The London Bridge that stands in the Arizona desert was drawn by an East Lothian farmer's son. John Rennie designed it, his second son built it, and in April 1968 the City of London sold the whole structure to an American developer for £1.02 million.
Robert P. McCulloch had the facing stones numbered, shipped through the Panama Canal to Long Beach and hauled to Lake Havasu City, where they were wrapped around a new concrete core and rededicated on 10 October 1971. No other Scottish surname owns a monument that odd, and the family behind it reshaped Britain first.
Who Was John Rennie the Elder?
He was born on 7 June 1761 at Phantassie, a farm near East Linton in what was then Haddingtonshire, and went to school at Prestonkirk. At twelve he was working for Andrew Meikle, the millwright who invented the threshing machine and who lived on the Phantassie ground. Rennie learned machinery with his hands years before he met it on paper.
He went back to school at Dunbar from 1775 to 1777, set up as a millwright in 1779, and only then read at the University of Edinburgh, from 1780 to 1783. Trade first, theory second, a very Scottish order of operations. In 1784 Boulton and Watt sent him from James Watt's Soho manufactory to London, to install the machinery at the Albion Mills, and he cut the wheels and shafts from iron where everyone else still used wood.
Which Bridges and Docks Did Rennie Build?
Kelso came first: his bridge over the Tweed, built between 1800 and 1804, was the working model for what followed.
Waterloo Bridge was designed in 1809 and 1810 and built from 1811, nine granite arches of 120 feet each with paired Doric columns between them, 2,456 feet long counting the approaches. Begun as the Strand Bridge, it was renamed after the battle and opened to tolls in 1817. Scour undermined the piers from the 1880s and the London County Council took it down in the 1930s.
Southwark Bridge, started in 1814 and opened in 1819, was the opposite instinct: three cast-iron spans on granite piers, the middle one 240 feet, the longest cast-iron span made anywhere at that date. Londoners called it the Iron Bridge and Dickens used the nickname in Little Dorrit. Fifty men died building it.
The water works were bigger still: London Docks from 1800 to 1805, East India Docks from 1803 to 1806, the Humber Dock at Hull from 1803 to 1809, and the Plymouth Breakwater begun in 1812 and unfinished until 1841. He died at Stamford Street, Blackfriars, on 4 October 1821, and lies in the crypt of St Paul's. Anyone who admires the Forth Bridge sees the generation his work made possible.
Did Rennie or Stevenson Build the Bell Rock Lighthouse?
Both, and the argument over which has never fully settled. The Northern Lighthouse Board contracted John Rennie to design and build the tower on the Inchcape reef off Arbroath and appointed Robert Stevenson chief assistant. Construction ran from 1807 to 1810.
Stevenson was the man on the rock, and his own written account gave Rennie next to no credit. Descendants on both sides kept the dispute alive for a century. Modern assessment splits it: Stevenson designed the tower in the main, and Rennie's part was still real. When Stevenson decided Rennie's 1809 visit was interference, he sent him eighty-two written questions about the construction. Rennie answered every one, and Stevenson largely ignored the answers. The Stevenson surname has a long Scottish record of its own.
What Happened to the Firm After 1821?
Two sons took it over as J. and G. Rennie, George on the mechanical side and John on the civil.
George Rennie, born in Southwark on 3 December 1791, went to St Paul's School and then to Edinburgh, inspected machinery at the Royal Mint from 1818 to 1826 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822. His works built the first biscuit-making machinery, locomotives, and the engines for the SS Archimedes, the first screw-propeller steamship in the world. He died on 30 March 1866 of injuries from a street accident.
John Rennie the Younger was born on 30 August 1794 at 27 Stamford Street. He completed London Bridge to his father's design, saw it opened in 1831 and was knighted for it, the first man of the profession so honored since Sir Hugh Myddelton. He also built the Royal William Victualling Yard at Plymouth, and died at Bengeo near Hertford on 3 September 1874.
A third talent in that family never left home. George Rennie of Phantassie, 1749 to 1828, was John's elder brother, and he stayed in East Lothian and made his name as an agricultural improver on the same 704 acres. One farm, two national reputations, one in soil and one in stone. The county's older families appear in our pieces on the Bolton name and the Hepburns of Hailes.
What Does the Surname Rennie Actually Mean?
It is a pet form of Reynold. Behind Reynold sit Germanic ragin, counsel, and wald, rule; Scandinavian settlement carried the Norse cognate Rǫgnvaldr into northern England, and the Normans reinforced it with French Reinald. Northern English and Scots speakers clipped the name back to a syllable and added the affectionate -ie.
The Oxford-backed dictionary of family names treats Rennie as a variant of Rainey and lists the Irish relatives grown from the same personal name, Mac Raighne and Ó Raighne, giving Rainey, Reaney and Rennie among others. Our article on the Irish Reynolds follows that branch to Leitrim.
You will meet the claim that Rennie is Gaelic, usually pointed at Raghnall, the Gaelic form of Ronald. That is right about the deep root, since Raghnall is Rǫgnvaldr borrowed into Gaelic, but misleading about the route. The Lowland paper trail runs through Reynold and Rainey, not through a Gaelic patronymic; the two lines meet in Norway rather than in Scotland. Our guide to how Scottish surnames formed covers why pet forms hardened into family names so readily here.
Where in Scotland Do the Rennies Come From?
The 1901 census returned 5,459 Rennies, the 130th commonest surname in Scotland. That is a solid Lowland name, and its trail is east coast.
Symon Renny was bailie of Inverkeithing in Fife in 1362, the earliest datable Scottish bearer. Families spelling it Rany or Rainey held estates in Angus through the fifteenth century, and the patronymic Renison and Rennison appears in Glasgow from the seventeenth. Fife, Angus and the counties north of the Tay carried the name hardest; Phantassie sits at the southern end of the same coastal spread.
Where Else Does the Name Turn Up?
In the middle of Glasgow's most famous signature. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born at 70 Parson Street, Townhead, on 7 June 1868, son of a police superintendent named William McIntosh and his wife Margaret, whose maiden name was Rennie. He signed with the middle name all his life, which is how a Lowland surname ended up attached to the Glasgow School of Art. That birthday fell exactly 107 years after John Rennie's own.
How Do You Research a Rennie Line?
- Search Rennie, Renny, Rainey, Rainie and Rany as one set. Clerks moved between them freely, and a family can change spelling between two children's baptisms.
- Keep Renwick and Rennick out of that set. They are a separate surname.
- Work Fife, Angus, Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire registers together, and treat Glasgow as a destination rather than an origin.
- Begin with a post-1855 statutory certificate and walk back into the old parish registers using our explainer on civil registration and our walkthrough of ScotlandsPeople.
Own a Piece of Rennie Heritage
A name carried by bridge-builders should have something on the shelf built to last. Three pieces carry the name here: a mug, a garden flag and a silver-framed hanging ornament, with the family crest raised above woven tartan on all three. No sett has ever been assigned to Rennie, so read the cloth as a design choice made in honor of the name rather than a claim on a clan weave. Our explainer on who may wear which tartan sets out the rules that do apply.
Rennie Scottish Plaid Family Crest Garden Flag
Frequently Asked Questions About the Rennie Name
Where in Scotland does the Rennie name belong?
The east coast, and the Lowlands rather than the Highlands. Its record runs through Fife, Angus and the counties beyond the Tay, with the engineering family at the southern end in East Lothian.
Was John Rennie related to Charles Rennie Mackintosh?
No connection has been shown. Mackintosh took the name from his mother Margaret Rennie, a Glasgow woman; the engineers farmed at Phantassie in East Lothian.
Is there a Clan Rennie?
No chief of the name has ever been recognized. Rennie belongs to the body of Lowland surnames grown from a personal name rather than a kindred, and Renwick and Rennick are a different surname entirely.
Sources and Further Reading
- John Rennie the Elder — Phantassie, the Meikle apprenticeship, the bridges and docks.
- Sir John Rennie — London Bridge in 1831 and the knighthood that came with it.
- George Rennie the engineer — the Royal Mint years and the SS Archimedes engines.
- Phantassie — the East Linton farm and the elder brother George.
- Bell Rock Lighthouse — Rennie's contract, Stevenson's role and the eighty-two questions.
- Waterloo Bridge — the nine granite arches and the 1817 opening.
- Southwark Bridge — the 240-foot span Dickens called the Iron Bridge.
- London Bridge at Lake Havasu City — the 1968 sale and the Arizona rededication.
- Charles Rennie Mackintosh — the 1868 birth and his mother's maiden name.
- Dictionary of American Family Names: Rennie — a variant of Rainey, from Rǫgnvaldr.
- Surname Database: Rennie — Symon Renny at Inverkeithing, 1362, and the Angus Rany estates.
- Rennie in the 1901 Scottish census — 5,459 bearers, ranked 130th.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — the standard reference for early Renny forms.
From a Haddingtonshire threshing barn to a bridge in the Arizona sun is a long way for one family: see the Rennie designs, among over 2,000 names here.