By Jack House.
Published by Robert Paterson Construction Ltd, Airdrie, 1977. First Edition. Hardback cover with dustjacket (unclipped), 96 pages. Black & white photography throughout.
CONDITION
Overall fair condition - see photos. Wear to all parts of dustjacket, tears to rear, but actual hardcover and contents in very good condition. No names or writing. Images crisp & clear throughout.
Foreword:
I am happy to have been invited to contribute a foreword to this book which sets down for posterity a brief account of a firm which, in the Monklands at least, is unique. In the Lanarkshire volume of the Third Statistical Account of Scotland I noted in 1954 that in Airdrie there were then four firms that had been established more than a century before and were still controlled by direct descendants of their founders. Of these four, Patersons took pride of place by some twenty years. Today two of the others have perished and a third no longer has a descendant of its founder on its board. Patersons' record stands unchallenged.
This book with its glimpses of family history reveals, I feel, the personal qualities that have sustained this firm through the past 150 years and made it what it is today. Vision that has been quick to observe trends in a changing world has brought them from hewing and carving fine stonework to building in brick and constructing in concrete, from digging estate drains and diverting watercourses to constructing conduits for underground telephone cables throughout the length and breadth of Scotland and to undertaking other civil engineering contracts for which the expertise acquired over a century and a half has peculiarly qualified them. The book points out, and rightly, that amongst their workers there has been found the same father-son tradition of service, the same pride in the firm's achievements, the same satisfaction in jobs well done.
Each Paterson in the firm has started 'on the shop floor. This has made for good relations between employer and employee: each can respect the other. Moreover the firm has never been too big to deny some degree of paternalism and it is characteristic that they had introduced a guaranteed week for their workers years before that became a statutory obligation. From time to time special skills of craftmanship or of management possessed by members of the family have been recognised. Thus the work of Robert IIl, that gifted stone carver, caused the famous Pugin to try to wile him away to England, and a local firm of ironmasters made a bid to secure the services of the young Robert IV as manager of their iron ore mines in Spain. Fortunately for the firm, fortunately for the community, each elected to remain in Airdrie.
Patersons have built well in more senses than one. Worthy causes in the community have always commanded their support and this has won for them the esteem and affection of their fellow citizens. It was my privilege to know Robert IV. From the pages of this book one realises his immense capacity for work. Yet he found time to be chairman of Airdrieonians Football Club and president of Airdrie Bowling Club. He became, too, president of Airdrie Town Mission.
A measure of the respect in which he was held is the fact that he was appointed a trustee of the local Female Benevolent Society and a director of A irdrie Savings Bank. Withal he was a modest man who in private life went about quietly doing good. His sons carry on the tradition. Willam III is a trustee and Robert V a director of ay
Bank.
As well as a record in words the book provides a record in pictures. It may be that some of these are rather of antiquarian interest but the photographs of recent achievements and of work still in progress demonstrate adequately the potentialities of this enterprising firm.
