build momentum for a statue in the city centre where her four tea rooms prioritised the employment of women from poor families.

He has received the backing of world-renowned sculptor Andy Scott, who built a statue for Mackintosh in the city and says he was keen to create another for his wife, the artist and designer Margaret MacDonald.

The architect is said to have remarked that whilst he had talent, he believed Margaret had "true genius".

"There aren't many statues of women in Glasgow," said Mr Millar.

"Kate Cranston is best known for being the patron of Rennie Mackintosh but she also broke the mould for women in business.

"She often recruited waitresses from single families and poor families and she made them contribute to a compulsory insurance scheme to help them if they were ill, she gave them three hot meals a day and they could call themselves Miss.

"It enabled a lot of the waitresses to get into a society position that they wouldn't otherwise have done.

READ MORE: Mural tribute to the 'forgotten Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh'

"What also happened was many of the waitresses became managers and set up their own tearooms."

The Newton Mearns-based author has published best-selling books on London and Edinburgh's hidden walks with another on Manhattan in the pipeline.

He turned his attention to Victorian Glasgow and the life of Miss Cranston earlier this year, launching a free guided tour taking in the locations of her city centre tea rooms, which are widely credited for inspiring replicas in London.

Born in 1849, her father, George Cranston, was a baker and pastry maker.
She opened her first tea room - The Crown Luncheon Room - in 1878 on Argyle Street, 

"It's still called the Cranston House," said Mr Millar.

"All the buildings are still there but Sauchiehall Street is the only one that still functions as a tea room.

"The interesting thing about her that is less well known is that she had a real eye for talent."

On September 16 1886 she opened her Ingram Street tearoom and in 1888 commissioned George Walton [1867 - 1933] to decorate a new smoking room in the Arts and Crafts style.

"He was a respected interior designer and artist and when she was updating the tea rooms she gave him the gig at Ingram Street.

"He started doing stencils and designing the furniture then Mackintosh started to share the work with Walton.

"Then at one point Walton went to London and Mackintosh got the gig at Sauchiehall Street.

"It started to expand the consciousness of his work."

READ MORE: National Tea Day: Four great tea rooms to enjoy a cuppa

Mackintosh worked with his wife, Margaret Macdonald, to create every aspect of the Willow Team Rooms from the furniture and light fittings, to carpets and wall decorations. Even details such as cutlery, signboards and staff uniforms were bespoke creations, developed to ensure a consistent experience for customers.

The interior plan saw a ladies' tea room situated at the front of the ground floor, with a lunch room to the rear. A vaulted room on the first floor was transformed into the grand Salon de Luxe, while further rooms upstairs became the men's billiards and smoking rooms.

In the 1860s and 1870s Glasgow began to see the development of department stores which drew middle-class women into the city centre.

"One thing I had thought was that Kate set up the tea rooms to target the female market but actually initially it was to target the male market.

"All the tea rooms had a smoking room and slightly segregated male and female rooms but initially she was trying to track the day to day market for middle-class men and then she started to notice women and very quickly switched on.

"Women at that time were quite interested in art and interior design and she started to produce these slightly lighter more artistic tea rooms.

"She was combining art with good value food."

Miss Cranston was part of a wide family network which also operated hotels in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

"There were about ten Cranston family establishments in the city centre," said Mr Millar.

"Her brother Stuart had the first tea room in 1875 he was a tea merchant who decided to put a few chairs on the side.

"What is interesting for that time is that she didn't work for her brother, she set up her own.

"When she set up her first tea room in Argyle Street she presumed all her friends would not want to know her anymore.
"For an unmarried woman to set up a business...women generally worked behind the scenes.

"She had some very strong female mentors because her cousins [Mary and Elizabeth] in Edinburgh started these temperance hotels. 

"She could learn from them and they helped fund her first tea house.

"She was known as C Cranston so she identify as being a woman owner. It took a few years before she was known as Miss Cranston."

She married in her early forties to a wealthy man eight years younger, John Cochrane, an ironmaster who inherited his father John’s Grahamston foundry and engine works.

When he died in 1917 she was so devastated, she sold off all her businesses, which also included a bakery on St Vincent Street.

"It's quite sad because at the time Mackintosh had left Glasgow, his career was on the slide, he was a depressed alcoholic and she was giving him bits of work to keep him busy.

"When she died, she had £67,000, several hundred thousand in today's money. She left two-thirds to the poor."

The author says her tea rooms tapped into the temperance movement, which began in the 1800s in the United States and sought an alternative to male-centred pubs.
He said: "The Cranstons in Edinburgh had three or four temperance hotels.

"One of the jokes is that if you were a guy and you told your wife you were playing billiards at Miss Cranston's, it sounded better than the pub."