Qualla: Willow Tearooms

Willow Tearooms: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit photographer J.C. Annan, Public domain. Sauchiehall Street takes its name from a willow meadow. 'Saugh' is the Scots word for willow tree. 'Haugh' means meadow. When Catherine Cranston commissioned Charles Rennie Mackintosh to design her newest tearoom at 217 Sauchiehall Street, the etymology was already waiting for him - and Mackintosh, working with his wife Margaret MacDonald, made the willow tree the unifying motif of the entire interior. The tearooms opened in October 1903. They were a sensation. They are the only surviving tearooms in Glasgow that Mackintosh designed for Miss Cranston, the entrepreneur and patron who gave him the freedom to design everything down to the waitress uniforms.

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Image: photographer J.C. Annan | Public domain

Willow Tearooms: Catherine Cranston's Vision

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dave souza assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Catherine Cranston ran a chain of Glasgow tearooms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that became civic institutions. She wanted clean, beautiful, alcohol-free spaces where men could break from office work and women - then largely excluded from public social life ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dave souza assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Willow Tearooms: The Room de Luxe

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first floor held the Room de Luxe, the most extravagant space in the building and its main attraction. It overlooked Sauchiehall Street through a full-width, slightly curved bay window beneath a vaulted ceiling. The double doors at its entrance were panelled in leaded glass, ...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 4.0

Willow Tearooms: The Facade as Composition

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dave souza assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Mackintosh's redesigned facade was carefully asymmetric. The ground floor entrance sat far to the left of a band of recessed windows, and the Room de Luxe above projected outward with a gentle curve. The two storeys above settled into a more regular pattern. The left side of the ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dave souza assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Willow Tearooms: Decline and Disguise

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stinglehammer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Miss Cranston sold her businesses after her husband died in 1917. The Willow Tearooms operated under a different name, then in 1928 were absorbed into Daly's department store. By 1938 Cranston's Tearooms Ltd had passed into other hands; the company went into liquidation in 1954. ...

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Image: Stinglehammer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Willow Tearooms: Restoration and Return

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. In 1983, the architect Geoffrey Wimpenny of Keppie Henderson - the successor firm to Honeyman, Keppie and Mackintosh - led a restoration that brought back the ground floor facade and refurbished the Room de Luxe to its original colour scheme. Anne Mulhern, a Glasgow businesswoman...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.5