Solsgirth House, dating from around 1870, lies on the eastern edge of Clackmannanshire. The house is set in around thirty acres of gardens and grounds. The grade B listed former mansion house was originally built as a weekend retreat and entertainment venue for William Connal (1819 - 1898) from Stirlingshire.
In the 1860s he set up a pig-iron business in Glasgow which became known as ‘Connal’s Store’. It was here that he collected pig-iron against warrants, the object being to keep the market from unduly fluctuating. As a recognised storekeeper, iron was brought into Connal’s yard and cashed in by iron merchants. Sometimes they were granted bank loans against the iron warrants. It proved a lucrative business and William quickly made his fortune expanding into Middlesbrough and opening the Cleveland Warrant Stores in 1864.
Solsgirth House was described at the time as ‘broadly Scottish Domestic in style’. It began as a straightforward two-storey oblong with a south front of five bays, in the baronial style.
In later years William Connal handed over the running of his business to his son, also William, and spent more time at Solsgirth House. He died at Solsgirth House in July 1898, aged 80, leaving an estate worth £202,200.
Following William Connal’s death there was no desire for his family to remain at Solsgirth House. The house was put up for auction in November 1898 with the highest bidder being Mr Robert MacKay Sutherland (1849-1916) of Wallside who intended making it his principal property. The remaining contents of the house were removed and sent to auction in December 1898.
Robert MacKay Sutherland hailed from Falkirk and had entered the business of James Ross and Sons. This was a chemical manufacturing business established in 1845 on the Forth & Clyde Canal at Camelon. It had expanded by leasing land at Lime Wharf for tar distillation and the establishment of the Philipstoun Oil Works near Linlithgow. In 1879 the business was transferred to a partnership between Sutherland (manager of the Lime Wharf Works) and Robert Orr of Kinnaird who had also risen through the ranks. Their timing couldn’t have been better for this was the period when industry across Victorian Britain was reaching the height of prosperity.
In early life Sutherland had married Alice D. Fleming, the daughter of James Fleming of Carmuirs in Falkirk. They had a family of two sons and three daughters and eventually resided at Wallside House, Falkirk, the former home of the company's founder, James Ross. Away from his principal business, Robert Sutherland was also a trustee and manager of the Falkirk Savings Bank as well as being a supporter of the Falkirk Infirmary from its conception.
Wealth and prosperity allowed pioneering entrepreneurs to improve their social standing and the Sutherland’s move to Solsgirth was typical of the day. One of Robert’s first undertakings was to connect the courtyard buildings to the main body of the house. There was also ‘a sizeable extension added to the east, with crow stepped gables and oriel windows to the two-storeys south part and a single-storey billiard room wing, a mullioned and transomed four-light window in its gable, projecting boldly north’.
The original house was remodelled and thickened to the north around 1910-13 by architect J. Graham Fairley, who gave this west part bracketed broad eaves and barge-boarded dormer windows. He heightened the south west corner as a French pavilion-roofed low tower containing the principal entrance in a segmental-pedimented surround of Jacobean inspiration. A much taller and ogee-roofed tower, also Neo-Jacobean, was built on the west side. At the same time he erected a Tuscan-columned screen in front of the low 1890s service range at the house’s east end. Interiors were appointed in a mixture of Jacobean and French styles, the principal room (the ballroom) apparently formed by Fairley amalgamating two rooms of the 1890s layout.
Robert Sutherland died following a long illness at Solsgirth House in August 1916. The estate passed to his son James Fleming Sutherland (1889-1932) who had also taken over the running of James Ross and Son. He married Edith Mary, daughter of Richard Fitzgerald Meredith of Barnabrow House, Cloyne, in County Cork, in 1918. They remained at Solsgirth House until the late 1920s when they moved to Knockbrex Castle, Kirkcudbright, as well as taking a London residence.
By 1929 the Solsgirth Estate consisted of the main house, a Home Farm, two farms at Newhall and Muirhead, and about one hundred acres of woodland providing shelter for pheasant, partridge and grouse shooting over Muirhead Moss. The house remained unoccupied and James Sutherland put the estate up for auction in July 1929, but market conditions were against him. This wasn’t a good time to sell a large country estate and two years later, in July 1931, the estate was offered for auction at the ‘upset’ price of £6,000 in Edinburgh. This time James Sutherland could take consolation that there was a person willing to take Solsgirth House, but he wouldn’t have known that he only had a short time left. Twelve months later he developed pneumonia and died at the age of 43.
The new owner of Solsgirth House was a man whose name is still well-known today. At the time of the purchase, Walter Alexander (1879-1959) was living with his wife, Isobel Daly Alexander, at The Manor in Camelon, Falkirk. For a much reduced sum he had procured a magnificent mansion that will always be associated with him. When he bought the estate he was at the height of his career and the rise of his firm was a tale of enterprise and industry. Walter Alexander was working as a grate-fitter at Bonnybridge Foundry and in the evenings he spent time with his two brothers repairing and selling bicycles. This was the era when the bicycle was a very popular form of transport and by 1902 he had managed to save enough money to set up a bicycle shop of his own in Camelon.
It was while he was working at his bicycle shop that Walter visualised the possibilities of road transport. He had a motor lorry which he used for haulage work, but on the two weekend nights he fitted wooden forms, put a hood over it, fitted bicycle lamps inside, and transported people between Falkirk, Bonnybridge and Denny for the price of a penny.
In 1913 he launched Alexander’s Motor Service, providing a service from Falkirk to Grangemouth. He bought his first purpose-built bus in 1919, which was regarded as a luxury vehicle at the time because it had glass windows on its sides. The bus had softer seats than the hard wooden forms, but had solid tyres. The bus ran between Falkirk and Kilsyth and was driven by his son, also called Walter, and who remained with the company for the rest of his life. On the occasion of a football match between Airdrie and Falkirk this bus was switched to take football supporters from Falkirk to Airdrie and back. Packed to the door, with passengers on the roof, the vehicle made this trip on one memorable occasion, and the conductress brought back an unheard of sum of money which was never equalled for a journey of similar distance by a single-decker.
By 1925 the firm was thoroughly established, and had started building their own buses at Brown Street, Camelon. By this time the fleet of vehicles numbered forty. When pneumatic tyres became available, the company were quick to add this comfort feature to their fleet. Express services were started from Falkirk to Glasgow, while there were developments in other directions.
On 1st January, 1927, Mr Alexander acquired running rights to Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen, and on that day a through service from Glasgow to Aberdeen and vice-versa was also inaugurated.
A further important development took place in 1928, when there was a consolidation of bus services after the government allowed railway companies to provide bus services. The London, Midland & Scottish (LMS) and the London and North Eastern (LNER) Railways, bought a large stake in the Edinburgh based Scottish Motor Traction Company (SMT) and in 1929, acquired a controlling interest in Walter Alexander & Sons. The group then comprised of SMT Edinburgh; W. Alexander & Sons Ltd, Falkirk; Western SMT, Kilmarnock; and Central SMT., Motherwell.
Possibly the greatest achievement for Walter Alexander was the introduction of the famous ‘Bluebird’ coaches, an idea conceived by his son shortly after they arrived at Solsgirth House.
The famous ‘Bluebird’ logo decorated Walter Alexander’s luxury coaches.
In 1930, the coachbuilding business needed more space, and so it expanded into a former bus garage at to Drip Road, Stirling.
In 1934 he launched the smart blue and cream vehicles (produced at the Alexander works) with the ‘flying bird’ symbol that revolutionised motor coach travel comfort with the absolute luxury provided. The famous ‘Bluebird’ logo decorated Walter Alexander’s luxury coaches. The coach works became the in-house coachbuilders for the whole SMT bus group.
In 1945, bus operations were nationalised by the Attlee government. The coachbuilding assets were transferred to a separate company called Walter Alexander and Co (Coachbuilders) Limited in 1948.
Isobel Daly Alexander died in June 1935 and Walter commissioned a chapel to be built at the east of the Solsgirth property. He refurbished much of the house interior, making use of the original wallpaper in the dining room, redressed the library with French walnut woodwork, built an ornate stone loggia with tiled floor and remodelled the drawing room and ballroom as well as providing en-suites to the bedrooms. Walter Alexander remained at Solsgirth House until his death in 1959.
His coachbuilding company, now run by his son Walter Alexander Jnr, moved into new premises at Camelon in 1958, and continued to prosper while the former SMT bus operations were eventually absorbed into three nationalised bus companies, Fife Scottish, Midland Scottish and Northern Scottish, all part of the Scottish Bus Group. By the late 1960s, they were also building buses in Belfast. Their buses were exported worldwide and in 1983 the company was named as the largest supplier of double-deck bus bodies in the world. In 1990 the Alexander family finally relinquished the business and it survived through various owners. Today it is known as Alexander Dennis (comprising three famous names – Alexander, Dennis and Plaxton) employing about 2,000 people in the United Kingdom, continental Asia and North America.
After the departure of the Alexander family, Solsgirth House remained in private hands. In 1996 it was bought by Bernie and Denise Burgin who used it as a family home for 15 years. In 2010 the estate was bought by Stirling entrepreneur Steven MacLeod’s, who had bought Airth Castle Hotel in Stirlingshire. In time he added Melville Castle in Edinburgh, Glenbervie House Hotel, Larbert and the Hotel Colessio in Stirling, all operating as part of the Aurora Hotel Collection. Solsgirth House was to become a hotel and wedding venue.
However, in January 2017 newspapers reported the hotel had closed down due to Perth and Kinross Council’s building control and licensing department having raised concerns over the hotel. Concerns had also been raised by the Scottish Fire and Rescue service. Due to these concerns, Solsgirth House was closed as a hotel and wedding venue in early 2017 and put up for sale.
The property has since been redeveloped.