Dewar's Temperance Hotel in Glasgow holds a special place in Scottish football history. It was there on 13 March 1873 that eight clubs resolved to 'form themselves into an association for the promotion of football according to the rules of the Football Association'.

That founding meeting of the Scottish FA took place in the hotel at 11 Bridge Street, just south of the river Clyde. It followed two Scotland v England encounters which were organised by Queen's Park FC, who realised that they could not continue on their own and it was time for a national body. Their appeal for clubs to join them attracted representatives from Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Dumbreck, Third Lanark, Eastern and Granville, while Kilmarnock sent a letter of support.
   Between them, they chose Archibald Campbell of Clydesdale as President with William Ker of Queen's Park as treasurer and Archibald Rae of Queen's Park as secretary. The eight committee members were James Turnbull (Dumbreck), Donald Macfarlane (Vale of Leven), Ebenezer Hendry (Clydesdale), William Dick (Third Lanark), John Mackay (Granville), James McIntyre (Eastern), Robert Gardner (Queen's Park) and William Gibb (Clydesdale). Apart from 49-year-old Campbell, all of them were active players and three of them (Ker, Gardner and Gibb) were internationalists.

The committee laid down a set of rules and while the Scottish FA took on the role of organising future internationals, its primary focus was the inauguration of a national competition, the Scottish Cup, which was played for the first time the following season.
   So, who was Dewar, where exactly was this hotel and why was it chosen as the venue?
   There is nothing there now to mark the spot: Dewar's Hotel is long gone, having been demolished in the 1930s, and a later building stands on the site. The Scottish FA did commission a plaque to commemorate their founding meeting, but they outsourced the work and rather ineptly it was put on the wrong side of the street.
   The story goes back to 1840, when Alexander Dewar married Jane Wylie, not long after he arrived in Glasgow from his native Perthshire. Shortly after their marriage they opened the Railway Arms Tavern in Clyde Place, the first of four businesses, all with the same name and all in close proximity to the newly-built Bridge Street Station which was then the southern terminus for Glasgow.
   After five years the Dewars moved their business briefly to Jamaica Street, then in 1847 they opened the third Railway Arms at 16 Bridge Street. This was in a prime position, right next to the station entrance and it proved to be a popular venue, expanding in 1852 and with further improvements in 1857. By this time the Dewars had six daughters who helped run the hotel, but in 1863 Alexander Dewar was declared bankrupt. He told the bankruptcy court that business had recently fallen off, and although he was discharged six months later the hotel closed in 1864. It was later taken over as railway offices.
   Undeterred by this setback, the family moved across the road to more modest premises at 11 Bridge Street, on the upper floors of a building which had shops and a restaurant at street level. This time it was on a no-alcohol basis, hence the name Dewar's Temperance Hotel, although it was formally still known as the Railway Arms. 

As well as providing rooms for visitors, its function room hosted a wide range of meetings and proved particularly popular for sporting associations and clubs. The Scottish FA certainly liked the environment as it held committee meetings at Dewar's Hotel regularly through the 1870s until it acquired its own premises, and others who met there included Rangers, Third Lanark and numerous smaller football clubs, as well as cricketers, bowlers and shinty players.

When the Scottish FA first met in 1873, however, Alexander Dewar was no longer there. He had died in October 1868 aged 57, and his widow Jane was left to carry on the business with the support of her daughters, so they were the hosts for the inaugural meeting.
   Even after Jane's death in 1875 the hotel remained in the family, with the daughters in charge until they gave it up in 1880. That was shortly after the opening of the much larger Glasgow Central Station on the other side of the river, which diminished the status of Bridge Street Station as trains could now cross the Clyde directly to the city centre. Although a reconfigured station was created a few yards to the south, it had much less traffic and that meant the hotel lost much of its viability.
   It carried on under new management as Fleming's Temperance Hotel until the turn of the century, then appears to have become rented apartments. With the slow decline of the Gorbals, the whole block where Dewar's Hotel stood, from 5 to 15 Bridge Street, was demolished in the mid-1930s. 

On the site today is Cumbrae House, an attractive deco building with contrasting black and cream tiles, built in 1937 as a furniture showroom. Now used as offices, it faces onto Carlton Court, with a prominent façade on Bridge Street, although the building is need of attention and has been shrouded in scaffolding for the past couple of years. This is the place where that Scottish FA plaque should be.

John Crichton and the Old Hampden Bar

Curiously, directly beneath Dewar's Hotel there was a football-related pub at street level. The Old Hampden Bar at 9 Bridge Street was for many years run by John Gray Crichton, who had played for Third Lanark against Queen's Park in the 1876 Scottish Cup final and appeared in a Scotland trial match.

​He sounds like a great sportsman and a character. After leaving Thirds he was a player for Alexandra Athletic and Queen's Park, but had particular prominence as an athlete with a speciality for sack racing. While this may sound like a novelty event, the sack race was a staple of athletics meetings in the late Victorian era, and Crichton was virtually unbeatable until he gave it up in 1881.
   The Athletic News paid tribute to his abilities, describing him as 'the cleverest sackist I ever saw … and, above all, he is every inch of him a gentleman.' After he retired, Crichton's natural successor as Scotland's leading sack racer was another footballer, Tuck McIntyre of Rangers.
   There had been a pub or restaurant at 9 Bridge Street since the 1870s, and when Crichton took it over in 1887 he named it the Old Hampden Café as he provided food as well as drink. He decorated the walls with portraits of theatrical, political and sporting celebrities, and among the photos was an original image of the 1873 Scotland team that faced England a week before the Scottish FA was formed. Sadly, many of the photos were destroyed in a fire in 1916 but it is a measure of his popularity that he received over a hundred letters of support from his customers.
   Crichton's influence extended far beyond these shores as he was made an honorary patron of Thistle Football Club in Fremantle, Western Australia, and supplied them with a set of strips and then a gold medal for their top scorer. The reason for this unlikely link is that his daughter had emigrated there with her husband, who played for the team.

John Crichton continued as landlord until 1920 when he sold up and retired to Surrey, where he died eight years later. However, the Old Hampden Bar remained open for at least another decade and had a prominent advert in the Scotland v England match programme in 1927, still boasting a photo gallery of footballers past and present.