A Glasgow afternoon tea experience at Mackintosh at the Willow

National World - LocalTV

Charles Rennie Mackintosh is almost synonymous with Glasgow - his architecture framing the streets and aesthetic of our city.  He was behind the design of Mackintosh at the Willow - an afternoon tea spot that was brought back to life in 2018.

Transcript

00:00 My name is Heather and we are here at Macintosh at the Willow.

00:03 And yeah, there we are.

00:05 I'm one of the tour guides and I'm also a retail assistant here at the tearooms.

00:09 So it was an entrepreneur, Glasgow entrepreneur here called Celia Sinclair.

00:14 Celia Sinclair Thornquist MBE.

00:17 And she was walking down Suckey Hall Street and she saw the for sale sign outside the building

00:22 and she said, absolutely not.

00:23 This has to be a heritage site.

00:26 This should be open again.

00:28 So she founded the Willow Tearoom Trust and from there they managed to raise just shy

00:31 of £10 million to do all the restorative work of the building.

00:36 And yeah, we're very thankful that they did.

00:38 Just look at the place.

00:39 It's absolutely stunning.

00:40 So Miss Cranston was a great entrepreneur here in Glasgow.

00:43 She had four tearooms in total.

00:45 This was the fourth and final one and the only one designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh and

00:49 his wife, Margaret MacDonald.

00:52 The brief for the tearoom or one of the briefs for the tearoom was fairy tale.

00:57 And I think you can see that here when you join us at Macintosh at the Willow.

01:00 It's absolutely just this whole place is just stunning.

01:03 So that's kind of where it started from.

01:05 We opened originally in 1903.

01:07 And as I say, Miss Cranston had other tearooms across the city.

01:10 So people really knew who Miss Cranston was at this point.

01:13 And she was really infamous.

01:14 She would wear a crinoline hooped skirt and yeah, just go walking around the city.

01:20 So everyone knew who she was.

01:21 So all these tearooms were very, very, very popular.

01:25 The Macintoshes really take from nature.

01:27 They were kind of training in that sort of arts and crafts time.

01:30 And then of course, explored into art nouveau, which is just beautiful.

01:34 So Macintosh, there's a rose that is sort of attributed to Macintosh.

01:39 Some people call it the Glasgow Rose, other people call it Macintosh Rose.

01:43 Margaret tends to, Margaret MacDonald tends to use the rose throughout her artwork too.

01:47 So yeah, the rose element comes in here too.

01:50 But the Willow Tearoom actually is called the Willow Tearoom due to Suckey Hall Street

01:53 itself.

01:54 Alley of the Willows is what Suckey Hall actually means.

01:59 So yeah, people think it's our china when they come to see the blue willow china that's

02:02 on the tables there.

02:03 They reckon that that's where we got the name from.

02:05 It wasn't at all.

02:07 It's actually due to nature itself.

02:09 It's due to the willow trees that would have been here on Suckey Hall Street initially,

02:13 way back when.

02:14 I think he's really just synonymous with Glasgow now.

02:16 I mean, we have so many international guests that come to the tearoom and they know Macintosh

02:21 really, really well.

02:22 And I think it's time for Glasgow to learn and understand just a wee bit more about them

02:27 too.

02:28 We think we know a lot about them, but there's still a lot more to discover.

02:31 I've been working here now for just going two years and I've learned so, so much more

02:35 than I ever thought I'd knew about Macintosh before, more than I've ever really read before

02:39 as well.

02:40 So yeah, coming into these tearooms, you get to explore that too with our guided tours

02:44 that happen at 9, 10 and 11.

02:47 And we also have an interactive exhibition as well where you can learn a wee bit more

02:51 about Macintosh and of course Miss Cranston, but mainly just the tearoom in general as

02:56 well and about Glasgow in 1903 and what was the tearoom's significance of that.

03:00 So yeah, there's lots of things to explore here at Macintosh of the Willow.

03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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