‘He never gave up': tributes to patriarch of Scottish undertakers

The Herald Scotland

20-07-2025

Died: July 9, 2025
William Wallace, who has died aged 92, was the patriarch of a firm of undertakers and a respected, long-lived and well-known figure in the village where he lived and worked his whole life. He joined the family business in West Kilbride straight from school when he was 16 years old and was still working there in his 80s.
The business was founded in 1902 when William's grandparents William and Helen started a carriage business in the stable of the Wellington Hotel in the village, where the funeral business still is today. In those early days, the horses were stabled upstairs and were taken in and out on a ramp. During the First World War, some of the horses were taken away for the war effort and Mr Wallace Snr went across to Connemara to replace them.
The family firm thrived as a carriage business, taking people around, doing deliveries and also doing funerals as well. It was the age of the joiner/undertaker when funerals were simple affairs conducted at home before the deceased was moved to the local cemetery, and William Wallace & Son was there to help. William Wallace recalled that 'in those days, undertakers had other professions. We supplied them with carriages so it seemed like a natural progression for us.'
It was when William eventually took over the firm in the 1950s that it began to specialise in funerals. It was still being run as it always had been, but with the help of his new wife Barbara, a nurse from Glasgow, William started to modernise. Barbara recalls seeing the office for the first time with its tall wooden desk and six-inch-thick ledger and realising that things hadn't changed for quite a long time.
William Wallace was born in [[West Kilbride]] in 1933 and attended [[West Kilbride]] Primary. He was a bright kid but perhaps knew that he'd be leaving school to join the family business and didn't thrive in an academic environment. In one exam at Ardrossan Academy, he got three per cent for writing his name neatly at the top and his headmaster said he would make a 'good citizen'.
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After leaving school, he went straight to work for the family business before it was interrupted in the 1950s by national service in Germany. He was discharged in 1956 from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers holding the rank of corporal and with a very good military conduct grading.
When he returned and started running the company for himself, William ran taxis and Volkswagen mini-buses for company contracts and collecting school children from local farms and ferrying them to and from school each day as part of a contract with the local council at that time. But he also had the skills and empathy needed to run a funeral business.
Over the years, he expanded the business after buying an old bakery at the back of the Wellington premises and built a service room. Mr Wallace recalled the early days when a funeral would cost £54. 'Most people have cars now,' he said, 'in the 40s, it was not uncommon for a funeral to involve five following cars.'
Although he was steeped in the history and traditions of the firm, Mr Wallace embraced modernisation and loved his mobile phone. Recently solar panels and batteries were installed so the firm's new Mercedes Benz E300de hybrid vehicle could be charged in the lighter months without using the grid.
William and Barbara Wallace (Image: Contributed)
William and Barbara had two children, John who earns a living as a professional guitarist, and Gordon, who eventually joined the family firm. Gordon says his parents encouraged him into further education, but after completing a degree in mechanical engineering and struggling to find work, he started helping his father out before going full-time.
Gordon says his father was still working at the firm in his 80s and was still busy in his 90s. 'He wasn't lifting things anymore,' says Gordon, 'but if he could have, he would have; he was doing funerals well into his 80s. He never gave up.'
Gordon, the fourth generation of the family at the helm of the business, says his father's firm has moved with the times and does traditional funerals as well as simpler, stripped-back affairs. The traditionally male-dominated business is changing too: one of the funeral directors at William Wallace & Son is Carly Brown, who joined nine years ago.
A recent message to the family after news of William's death described him as, 'a real-life legend that I thought would live forever.' He will be greatly missed by everyone that knew him.
William Wallace is survived by his wife Barbara, who he married in 1970, and their sons John and Gordon.