THROUGHOUT an existence of more than 100 years William Murchland and
Co. Ltd has always been ready to keep in the forefront whenever
possible.
That tradition began in the 1870s when William Murchland, an Ayrshire
plumber, took over a small plumbing business which was already operating
in Kilmarnock.
He was energetic and innovative. Within a few years the firm's
operations had grown considerably in the general commercial plumbing
field. An early speciality which involved much travel throughout
Scotland was when the Kilmarnock firm became sole agents for a prominent
windmill powered water pump.
This was followed by William Murchland being prominent in the
development of the first milking machine in Scotland, something of
particular interest in a dairy cattle area like Ayrshire. Today one of
his milking machine prototypes can be seen on display in the Scottish
Agricultural College in Edinburgh. He was also involved in early
development work which in part was to lead to the modern fire hose.
The present firm, Wm Murchland and Co. Ltd, moved in the eighties from
Bank Street, Kilmarnock to its present premises in Grange Street.
Although general commercial contract plumbing is the backbone of
business they also carry out work as sanitary and heating engineers,
slaters, tilers, and roughcasters.
Few Scottish companies can have a stronger family tradition. Managing
director Archie Parker and director Alastair McCall are cousins and
fourth generation descendants of the original founder William Murchland.
Archie Parker began his working life as an apprentice plumber with the
company and has been there ever since. Alastair McCall joined after
training as a quantity surveyor. Their fathers were both directors of
the company and the cousins in turn joined the board on the same day in
1980 -- a matter recorded in one of the handwritten company minute books
which trace back over the generations.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article