In 1818 Miss Christian Ann Elizabeth Cruickshank bequeathed money for an organisation to provide work to unemployed blind people resident in Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine. Twenty years later, as this fund was accumulating interest, land was being bought and architects were being consulted, a bequest from Miss Janet Walker for the same purpose, enabled the organisation that would become Glencraft to open its doors in 1843.
During its first sixty years the trust fund provided a school and workshops, housing, educating and employing over 300 people between the ages of eight and sixty. When the school closed, around 1904, 150 children had passed through its doors. Until the end of the nineteenth century, part of the building was also leased as a hospital for Aberdeen's orphans.
In the twentieth century, the workshops diversified from their initial produce of baskets, rope and string, to include brush-making, upholstery and mattresses. The popularity of the mattresses led to an exclusive focus on this area of work by the start of the twenty-first century.
Mattresses made in our workshops have been requested by three generations of the Royal Family for furnishing Balmoral Castle, from Queen Victoria to the present day.
We supply many of Aberdeen's leading hotels as well as the oil industry and the city's universities.
Our workforce has evolved from being exclusively blind with some sighted assistants to being a mix of many different abilities and disabilities. The one thing that has united all our craftspeople through nearly two centuries is a dedication to making products of the highest quality.
