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Note: http://www.thepeerage.com/p37304.htm#i373039
His ancestry at http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=maclaren&id=I000001
Father of 3 sons and a daughter. A dedicated countryman, a keen shot and enthusiastic angler, also enjoying skiing, sailing, golf, tennis, painting and numerous dogs; dangerous at table tennis and billiards (less dangerous), and shared with his brothers a love of gardening.
Managing Director of Robert Maclaren & Co (later Maclaren Controls) manufacturing thermostats in Glasgow (started by his grandfather as an iron foundry in 1844). Head of ITT's European Controls and Instrumentation Division, until 1973, responsible for the Glasgow factory and for the Drager factory in Essen, Germany, a smaller factory in Holland, and sales organisations in most countries in Europe.
Reached the rank of Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force during the World War II. In the late1950s to early 1960s served as Lt. Colonel, commanding the 277 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, the Greenock TA unit, and was the CO when it became the 5/6 Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
He had the distinction of commanding two different regiments when the Gunner Regiment was amalgamated with and rebadged as 5/6 Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. As a Lt. Colonel in the Highland Division he enjoyed the confusion caused by his TD (Territorial Decoration) alongside his Distinguish Flying Cross and RAF wings and other decorations.
He was the local representative for SSAFA. was treasurer of the local Conservative Party, chairman and treasurer of the Galloway branch of the National Trust for Scotland. He co-founded the Thursday Lunch Club and the Easter Charity Reel Club.
Educated at Ampleforth and Glasgow University, and served as an engineering apprentice at the firm Mavor and Coulston in Bridgeston, Glasgow (which he described as "So there I was at seventeen with no previous experience of the outside world (and school in England), in Bridgeston, Glasgow I could not understand a word anyone said. It was bloody silly actual").
"He is remembered by his friends for his sense of humour and the dog which accompanied him on all his country pursuits. (and for the outstanding gardens that he left at his homes in Skelmorlie, Ayrshire (Ashcraig) and in New Galloway. Kirkcudbrightshire (Meadowbank) and in Gatehouse of Fleet."
One of my earliest memories of my father was sitting on his knee as he held the drawing room fire poker as a joystick, while we dived, climbed and turned to his loud aircraft noises and laughter.
Facts
Ian Garnet Maclaren DFC TD (1914 - 1997)
Born 24th August 1915, Deeshome, Troon, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Died 16th February 1997, Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.
Son of Norman Maclaren 1880-1936 & Mary Margaret Garnet 1894-1989.
Husband of Annette Mary Birtwistle. Father of Robert, Hamish, Simon, & Susan.
For the History of ROBERT MACLAREN & COMPANY LTD. (later Maclaren Controls) by I G Maclaren see that history in the Notes for Norman Maclaren 1880 to 1936)
Article from "Industries of Glasgow" (published 1888) was a description of Robert Maclaren & Co, Iron Founder and Manufacturer of patent cast-iron pipes, Eglinton Iron Works, Port Eglinton. Among the greatest of Glasgow's iron industries...... See notes under Robert Maclaren, 1817-1889. And the Notes under Ian Maclaren's uncle Robert Maclaren, of Craigs, Colonel, TD DL, 1860-1936.
For photographs of IGM and relatives see the at genealogy.com (originally from the Family Tree Maker site) "Robert Maclaren, died 1826 & Ralph de Birdtwisell 1160" at http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/m/a/c/Hamish-S-Maclaren/index.html This no longer supports documents: stories, obituaries, etc.
Obituary: Ian Garnet Maclaren DFC TD.
Combined from obits submitted to , and much of which appeared in, The Herald, Glasgow Thursday 6th March 1997. The Scotsman and The Ampleforth Journal
Ian Garnett Maclaren died at home in Gatehouse of Fleet on Sunday 16th February at the age of 81.
Ian Maclaren had a varied life that spanned distinguished war service, international business success, and voluntary work. He was born in Troon in 1915 and was brought up in West Kilbride while his father was a Professor at Glasgow University. He and his brother Peter learnt to enjoy golf, fishing, shooting and other country pursuits.
He was educated at Ampleforth (St Wilfreds 1925 - 32. Prep School in 1923 and was a founder member of Wilfreds, and boasted that he was selected for the house cricket team when the house only had eleven members) and Glasgow University where his father had been a professor. He served as an engineering apprentice before joining the old established family firm of Robert Maclaren & Company which manufactured thermostats in Glasgow.
He claimed that his first memory was of being held by a nurse, at the age of two, in front of a window to look at an airplane. This was being flown by his cousin, Fred Maclaren, who had been an aerial observer at one of the British Army's last cavalry charges at the Battle of Huj in Palestine in 1917.
He joined the TA as a Gunner (lieutenant) in 1938 and was mobilised in August 1939. 1940 Staff course at Camberly, then "Motor Contact Officer" on General Staff (captain). Transferring to the RAF in 1941, flying Blenheim light bombers. During his tours he took part in all the early landings - in Dieppe, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy as the king noted when presenting his DFC.
He was awarded an immediate DFC for action during the final attempted German breakout at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia. By following a railway line under very low clouds in foul weather his was one of only a few aircraft that got through and carried out several attacks. On returning to base, where his gunner found that his own parachute had been shredded off his back by the intense AA fire, he rearmed his aircraft for a second sortie. Unfortunately this was thwarted by a malfunction ten minutes from target. For this action the squadron was signaled commendations by Monty and Air Marshall Tedder and received a visit from General Alexander to express his personal thanks.
Note. From 614 Squadron History The Kasserine Pass break-through was assisted by 614's attacks on enemy transports and both 'Monty' end Air Marshal Tedder signaled commendations as the Bisleys left the roads littered with useless Nazi vehicles. General Alexander visited the squadron to give them his personal thanks
It was believed that he, with his navigator and gunner, who served together for exactly two years, were probably the last surviving intact Blenheim crew.
He was posted to Combined Opps for D-Day and ended the war commanding an air base in the Philippines which, after VJ-Day, was used for the evacuation of prisoners of war. He was one of the first to fly into Hong Kong after Japan's surrender.
His great aunt was the famous Abbess of Stanbrook on whose correspondence with George Bernard Shaw the successful West End Play 'The Best of Friends' with John Geilgud was based. He attributed his survival during the war to the prayers of Stanbrook Abbey.
In 1947 he married Annette Birtwistle whose four brothers had been at Ampleforth. They were married by her uncle, Fr Stephen Marwood.
On demobilisation he returned to the family company in Glasgow, eventually becoming managing director. He sold the company to the US conglomerate ITT in 1964 and became the CEO (manager) of its European Controls Division. This required him to spend much of his time on the Continent.
Having reached the rank of Wing Commander during the war he was asked to command 277 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, the Greenock TA unit, in 1958. This he did for four years and had the distinction of commanding two different regiments when the Gunner Regiment was amalgamated with and rebadged as 5/6 Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. At that time the battalion held the World Pipe Band Championship. He enjoyed the confusion caused by his TD (Territorial Decoration) alongside his RAF wings and decorations.
Preferring to spend more time in Scotland he retired from business in 1975.
Having earlier chaired the building committee for the local Catholic church in Largs he became involved in the local community, helping to start a local branch of Age Concern, including instigating a day center. He wrote the constitution for the local community council. His home and gardens were opened for many charitable functions.
He was the local representative for SSAFA. He stood unsuccessfully in the first Strathclyde Regional Council elections in 1973 before moving to New Galloway in 1975.
There he became treasurer of the local Conservative Party and was chairman and treasurer of the Galloway branch of the National Trust for Scotland. He co-founded the Thursday Lunch Club and the Easter Charity Reel Club.
He was a keen shot and enthusiastic angler and shared with his brothers a love of gardening. He enjoyed National Hunt racing and for a while had some success with horses in training. He was an enthusiastic painter and skier, an occasional golfer, and had taught himself to sail before the war.
He is remembered by his friends for his sense of humour and the dog which accompanied him on all his country pursuits. (and for the outstanding gardens that he left at his homes in Skelmorlie, Ayrshire and in New Galloway. Kirkcudbrightshire.
He is survived by his wife Annette, whom he married in 1947, three sons, and a daughter.
Additional bits:
In the early 1900 his father had travelled through Alaska with a team of husky dogs and a Chinese cook, making the first map of large areas of Alaska, breaking an arm in a crevasse and setting it himself. He was a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Linean Society.
At the Bristol Blenheim site at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Blenheim The "Rare colour photo from the Second World War showing Bristol Blenheim being serviced" shows Ian Maclaren the pilot, Don Ager, the navigator, and Paddy Stapleton the dorsal turret gunner, and three ground crew.
The following is taken from the business magazine "Scotland" in 1969, before he retired.
Scotland
Britain's brightest business monthly
May 1969
"Conglomerate Success" By John Fowler
GRANDFATHER Robert Maclaren, an impressive paterfamilias in his bristling whiskers, set his foundry in the south side of Glasgow in 1844 and the business had been kept in the family ever since. But early in the 1960s grandson Ian Maclaren realised that the old story was coming to a close.
By this time the engineering side had been dropped and production was concentrated on thermostats and heating controls. The business was prosperous enough - in fact it was increasing satisfactorily - but, looking ahead, Ian Maclaren knew he could not be complacent.
The firm of Robert Maclaren, as it was still called, was very much a small fish in a pond which included big fellows like Honeywell and Elliott Automation. One by one small individual competitors were being swallowed by the giants, the mergers giving them the capital strength and the research facilities which Maclaren knew he needed if he was to keep in the swim. How much longer could his business remain on its own?
Nearing the end of a five-year plan, he was uncomfortably aware that a fresh injection of new capital was needed to provide new products, broaden the scope of the company, and bring new ideas into fruition. And capital on that scale, in a private company where all the shares were held by himself and his relatives. was not easy to come by.
Maclaren did not relish going public. since it might have meant loss of control of the firm and in the prevailing conditions would invite takeover. In the event he decided to go in for the takeover business himself. offering for a company in London which would have enabled him to establish a broader base.
The result was not what he had foreseen. His bid came to nothing, the company he wanted was ultimately linked with an American company and by this time it was clear that Maclaren's itself was in the market. 'That started the furore', says Maclaren wryly.
When the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation of America showed interest, Maclaren and his fellow directors decided that it would make sense to tie with a firm which operated in an allied field and which would back them with the strength of a world-wide organization. The ITT at that time was ninth on the list of the world's private-enterprise employers and moving .
The offer could not fail to attract. ITT had started as a small company operating telephone services in Puerto Rico and Cuba, went into telecommunications manufacturing on an international scale with the purchase of the International Western Electric Company in the 1920s, and then in 1959 began a massive reorganisation and growth programme which greatly extended its size and diversified its interests. ITT is now big in a number of fields outside telecommunications and is in the insurance business, owns the Avis car rental outfit and the Sheraton chain of hotels.
lts subsidiary, General Controls of Glendale California, particularly attracted Maclaren's because this company specialised in the gas control, overlapping the interest Maclaren's had already built in the central heating market.
So at the beginning of 1963 the firm of Robert Maclaren, later to be named appropriately Maclaren Controls, became a subsidiary of ITT, proudly cherished in ITT publicity literature as the oldest established company in the organisation. Even so, the Scottish company did not lose its identity. For one thing, lan Maclaren remained firmly in the chair, unlike other cases when, as he remarks, 'the owner is usually slung out'. Maclaren stayed on, and proof that ITT was satisfied with its new recruit came two years ago, when he was made head of the European Controls and Instrumentation Division of the parent. As such he is responsible not only for the Glasgow factory but for the Drager factory in Essen, Germany, a smaller factory in Holland, and sales organisations in most countries in Europe.
Nowadays he finds that only one third of his time is spent on Maclaren Controls business (he has just appointed a general manager in Glasgow to take the load off his shoulders) and that the remainder is devoted to the European side. Ian Maclaren has joined the jet men, the top men with suitcase and passport at the ready, and he reckons on spending at least two days in the average week on the Continent.
There was a forlorn moment when a phone call interrted our talk as his secretary made arrangements for a lightning visit to Brussels, at the end of which he asked: 'Does my wife know I won't be home?'
She didn't.
Maclaren, 53. has spent all his working life with the firm apart from the war years, after which he became general manager and later managing director. His wartime career was distinguished, including the award of the DFC for harrying German night convoys from the air in North Africa. Having reached the rank of Wing Commander he then proceeded to become a TA Colonel in the Argylls after the war had finished.
Monumental Inscriptions in Anwoth Old Churchyard
www.kirkyards.co.uk/anwoth/anwothnew.asp?offset=20?
Inscription 2.15
Ian Garnett Maclaren DFC TD 24.8.1915 16.2.1997. Also his beloved wife Annette Mary Birtwhistle 31.7.1921 6.3.2006. Requiescant in Pace.
Ian Garnet Maclaren, Page 1 - Patentmaps
http://www.patentmaps.com/assignee/Ian_Garnet_Maclaren_1.html
Ian Garnet Maclaren (1 - 2 of 2 results)
1
Improvements in and relating to automatic temperature control systems. Robert Maclaren & Company, Ian Garnet Maclaren, Ian Ross Adam August 16, 1961: GB875077-A
Improvements in and relating to automatic temperature control systems United Kingdom Patent 875077-A
875,077. Automatic temperature-control systems. MACLAREN & CO. Ltd., ROBERT, MACLAREN, I. G., and ADAM, I. R. Dec. 29, 1958 [Dec. 30, 1957], No. 40252/57. Class 38 (4). [Also in Gro XXXVII] A thermally sensitive device controlling a main switch in series with an electric heater also controls a switch in a circuit including two auxiliary heaters which modify the effect of the thermally sensitive device when the main switch is open and closed respectively, the main switch opening and closing intermittently to maintain a constant temperature.; In an automatic temperature-control system, e.g. for a room or furnace, a rod and tube expansion device 22, Fig. 1, responsive to the temperature, operates a lever 20 so that when the temperature rises to a value determined by the setting of a screw 28 a switch 26 is closed to energize, as shown in Fig. 2, an auxiliary heater 19 causing expansion of a tube 18. The movement of lever 20 and the expansion of tube 18 combine to open a snap-action switch 10 and thus interrt the sply to the room or furnace heater 10a. The sply to auxiliary heater 19 is also interrted by the opening of switch 10 so that tube 18 cools and permits switch 10 to re-close. Heater 10a is thus energized intermittently with the ratio of the on to off periods variable to maintain the desired temperature.; A high-resistance heater 17 which is energized when switch 10 is open causes expansion of an adjustable tube 14 to assist reclosing of switch 10 thus reducing the temperature differential of switch 10.
Title
Improvements in and relating to automatic temperature control systems
Application Number: GB19570040252 19571230
Publication Number: 875077 (A)
Application Date: December 30, 1957
Publication Date August 16, 1961
Assignee: Ian Ross Adam, Ian Garnet Maclaren, Robert Maclaren & Company
IPC
H01H 37/00
G05D 23/275
H01H 37/14
G05D 23/275
_______________________________________
2
Thermal-time controlled switches United Kingdom Patent 789450-A
789,450. Thermal switches; time switches. MACLAREN & CO., Ltd., R., RICHMOND, T. G., MACLAREN, 1. G., and ADAM, 1. R. Aug. 12, 1955 [Oct. 28, 1954], No. 31161/54. Class 38 (5). A switch, suitable for controlling the heating of a building, is operated by either thermal means or time control means. As shown, Fig. 2, a micro-switch 10 (preferably as described in Specification 615,467) is operated by a first lever which is acted on either by a pin 17 of a temperature-responsive bellows 16 or by a second lever 13 which follows a clock-driven cam 12. Ambient temperature compensation may be provided by a bellows 29 which controls a potentiometer of a heater circuit surrounding the bellows 16. In a modification the first lever is bimetallic and constitutes the thermal means.; The cam is arranged to rotate daily, and means to over-ride its control at week-ends comprises a cam 35 on a ratchet wheel 34 moved twice a day by a pin 33 on the clock spindle, the cam 35 maintaining the lever 13 in its actuating position.
Title
Thermal-time controlled switches
Application Number GB19540031161 19541028
Publication Number 789450 (A)
Application Date October 28, 1954
Publication Date January 22, 1958
Assignee: Ian Ross Adam, Ian Garnet Maclaren, Thomas Guthrig Richmond, Robert Maclaren & Company
IGM DFC award
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/36022/supplement/2247/data.pdf
Rumb. 36022 2247
SECOND SUPPLEMENT TO
The London Gazette Of TUESDAY, the 18th of MAY, 1943
Published by Authority FRIDAY, 21 MAY,1943
Air Ministry, 21st May, 1943. ROYAL AIR FORCE The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the following awards in recognition of gallantry dis- played in flying operations against the enemy:
Distinguished Flying Cross.
..
A c t i n g S q u a d r o n L e a d e r I a n Garnet MACLAREN (45602), No. 614 Squadron.
In operations in North Africa, this officer took part in a number of successful sorties, many of them in bad weather and over difficult terrain. One night in February, 1943, he was detailed to execute a night bombing attack against enemy transport and troops in the Kasserine Pass. The weather was extremely bad with heavy clouds covering the mountains on either side. Despite this; Squadron Leader MacLaren flew down the pass and successfully bombed the target. He has invariably displayed great courage and determina- tion.
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