BILL McALLISTER: Memories of an Inverness draper who made tartan fashionable in royal courts
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DONALD Macdougall was a remarkable Invernessian who turned his draper’s business into a Royal Tartan Warehouse, constructed a still-pleasing building for it on the High Street, and attracted both royal and international clientele.
Once he proved successful, Donald was also to become a significant benefactor to his home burgh – and his generosity continues to pay dividends to this day.
An ornate Baronial style turreted three-storey building, 21-23 High Street has on its ground floor a lane, or close, through to Lombard Street – with an ice cream café and a scented soap business on either side.
Atop the central gable is a carving of the Royal coat of arms.
Macdougall set up his tartan warehouse in the 1820s, and at one point his business collapsed.
Having succeeded at the second attempt, as a point of pride, he paid back every original creditor in full.
The revitalised firm quickly gained a reputation as a supplier of Highland dress, helping to popularise the garb among the landed gentry dresses.
Lord Brougham, Parliament’s Lord Chancellor, was an enthusiast for Macdougall’s wares and in 1837 the Courier reported:”A new taste has sprung up for the more valuable and curiously fine patterns of clan tartans… Mr Macdougall, draper, has an immense variety of different patterns, some of them exceedingly rich and beautiful… Lord Brougham and others have rendered them fashionable in London.”
Royal patronage arrived in 1848 when, from Balmoral, Queen Victoria gave him a substantial order for tartan shawls, dresses and plaids for herself and for Highland dress for her husband and son.
Three years later Macdougall took a much-acclaimed stand at the Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace. Inverness sculptor Alexander Munro, then based in London, told the tale of arriving with his exhibit in a horse-drawn cart only to find the doors locked.
The powerful Macdougall lifted the hefty sculpture on his back, kicked at a side door before brushing past the attendant.
He plonked his burden in a prime site in the sculpture hall and told Munro: “They won’t shift that in a hurry.”
By 1868, Macdougall also had a London outlet at 42 Sackville Street, ‘three doors off Piccadilly’, as his advertisement stated in Black’s Guide Book.
The advert stated the firm were “manufacturers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family, their Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Courts of France, Russia, Prussia and Spain”.
Not bad for an Inverness draper!
It added that the Royal Tartan Warehouse had “the largest and most varied assortment of Scotch Goods in the Kingdom, for which their establishmen was awarded a First Class Prize medal in the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1862”.
Among its offerings were “the Famous Highland Cloak, of which we are the Inventors.”
As his business grew, Donald decided to rebuild and comprehensively extend the premises.
He engaged local architects Matthews and Lawrie, of Castle Street, and in 1878-79 the handsome building was completed.
The upper floor would later be home to the Highland Club, the social venue for business and gentry through to the late 1970s.
In 1865 he founded the Working Men’s Club in Drummond Street “for the mutual improvements of working men”.
Four years later when it moved to a handsome building in Bridge Street, it was Macdougall who was the prime funder.
Sadly, it was pulled down in the Bridge Street demolition of the 1960s.
Scottish business luminaries attended a dinner in Glasgow, presided over by the Lord Provost, in recognition of the Highland entrepreneur’s life of achievement.
As well as launching a long-running scripture prize for local children, Donald bequeathed money to set up a Macdougall Trust for annual donations to local bodies fulfilling similar purposes to the Working Men’s Club.
This Trust continues to make a contribution as part of Inverness Common Good Fund – an enduring tartan legacy of an intriguing gentleman responsible for one of the most attractive and historic buildings on today’s High Street.
n Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
