The area was previously part of the
Jordanhill Estate within the parish of Renfrew centred on Jordanhill House.
Jordanhill Estate:1546-1913 Crawfords of Jordanhill 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. There he built a house, possibly on or close to the foundations of an original hunting lodge. In the 18th century, one of his descendants also called Lawrence Crawford extended and refurbished the old house, and laid out the original garden scheme and associated orchards.
Houstons of Jordanhill In 1750 the Crawford family sold the estate to
Tobacco Lords Alexander Houston, whose family was also forced to sell the estate in 1800 after his business got into trouble, to
James Smith of merchants Smith & Leitch. 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. On his early death in 1872, to pay off
death duties and the accrued debts of the estate, his wife sold of much of the estate's former farmlands for housing development north of the
Glasgow, Yoker and Clydebank Railway. 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. Approached by the university which was looking for a site on which to establish a unified teacher training college, in 1913 Parker Smith agreed sale of the residual estate. Following the death of Archibald Colin Hamilton Smith in Australia on 5 June 1971, the sixth generation of the family who died without issue, the Smith family papers dealing with the Jordanhill Estate were donated to the Glasgow City Archives at the
Mitchell Library. Many of the Smith family are buried in the graveyard surrounding
Renfrew Parish Church. ==Amenities==