Jordanhill (Scots: Jordanhull, Scottish Gaelic: Cnoc Iòrdain)[1] is an affluent[2] area of the West End of the city of Glasgow, Scotland.
[3] In 1546 Lawrence Crawford of Kilbirnie founded a chaplainry at Drumry, and to sustain it endowed it with the freehold ownership of land at Jordanhill, which then accumulated rent at a rate of £5 per annum.
His sixth son Thomas Crawford was a soldier who led the 1571 capture of Dumbarton Castle, who had previously acquired the lands at Jordanhill from the chaplain of Drumry in 1562.
[4] The third son of a Tobacco Lord from Craigend, James's two elder brothers having travelled to Virginia and North Carolina in the 1760s had noted the growing civil uprising warning of the forthcoming American War of Independence, and refocused their family's merchant business on trade with the West Indies.
A qualified barrister who lived in London with his wife and three children, he devoted his spare time to working on the problems of the deviation of the navigational compass associated with the newly developed iron ships.
Smith left most of the management of the estate to its staff, which generated £4,500 of income across its core 293-acre (119 ha) holding, of which £3,000 came from the quickly diminishing coal mines and ironstone workings leased on the former farmlands to the Monkland Iron and Steel Co.[5] An 1872 government award of £2,000 for his compass research allowed him to replace the worst houses on the estate with new homes, today known as Compass Cottages in Anniesland Road.
[6] After losing his seat in 1906, like his mother he began selling off more pieces of land four housing development, including the former Gartnavel farm to the Royal Lunatic Asylum.
The area consists largely of terraced housing dating from the early to mid 20th century, with some detached and semi-detached homes and some modern apartments.
When asked, the Lord Lyon King of Arms rebutted a proposal to include the Maltese cross of the Knights of St. John in the crest of Jordanhill College.
[9] The school is unique in the Scottish state sector in that it contains both Primary and Secondary departments, providing education for children from 4 to 18, and in that it has Grant Maintained status and is independent from local government control.
It has several feeder primary schools, including Corpus Christi (Knightswood), Notre Dame (Dowanhill), St Pauls (Whiteinch), St. Peter's (Partick), St. Brendan's (Yoker), St. Patrick's in (Anderston), St. Clare's (Drumchapel) and St. Ninian's (Blairdardie).