Peter Puddock and the Puddocky: the thread about Municipal Frogs and Flood-prone Pitches

An unexpected – and irresistible – eBay find in recent days was this charming (or, depending on your feelings towards anthropomorphic frogs, terrifying) button badge featuring Peter Puddock, the one-time mascot of Edinburgh’s Royal Commonwealth Pool. Peter was created as a marketing campaign by the District Council in 1987 and his name was chosen by a children’s competition which attracted some three hundred entries.

ROYAL COMMONWEALTH POOL – Peter Puddock

The lucky winner was ten year old Marjorie Drysdale from Prestonfield. In addition to securing the naming rights she was awarded a photo-shoot with Peter, who presented her with two golden passes for a year’s free swimming at The Commie. In addition, from the chairman of the council’s Recreation Committee, she received one of these badges and a matching t-shirt.

Marjorie and Peter at the Commonwealth Pool, she sporting her t-shirt and holding the prize tickets, he resplendent in his enormous bow tie. Edinburgh Evening News photo, 18th March 1987

Following this, Peter’s first official public outing was at McDonald Road Library on March 21st, the occasion being the sale of 20,000 ex-circulation books. After that, what became of him is not recorded in the pages of the Evening News or any other newspaper. However, in August 2018 the Dartmouth Chronicle reported that a Peter Puddock had accused Kingswear Parish Council of financial mismanagement and running up a £17,000 financial shortfall. Coincidence? Who is to say…

So what’s in a name? As recorded in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, Puddock is the word for a frog in that leid (or a toad, the two species are often confused). It can also be spelled puddick, poddock or paddock, but does not share an etymology with the English word paddock (from parrock or park), instead having its roots in the Old Norse padda for toad. It may be used as an adjective – puddockie or puddocky – to describe the sort of wet, boggy ground which abounds in amphibians. It has various reduced forms including paddy but it’s pure coincidence that the same word is used in English for a flooded field where rice is grown; in this case that’s a loan from the Malay word pādī.

Three Frogs, by Jemima Blackburn (née Wedderburn), mid 19th century. National Gallery of Scotland collection.

Sections of the Water of Leith were once commonly known as the Puddock Burn although by the mid-19th century it was remarked upon that this was a nostalgic notion on account of the river pollution having rendered it almost entirely devoid of such wildlife. This association is also used more specifically for the section of the river between Canonmills Bridge and Powderhall, long known as The Puddocky.

“Water of Leith from Back of Warriston Cemetery”, a romantic scene at The Puddocky in the 19th century – in reality the river here by this time was extremely polluted. Note the steam train running along the railway embankment on the middle right distance. 1850, John Reid Prentice. Credit; Edinburgh Museums and Galleries.

While it’s true that generations of children have fished here for frogs with bits of string and jeelie jars, the name instead derives from an older placename of Paddockhaw or Puddockhall, a farm of that name in this location being recorded in 1724. There was no actual hall here however, the word being referred to is the Scots Haugh; a level plain alongside a river, seasonally wet land prized by farmers and frogs alike.As a place it disappeared after 1763 when the river was significantly straightened in an attempt to deal with flooding, but the name has persisted in to modern times.

Robinson & Fergus 1759 Town Plan of Edinburgh (left, photo © Self) and Kirkwood’s 1817 Town Plan (right, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) overlaid on each other, move the slider to compare. This shows the development of the area around this time, in particular the straightening of the Water of Leith that trapped a portion of land belonging to Heriot’s Hospital that was once contiguous with the holding on the north bank of the river on the south instead.

The persistence of the name in collective memory has perhaps been helped by its surprisingly prominent literary profile. In an 1898 biography of Robert Louis Stevenson – educated nearby at the Canonmills school of the Free Kirk – Evelyn Blantyre Simpson relates that on learning the 23rd psalm (“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; he makes me down to lie in pastures green; he leadeth me the quiet waters by“) the boy’s over-active imagination pictured this as being his riverside playground of the Puddocky where he spent many an hour splashing around, attended by his ever-present nursemaid Cummy.

A statue dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson, depicting him as a boy, located by the Water of Leith at Colinton Parish Church where his grandfather was minister. CC-by-SA 4.0 Rosser1954

The young RLS was not the only Edinburgh author to have formative memories of the place, Muriel Spark recalls in her autobiography Curriculum Vitae that “at weekends we roamed in the botanical gardens or went for walks at Puddocky“. She would use it as a location in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie where the character Teenie allegedly took a romantic “walk” with her boyfriend which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. Norman Macaig refers to it in “his most sustained meditation on Edinburgh“, the 1973 poem Inward Bound:

Journeys, Mine were
as wide as the world is
from Puddocky to Stockbridge
minnows splinter in a jar
and a ten-inch yacht
in the roaring forties of Inverleith Pond
crumples like a handkerchief

The Puddocky name also has a number of long-standing associations with sport in the district. Part of Warriston Park was taken on as playing fields by the Edinburgh Institution (later to become Melville College) in the 1860s, with cricket played in the summer and rugby in the winter. This ground was part of the Water of Leith’s flood plain and had once been the site of the ornamental pond of Wester Warriston House. Unsurprisingly as a sports pitch it was perpetually damp, usually waterlogged in winter and more suited to webbed feet. It gained the derisory nickname of The Puddocky. It was taken over later by the Edinburgh School Board in 1910 and remains as playing fields for school use to this day.

Lothian Regional Council hasn’t existed for 30 years, but their sign for Warriston playing fields is nevertheless still in remarkably good condition

On the opposite bank from here was the triangle of land possessed by The Governors of Heriot’s Hospital that had been marooned on that side when the river was straightened out. From 1883 this was used as a football ground by the itinerant St Bernards F.C. but after 1887 it was transferred back to Heriot’s as school playing fields. Again this site was frequently damp and again it found itself nicknamed The Puddocky. The school lasted here for little more than a decade before removing to altogether more commodious and drier facilities further north at Bangholm. Renamed Old Logie Green, it became the ground of Leith Athletic F.C. who played here until 1915. The displaced St Bernards didn’t have too far to go however and moved just next door to the New Logie Green ground.

1894 OS 1:25 inch map of Edinburgh showing the various Puddocky sports grounds. The Institution’s Ground on the left can be seen below Eildon Street, now merged with Warriston Park as the council playing fields. The Heriot’s Ground is on the opposite bank of the river, and wound later be known as Old Logie Green. The ground marked as St Bernard’s Football Ground was New Logie Green. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Once again the nickname Puddocky was applied for the usual reasons and this site holds a unique claim to fame in that it is the only football ground outside of Glasgow where the Scottish Cup has been held. Owing to a timetabling clash at the usual Hampden Park venue in 1896 the game was played instead at the ground of the holders – St Bernards. The match was an Edinburgh derby, Heart of Midlothian prevailing over their city rivals Hibernian by three goals to one. St Bernards departed here in 1899 when their lease expired and the ground was removed, Logie Green Road driven through its heart.

The 1896 Scottish Cup game, the unique occasion of it being an Edinburgh derby at an Edinburgh ground. On the left is the old house of Logie Green which abuts the pitch and in the background is the roof line of Warriston Crescent. Note the steam locomotive on the railway embankment, which appears to have stopped to spectate. Note also the pitch line markings are different from those we are familiar with these days.

To keep you on your toes if you are trying to research either of these two football teams or either of the two Logie Green grounds, Leith played very briefly at New Logie Green in the 1899 season and St. Bernards returned to Old Logie Green between 1921-24. From then until final closure in 1926 Old Logie Green was home to, you’ve guess it, Leith Athletic. In the century since then it has been the football boots of generations of Edinburgh school children playing soggy winter fixtures at Warriston that have trod on the last remaining Puddocky pitches.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Canonmills #Powderhall #River #RobertLouisStevenson #Sport #SwimmingPool #Warriston #WaterOfLeith #Written2025

The Singing Street; the thread about skipping, hopping, dancing and birling through the backgreens and streets of 1950s Edinburgh

This thread marks a milestone for Threadinburgh as WordPress tells me it is the 300th post since it first went live in September 2022 and it also informed me this afternoon that we just passed the 500,000th visitor! To mark this auspicious double-celebration it feels fitting to finally get round to something on my to-do list that has been there for far too long. As if by providence a little booklet recently came my way that proves to be the final piece of such a puzzle. Self-described as “a Merry-Ma-Tanzie1 of Skipping, Hiding, Hopping, Birling, Stotting, Playing and Dancing Rhymes“, The Singing Street was first published in 1951 to accompany an amateur film of the same title and will therefore soon celebrate its seventy-fifth birthday.

A wonderful picture of Edinburgh – as true perhaps as has ever been put on the screen

The Scotsman, February 1st 1952

The film pops up not and again online, and if you aren’t already familiar with it then at the very least I’d certainly recommend a quick view of the below thirty second taster before reading on. Alternatively you can watch and listen to all eighteen-minutes of it at this link to the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3KDVbKU7is

It would be all too easy to treat such “astonishingly evocative scenes” as a pure nostalgia trip back to an Edinburgh which disappeared in living memory. But this was never the intent of the film and it is so much more than just a skip and a hop down memory lane. So let us therefore celebrate it by telling the tale of how and why it came to be and by recognising its importance as a much wider piece of archival work. Then, and only then, shall we step through it scene-by-scene and song-by-song, back to the streets of 1950s Edinburgh to compare them with the present day.

Merry-ma-Tanzie, an ancient Scottish game related to “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush“. ↩︎

The story of the Singing Street begins with Dr James (Jim) T. R. Ritchie in 1936. He was then a newly-minted teacher at Norton Park Intermediate School on Albion Road where he taught maths and science to reluctant eleven-to-fourteen year olds.

A very young James T. R. Ritchie in 1929, cropped from a class photo outside the University of Edinburgh Chemistry Department in his final year of undergraduate study. CC-BY University of Edinburgh School of Chemistry

This was, in his own words, a school that “had no Park but stood among tenements and a variety of industrial buildings which together covered the lands between the Canongate of Edinburgh and the Port of Leith“. He made a particular point that he taught science in Leith but mathematics in Edinburgh: the municipal boundary between these two formerly separate burghs ran right through the middle of the school and even after amalgamation in 1920 the two halves were referred to distinctly from each other.

Official photograph of Albion Road School (as it then was known), taken to support the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920 which subsumed Leith (and other surrounding parishes) into Edinburgh. This highlights the rather ridiculous nature of the municipal boundary cutting through the middle of a school which served only one side of the line. © Edinburgh City Archives

In his spare time Ritchie was a keen amateur poet and from a second-hand copy of Robert Chambers’ 1841 Popular Rhymes of Scotland and a 1931 reprint of Norman Douglas’ London Street Games, he began to develop a particular interest in the songs and rhymes that accompany children’s play. He recalled a particular day at work:

One morning… I was teaching science in Leith, and finding the response on this occasion not very lively, I asked “Then what do you like doing?” The class answered: “We like playing games.” “What games?” They told me, and I began there and then to write them down… From then on I collected every sort of rhyme or playing jingle and my collection grew.

James Ritchie, writing in 1965, quoted in “Golden City: Scottish Children’s Street Games & Songs”, Mercat Press, 1999

Through his pupils, Ritchie was given access to a vast world of play songs and rhymes, which to which most adults was off-limits and of little interest, and found himself de facto official collector of them. He found they varied “from street to street” and changed “from day to day“. Tunes were at once familiar but their parts were endlessly broken apart and re-assembled in new orders into completely novel songs. Their words were “phrases of ancient ritual, myth, lost language” but that “there [was] always something new… the poetry is kept alive.” For instance, the girls liked to sing a song called “There came three Jews from the land of Spain“. When the century-old copy of Chambers was consulted it was found to be a direct musical descendent of “We are three brethren come from Spain“; the song had passed, unwritten, down through over a hundred years of Edinburgh children, evolving as it went. Other songs were found to be unique creations of the school, such as “O Alla Tinka“, an accompaniment to a “rumba ring” dance which was revered by the girls as if it was a “magic incantation“:

O alla tinka, to do the Rumba; O alla tinka, do the; Rumba umba umba umba Ay!

I paula-tay paula-tuska; Paula-tay, paula-toe; Paula-tay, paula-tuska; Paula-tay, paula toe.

Its nonsensical second verse was later found by the Opies, prominent folklorists of childhood, to have been adapted from a campfire song popularised by the pre-WW1 Holiday Fellowship which included a line “Hi politi politaska, polita, polito”. It had been brought back by a child from one of those camps four decades before, had been entered into the playground lexicon and evolved from there.

Girls skipping and boys playing with a ball in a back green. From “The Singing Street” by James Ritchie, 1964

Over the next decade from this “narrow vineyard” Ritchie harvested a huge volume of material. Word slowly spread of the project and in 1949 the BBC’s Scottish Home Service commissioned a programme of some of the Norton Park pupils singing a selection of their songs, billed as “a microphone tour through the streets of Edinburgh.” Broadcast on August 3rd it was warmly received but criticised for having a late night timeslot which meant that children had missed it. Ritchie was therefore asked to re-write it for a younger audience and this version was broadcast for Children’s Hour. Radio broadcast was all well and good, but he was more than aware that the words and melodies did not exist in isolation, but were key components of a vast repertoire of obscurely-named games with labyrinthine rules; unwritten but carried around in the heads of every child and passed down from generation to generation. He was therefore on the lookout for a better medium to fully capture and represent the songs than just sound alone.

Girls playing “One, Two, Three, A-leerie” in the playground of Norton Park. From “Golden City” by James Ritchie, 1965

He had by the dawn of the ‘Fifties fallen in with a pair of younger colleagues at work; art teachers Nigel McIsaac and Raymond Townsend. The three shared progressive views on education, something encouraged by their headmaster Richard Borthwick, and had a common interest in the idea of creating a film of – and with – their students. After consulting with the artist William Geissler, then the head of the art department at Moray House College of Education, they recruited him too to form the Norton Park Group and set out with high ambitions but no funding for the world of cinematography. Meeting the £40 a week cost of hiring the 16mm ciné camera from their own pockets in early 1951 their first project was completed, a silent short called Happy Weekend. This documented their art pupils working together to paint a large mural which detailed their experiences of the world over a weekened and is particularly notable for a clever switch from black-and-white into full colour as the children begin to paint. As such it is a very rare piece of colour film footage of Edinburgh at this time.

Colour still from Happy Weekend depicting the pupils at work on the mural. The film remains in copyright, still via National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive.

Happy Weekend was silent as its makers had no familiarity with using sound, but the experience left them keen to have a go at it but they reached mutual agreement that it should be a main feature of the next project and not just a mere audio backdrop. Various scenes of the first film made considerable use of the children at play, both in school and in the surrounding streets, and so the idea presented itself that this was the perfect opportunity to bring the songs and their games alive, together as the centrepiece of a film. The children would provide the cast – playing their own games and singing their own songs – and the set would be their native environment of “back greens, under and over bridges, along the pavements, the causeways and the balconies“. Thus was born The Singing Street.

A colour still from Happy Weekend with girls playing a skipping game in the playground at Norton Park as their teacher leaves work. The film remains in copyright, still via National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive.

Jim recruited a cast of some sixty pupils for the project. They were mainly girls and as well as Peggie McGillivray his notes named Audrey Fraser, Harriet Sandison, Joan Grant, Hazel Agnew, Marjorie Lock, and Laura Gardner as singers. Together they worked out a representative selection of songs and games to feature and the order in which they should run. Over the following weeks McIsaac turned these into a storyboard from which timings and camera movements were worked out and a shooting plan was created. Townsend, who had started his working life as a set-designer for the film industry, and Geissler acted as cameramen. Donald Elliot of the Scottish Film Council and Denis Forman of the British Film Institute were credited as consultants and Alan Harper of Campbell Harper Films, a local commercial ciné studio, provided practical advice.

And so it was that over a particularly cold and wintry Easter holiday weekend shooting took place. The weather was perhaps appropriate as the song The Golden City, chosen as the film’s leitmotif, begins with the line “The wind, the wind, the wind blows high; The snow comes falling from the sky“. The children sang on set but no audio was recorded, instead it was over-dubbed with recordings of them made at the BBC’s radio studio on George Street. Incidental sound for the transition scenes was provided by the poet Norman MacCaig, who whistled refrains of a variety of the songs. The film was then cut and edited by hand and the soundtrack overlaid to master the final production.

Chalked titles, The Singing Street, © NLS Moving Image Archive

Before it was even released, word of it had reached the ears of American archivist and collector of folk music Alan Lomax who happened to be in the UK at the time, along with the latest in portable recording equipment, on an expedition to record traditional songs sung by untrained voices. Two men were to become champions of the imminent Scottish folk scene revival, Ewan MacColl and Hamish Henderson, made it their mission to track Lomax down and ensure Scotland was “well represented” in his collection. Lomax soon found himself being taken on a tour of Scotland by Hamish Henderson, who introduced him to Jim Ritchie at Norton Park. Here he recorded some of the songs for himself and described being fascinated by how the whip of a skipping rope or the regular bouncing of a ball acted as percussion and provided the beat of the otherwise unaccompanied songs. He interviewed Ritchie and fifteen-year old Margaret Hunter (Peggie) McGillivray, one of the most prominent faces and voices in the film. Ewan McVicar, an authority on Scottish folk music history, would later write of her that she was “a wonderful informant and performer, she is melodic and confident in her performance and articulate and clear in her accounts of how the songs were used“. You can listen to Lomax’s recordings at Norton Park at the Lomax Digital Archive.

Alan Lomax at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, North Carolina, early 1940s. US Library of Congress, PPMSC.00433

While it is suggested that the film was shown at the 1951 Festival, The Scotsman reported that its public première was at the Film House on Hill Street on January 31st 1952. Their critic was full of praise; it was a “minor miracle… something exciting, valuable and entertaining, and as much a part of our own and our children’s living as the cobbles and causeys of our city streets“. Excusing the poor photographic quality on account of the weather when filming, everything else about it was “…first rate. The shooting has been done with imagination and artistry, and the voices of children singing their rhymes make the whole something for memory’s delight.” It was declared to be a “knock in the eye for the professionals“. The film went on to win the Glasgow Film Society prize that year and the British Film Institute chose it as one of four films to represent the country at the fourteenth International Amateur Film Festival in Barcelona.

The Singing Street was the first film explicitly dedicated to depicting children’s song and games and John Grierson, the Scottish and father of British documentary film, considered it:

…the best amateur film I ever saw… in some ways technically terrible but it was wonderful to me and quite unforgettable… The reason for it being wonderful was quite simple. Somebody loved something and conveyed it.

John Grierson, speaking to BBC Scotland’s Arts Review in 1955

The Scottish Group of Gramaphone Societies noted “the contrast of the greyness of ‘Auld Reekie’ and the young, fresh vitality of the singers gave hope that a depressing environment need not imply a repressed childhood“. The success of the Singing Street quickly inspired other films including Lewis Gilbert’s “Johnny on the Run” – partially set and filmed in Edinburgh – won the Grand Prix at the Venice International Festival of Films For Children in 1953. The Norton Park Group followed up with their third production, The Grey Metropolis, which mixed the verse of Robert Louis Stevenson with footage of the city’s streets. This won the Lizar’s Cup at the Scottish Amateur Film Festival in 1953.

A still from Johnny on the Run. The homesick Janek, a Polish refugee, stares into the window of a travel agent on Princes Street longing to return to his homeland.

Ritchie – anonymously at first – published the lyrics from The Singing Street in a 1951 pamphlet. He made very clear in the foreword that “none of the rhymes are from books. All have been taken down from word of mouth“. He would later expand this short work into a book of the same name, “a social and picturesque history of the century… sketched through skipping songs, singing games and rhymes“, published 1964. The legendary Glaswegian journalist and social commentator Jack House described it as “an absolutely fascinating book about the street games and songs and saying… a delight from beginning to end.” It was followed up the next year by “Golden City“, a continuation that elaborated more on the various games themselves.

Playtime on Albion Terrace, the setting for much of “The Singing Street”, a staged photo from Ritchie’s book of the same name. Skipping, a ball game and chalking is seen in progress. In the smoky background can be seen the industries of the district and the faint outline of Arthur’s Seat, the ever-present backdrop to the film.

Both books have become widely-referenced educational works but have taken on a particular importance as they recorded and described childhoods in Edinburgh and Leith at a critical – and irreversible – point of urban change. After a lull on account of WW2, the city centre was undergoing rapid and sever depopulation, particularly of school-age children, driven by widespread demolition of whole districts. Residents jumped or were pushed away, scattered to the vast new public housing schemes on the periphery. Those who did remain found their freedoms greatly curtailed, their playground of streets and pavements abandoned to motor vehicles. Instead, they spent more time in their homes, where children’s television beamed in from London took up an ever more prominent place in their lives. These were forces that their hyper-local songs, games and rhymes – unwritten and passed around only by word of mouth and relentless repetition – would struggle to long survive. Fortunately, Jim Ritchie was the right man in the right place at the right time to write down and record at least some of them.

Stepping now into the film itself (here’s the link to it again so you can play through as you go), the booklet helps match the songs to the scenes and I have revisited nearly all of them to provide an image comparison (drag the slider to compare). If you are sitting comfortably, we begins with a rather low-key card announcing the feature presentation as the second production of the Norton Park Group. The numbers in bold are the running times for each scene.

Norton Park Production No. 2. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

00:10-00:54. The card fades out to reveal a classic Edinburgh skyline viewed from East Princes Street Gardens; the camera pans from the North Bridge across to the National Galleries of Scotland. From here on however such a picture-postcard vision of the city is abandoned and instead we journey to the real Edinburgh of seemingly endless setted streets, tall, dark tenements and smoky factories. The song “The Golden City” begins and like many in the film, parts are instantly recognisable. A Northern Irish variation of this song is well known as “The Belle of Belfast City” or “I’ll Tell Me Ma”.

00:55-01:04. A shot from the upper storey of Norton Park School looking down to Albion Terrace below and across the Crawford Bridge to Bothwell Street, a strip that provides the majority of the film’s setting. “The Golden City” continues.

Looking down on Albion Terrace across the Crawford Bridge to Bothwell Street, where much of the action of the film takes place. Still from The Singing Street, © NLS Moving Image Archive

01:05-01:15. The opening titles are seen chalked on a wall as “The Golden City” concludes.

Chalked titles, The Singing Street, © NLS Moving Image Archive

01:16-01:25. Looking down on Albion Road, a girl on the street is holding a skipping rope and calls up to her friend to come out and play with the calling rhyme “Weary, Weary, Waiting on You“.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

01:26-01:33. Looking along Albion Road, the girl is joined by her friend and they share the rope, skipping past a horse and cart and down to the shop on the corner with Albion Terrace. They are accompanied by the skipping and hopping song “Down to the Baker’s Shop“.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

01:34-01:56. Outside the corner shop, we see the reflection of a girl playing with a diabolo in the window. The camera pans to reveal a girl – Peggie McGillivray – singing “My Name is Sweet Jenny” as she looks at her reflection in the window and combs her hair: “I looked in the glass, I said to myself, what a handsome young lass.”

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

01:57-02:20. The skipping girls arrive and meet Peggie. All three skip away down Albion Terrace as the tune changes to “On The Mountain“. The trio meet other girls in the street, in the background is the Crawford Bridge and Albion Terrace. One girl arrives by bicycle and another plays a ball game off a wall.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

02:21-02:29. Fade to looking along Bothwell Street with Norton Park School in the distance. The girl with the Diabolo plays in the centre of the shot while the tune “In And Out the Dusting Bluebells” is whistled (by Norman MacCaig, unseen)

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

02:30-02:32. Silent transition scene looking down on the north pavement of Leith Street as people walk by.

02:33-02:57. Looking down on the setts of Albion Road from above, the girls perform a ring dance to the accompaniment of “The Bluebird“. The camera then joins them down at street level, filming through the raised arms of the dancing girls, with tenements seen behind.

A ring dance to “The Bluebird” on Albion Road. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

02:58-03:13. A skipping game filmed looking along Albion Terrace towards Bothwell Street, with Calton Hill visible in the distance through Auld Reekie‘s grimy skies. “Bluebells and Dummie Shells” is sung.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

03:14-03:33. At the foot of the Crawford Bridge, looking towards Bothwell Street, a ring of girls dance and sing the “O Alla Tinka Rumba” in a small space, then fenced off but now used for parking cars.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

03:14-03:37. Transition shot, the junction of a busy street with pedestrians and traffic passing by. Looking across the top of Leith Street from the end of what was East Register Street.

03:38-03:49. At the foot of the Crawford Bridge again, with steam in the background from a passing train below, “The Little Sandy Girl” is danced around a girl in the centre who covers her face, pretending to cry, before following the command of “Rise up, Sandy girl, wipe your tears away“.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

03:50-04:14. Looking down from a tenement window on children at the foot of the Crawford Bridge, the camera pans to follow girls running across towards Bothwell Street. A refrain of “The Little Sandy Girl” is whistled before the singing of “There Came Three Jews” begins.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

04:15-04:47. The previous song continues, the camera looks down on the girls who had run across the bridge to join friends on the other side. On a balcony at the end of Bothwell Street, with the railway line beneath the bridge in the background, a girl dances back and forth towards her companions in a line. For the chanted bridge section of “My name is not Corkscrew, I stamp my foot, And away I go” there is a close-up shot of the game. This is repeated for the later bridge of “Ye dirty we rat, ye’ll no come out” before returning to the wider view for the end of the song and dance. The balconies are much reduced in size since, and are private.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

04:48-05:10. A refrain of “On the Mountain” is whistled as the previous dance ends. There is a montage of shots of other children before the camera returns to looking down on the girls again before panning up to the distant skyline of Salisbury Crags and the steeple of the Abbey Church (since demolished).

05:11-05:27. The shot pans down from the view of the Crags back to street level but we are now at St John Street in the Canongate, looking towards St Andrew’s Episcopal Church (also since demolished). Girls in the street skip to “On The Mountain“, one assumes it was a deliberate choice to mix this particular song with the view of Arthur’s Seat.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

05:28-06:18. The camera moves to a new location as the previous song ends. After a brief close-up of younger children, nine older girls playing a dancing game on stone steps within the entrance to Moray House, whose gate pillars can be seen in the background, to the song “The Bonnie Bunch of Roses“. The entrance has since been made accessible and landscaped.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

06:19-07:10. A close-up shot of a ring of girls on a playground surface dance to the song “In and Out the Dusting Bluebells“. The camera moves to reveal they are in the playground at the Moray House Demonstration School, near to where the two previous scenes were filmed. The song and dance get progressively faster.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

07:11-07:15. Transition shot, the same location on Leith Street as previously seen with pedestrians and a bus passing by. The refrain of “The Dusting Bluebells” is whistled.

07:16-07:35. The camera is now at Abbeymount, looking across Montrose Terrace towards the Regent Buffet public house. The shot angle changes slightly to show a bus coming over the hill from Easter Road. Beyond can be seen the chimney and rising clouds of steam from the Abbeymount public wash house.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

07:36-08:49. We return to the song “The Golden City“, the camera looks down on a ring of girls on the street dancing around one of their number in the middle. For the second verse the shot transitions to the lyrics chalked on a blackboard before returning to the street. The camera position then moves to reveal they are on Carlton Terrace, with Playfair’s grand terrace behind them.

Looking down on Carlton Terrace on a ring dance to “The Golden City“. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

08:50-09:24. “The Golden City” finishes and two pairs of girls skip off down Royal Terrace towards Greenside Church and Blenheim Terrace to the song “When I Was Single“.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

09:25-09:30. The transition shot at the top of Leith Street, this time viewed from Leith Street Terrace, showing the busy scene beyond outside the GPO.

09:31-10:09. The camera briefly looks up Calton Road towards Leith Street as a tram passes by, before moving to look down it towards the arches of the Regent Bridge. This is a film location forever immortalised by Train Spotting, but the Norton Park Group were there forty-five years before Danny Boyle. The shot drops to reveal three girls skipping to “Up and Down to London Town”. The rhyme repeats over different shots of the same location and then for a third time with a close-up of the skipping girl’s feet.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

10:10-10:29. The rhyme “Plainie Clappie” begins, initially looking down from the Regent Bridge to the previous scene but then moving to Abbeyhill and the steps at the head of Alva Place as a girl throws a ball against a wall in time to the actions of the song. Girls and boys watch on as traffic and people walk by beyond.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

10:30-10:36. The camera moves to show boys playing with marbles or counters on a chalked-out peevers grid (hopscotch) on the steps. An older girl’s voice is heard to say “Come on, away ye go, this is a lassie’s den” and she enters the shot to shove the boys over.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

10:37-12:00. The girls dance and play “Plainie Clappie” on the same steps while the four seated boys sing “I Merried Me A Wife“. Adults and passers-by look on, the bespectacled man in the hat is Councillor Pat Murray who would later become the founding force for the establishment of The Museum of Childhood. This is the only song in the film sung by boys and various angles are shown as they complete it – with some of the verses starting quite hesitantly at first but soon being belted out with gusto. They are chased away by a girl as they finish and run off.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

12:01-12:10. A line of girls dance in the street to a whistled refrain.

12:11-12:30. Three girls play French skipping with two ropes to “Down in the Valley“, they are at West Norton Place outside the back wall of the Regent Road School (now Abbeymount Studios). A second vantage point looks down the top of Easter Road beyond with more girls playing behind them. The end of this scene is in slow motion.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

12:31-12:39. The final verse of “Down in the Valley” is sung as a girl rollerskates down the pavement on the opposite side of West Norton Place – much of which has since been demolished – past bemused onlookers.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

12:40-13:39. The camera pans across the top of Victoria Street to show Victoria Terrace in the background. A game of hide and seek begins with a girl counting up to 100 in fives as the other players run off to hide. In the background we can see the steel frame of the incomplete National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge. Parts of the song “Water, Water, Wallflower” accompany various shots of this game, transitioning to a dance later on.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

13:40-13:48. A shot across the rooftops of the West Bow as the song “I’m A Little Orphan Girl” begins.

13:49-13:12. The previous songs continue, the scene moves to the gates of the Eastern Cemetery at the end of Drum Terrace off Easter Road where sixgirls perform German skipping, over a rope laid on the ground. The scene ends to show the six little angels in the last verse of the song chalked on the pavement.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

14:13-14:20. A silent view across the smoky roofs of the Old Town.

14:21-14:45. Girls skip in a street off the Canongate. The tune is “The Night Was Dark“. They skip of into the distance at the end.

“The Night Was Dark” is skipped somewhere in the Canongate (probably!). Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

14:46-14:59. A whistled refrain looking from Victoria Terrace across to the incomplete frame of the National Library as the world passes by. In the far distance a girl (Peggie McGillivray) approaches, skipping down the pavement of Victoria Street.

15:00-15:18. The song “I Once Had a Boy” begins. The camera moves to show a girl skipping towards it through the colonnade of Victoria Terrace. The shot changes again with the camera pulled further back to show both of the previous girls continue their skipping.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

15:19-15:48. As the song continues, Peggie skips down Victoria Street past the Bow Bar public house. The shot follows her down the West Bow and the scene ends with the girl on Victoria Terrace waving down to her before walking off.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

15:49-16:02. “Broken-hearted I wandered” is sung as the camera pans across the roofs of the West Bow, before dropping down to re-join Peggie as she heads towards the Grassmarket.

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

16:03-16:20. The song continues but there is a deliberate continuity error as skipping Peggie emerges not in the Grassmarket but from Burgess Street in Leith and onto the Shore, where she walks across the road. In the background we can see the Upper Draw-bridge over the river and St Thomas’ Church (now the Sikh Gurdwara).

Move the slider to compare. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

16:21-16:45. A final reprise of “The Golden City” is sung as Peggie walks out of shot, listen carefully and the song’s name-check line has been altered to “Peggie McGillivray says she’ll die, for the want of the Golden City“. The camera pans across the bridge beyond before cutting to the end credits which have been chalked on a wall.

The End. Edinburgh – 1951. Still © NLS Moving Image Archive

While the above comparison photos show just how many of the locations are easily recognisable to this day, it is also obvious just how much has changed over time and the world is fundamentally unrecognisable even though there are familiar buildings, streets and stairs. These locations are marked on the map below if you fancy having a look for yourself:

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=1b01L9V2YKDQJeLLDXOLbW3S-Uf2Lrns&ehbc=2E312F&noprof=1&w=640&h=480]

James Ritchie went on to teach at Norton Park for over 30 years. In her harrowing childhood autobiography “The Step Child“, Donna Ford recalled him as “a relief from the unremitting cruelty for children like me… an incredibly kind man… he made me feel as if I was so important, the centre of the world at the moment he spoke to me“. As well as being a teacher and collector he was a poet and playwright, publishing titles such as A Cinema of Days, The Gay Science and The Ha’penny Millionaire. He died aged 90 in 1998. Raymond Townsend would go on to become a film-maker and visual arts lecturer at Moray House; he died in 1991, aged 69. Nigel McIsaac left Norton Park before the film was released and moved to the Royal High School where he rose to become head of the art department and Vice Rector. A stalwart of the Edinburgh Festival scene, he died in 1995 aged 84. Peggie McGillivray, later Peggie Hunter, died in 2022 aged 86.

Jim Ritchie’s simple burial marker in Dalry Cemetery. Photo by EdiJakob via Findagrave.com

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#1950s #Children #Cinema #Film #Games #nostalgia #School #Schools #Songs #Teachers #Written2025

“From the Three R’s to Transistors”: the thread about Dean Public School

Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.

Part six of the series of posts looking at “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” pays a visit to the former Dean Public School. Judging by the crowds of tourists on phones who gather daily in crowds outside, this must be one of the most Instagrammed of schools. I wonder how many stop for a moment to consider its history and its claim to a unique first in the story of education in the city. So let us take a moment for ourselves to do just that.

Following the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 (which made schooling compulsory in Scotland between the ages of 5 and 13) the newly elected School Boards undertook a flurry of construction to rationalise, modernise and expand the existing provision. At its formation in 1873 the Edinburgh School Board (ESB) took stock of the situation it had inherited in the city and found there were almost twenty-two thousand pupils being taught in one hundred schools, with the majority run by the various churches. Unsurprisingly the Presbyterians dominated, educating forty-three percent of scholars.

ProviderSchoolsPupilsShareFree Church174,28219.7%Church of Scotland164,22219.4%Heriot’s Hospital163,74217.2%Non-denominational & private203,65416.8%R. C. Church82,0149.3%Episcopal Church91,5187.0%Industrial & free schools, etc.81,4266.6%U. P. Church68573.9%Total10021,715Elementary Edinburgh Schooling in 1873, census by Edinburgh School Board

In 1873 the Board held a survey of teachers in the city to help prioritise where new schools should be built and the following year held a competition to find architects for its first batch of seven purpose-built schools; Bristo, Causewayside, Leith Walk, North Canongate, Stockbridge, West Fountainbridge and the Water of Leith Village*. The work was divided between the successful applicants, that for the Water of Leith was awarded to Robert Wilson, who would later become the Board’s house architect.

* = The naming and jurisdiction of this school is somewhat confusing. While the area today is widely known as the Dean Village, well into the 20th century it was always known as Water of Leith village. “Dean” referred instead to the old Village of Dean slightly to the north. Both Water of Leith and Dean villages were in the Edinburgh School Board catchment and while the new school was in the former village it was christened Dean Public School at opening. This was most probably in recognition that it served the Dean quoad sacra Parish (an ecclesiastical division, but not a municipal one). To add further confusion, until 1895 there was also a separate St Cuthbert’s and Dean School Board. This covered the western hinterland outwith the city’s municipal boundaries as they then stood and was responsible for schools such as Gorgie, Roseburn, and South Morningside (extension of the city boundary in 1882 meant that the former two schools were actually now in Edinburgh but served by the St Cuthbert’s and Dean Board!)

Water of Leith village, looking northeast past the Bell’s Brae Bridge to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church pre-1875. The school would be built in front of the tall mill building with the circular windows on the left, where the low range sits in this picture. Thomas Vernon Begbie glass negative dated 1887 (incorrect). The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie Prints; City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries

Perhaps because it was the smallest, the Dean Public School was the first of the batch to complete. The opening took place on Wednesday December 8th 1875 making it the first purpose-built school by the Board in the city. The Scotsman reported that at two o’clock, the 150 children of the older division were assembled in the upper classroom in front of the Board and “a large number of gentlemen interested in the work“, including Lord Provost James Falshaw, James Cowan the MP for Edinburgh and numerous town councillors. Following the singing of a psalm and a prayer led by the Rev. Whyte of Free St George’s Church, the Lord Provost gave an opening address and observed that “it was to him a most gratifying circumstance that an auspicious event like the present had occurred during his term of office.”

The roundel of the Edinburgh School Board, “the female figure of education” dispensing knowledge to the young at Dean Public School. © Self

The Chairman of the Board, Professor Henry Calderwood, mentioned that at this time they had 7,386 children in public education at the nineteen schools under their charge but that most of these were small and overcrowded and there was much work ahead to provide purpose-built accommodation for them. Thanks were given to the kirk session of Dean Free Church for allowing the continued use of their schoolhouse since the 1872 act before the new school was ready.

OS Town Surveys of Edinburgh in 1849 and 1876, before and after the Dean Public School was built. Note that at this time the village itself was referred to as “Water of Leith”, as it always had been. Note the Dean Free Church on the old Queensferry Road where schooling took place before 1875. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The new school was arranged over two storeys with accommodation for 400 children (using a formula of 10 square feet of space per child). The infants were accommodated on the ground floor and the older children upstairs, each level having a principal large school room (57ft by 23ft, or 17m by 7m) which could be divided by movable glass partitions, as well as smaller classrooms. There were separate entrances for boys on one side and girls and infants on the other, with the playgrounds being similarly segregated. The total cost was £5,740 5s 2d; £1,030 9s 9d for the site and £4,709 15s 5d for the construction work.

Dean Public School in 1950, looking south. The squat gable of Drumsheugh Baths can be seen in the middle distance. Picture CC-by-NC-SA Dean Village Memories, via Edinburgh Collected

As early as 1878, in a report to the School Board the Inspector complained of overcrowding and a lack of writing desks in the school (those available were sufficient for only 1/3 of the children). This had “spoiled the writing, wasted time in the classes and has prevented the highest discipline grant through the copying traceable to over-crowding“. Failure to remedy these defects would result in the school’s government grant being cut. The school roll at this time was 311, with 200 children qualifying for the Examination in Standard – but the pass rates in these qualifications of 82% for Reading, 84% for Writing and 71% for Arithmetic were the lowest in the School Board. Headmaster Waddell was however praised for his organisation and discipline and the infant department was “in many respects a model one“.

Class portrait of older girls at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note that at least one girl has very short hair, likely the result of it being shaved to combat headlice. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note the boy on the left of Mary seems notably older, taller and better dressed than his peers and may be one of the pupil teachers. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School with (probably) their headmaster, Esdaile Duncan. 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. The boy to the left of her is notably taller, older and better dressed than the others and may be one of the pupil teachers,1883 class photos from Dean Public School

The lack of accommodation was remedied in 1888 with a 3-storey extension for 132 additional children added to the rear, comprising a play-room, a sewing room and an infant classroom. The space beneath was left open and served as a covered part of the playground.

1907 photograph showing the extension added at the rear of the school on the right, adjacent to the bridge. The apparently 17th century structure on the left is Well Court, in fact a late 1880s model workers housing complex in a Scottish Vernacular Revival style by architect Sydney Mitchell. 1907 photograph, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.

When education was made free of charge in 1889 (the 1872 act had introduced fees, although assistance could be provided by the Parish Poor Boards for those who could not afford them), the headmaster at Dean wrote to the School Board to say that the hoped for improvement in attendance rates had not materialised within his district and that “the parents who before were indifferent, are now equally or more so“. In 1894, 120 children were sent to the school from the nearby Dean Orphanage, being reported as “perfect models of cleanliness and order” by the Scotsman and commended in the Evening News for making the school football eleven “a combination to be feared and respected“. They were moved to the new Flora Stevenson School in Comely Bank when it opened in 1901, before being moved back to Dean in 1913 when the new Parish Children’s Home on Crewe Road opened, putting pressure on capacity at Flora’s when there were 115 vacant places at Dean School.

The Dean Orphanage in 1850, recently relocated from its old location beneath the North Bridge where it been in the way of the North British Railway. The community of Bells’s Mill lies beneath and children from both of these locations would attend the Dean Public School. Salt paper print, unknown photographer. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.

With no playing fields or local park to call its own, the school sports days were held at Warriston Playing Fields. In June 1912 the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the pupils from Dean – for the first time in the history of the ESB – had performed mass dancing as part of the day. One hundred and sixty pupils danced “with great zest… danc[ed] a reel to the music of the pipes.”

Pupils of the Dean Public School perform a maypole dance at Warriston Playing Fields as part of their annual sports day, June 28th 1913, Edinburgh Evening News.

In December 1914, the staff of the school contributed £1 4s 6t to the Edinburgh Belgian Relief Fund. The following year Robert Peter Smith, assistant teacher, was wounded during at the Dardanelles when serving as a lieutenant with the 1/4th King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Officers of the 1/4th KOSB in 1915. Robert P. Smith is in the 3rd row, third from the left, the shorter man sporting a moustache. Photo via UK Photo and Film Archive.

In 1939 the school was requisition by the War Office and temporarily relocated “for the duration” to the St Mary’s Cathedral Mission Hall on Bell’s Brae, the ancient convening house of the Incorporation of Baxters (bakers) of Edinburgh. It was returned to educational use and in 1953 was placed under the charge of Dorothy Edmond. The new headmistress was determined to raise the school’s profile and instituted a uniform, having a school badge specially commissioned for the blazers.

She rallied parents together and asked for support financially. Although it would not be a lot, it was a lot to some folks and it caused some controversy… Miss Edmund was strict and eventually was held in high regard by both parents and children.

Recollection by pupil Kathleen Glancy of Dorothy Edmond. Via Edinburgh Collected.Dean School badge, showing the castle of the arms of Edinburgh, open books symbolising learning, the blue of the Water of Leith running through the centre. The Boar’s Head is from the arms of the Nisbet of Dean family, The Cock’s Head may refer to the Poultry Lands of Dean, which in the 17th century conferred the holder the hereditary title of Poulterer to the King. From Kathleen Glancy by Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh Collected.

But not even the determination of Miss Edmond could counter the significant long term depopulation in the neighbourhood, the result of much of the housing stock being decrepit and condemned combined with the decline of the remaining traditional industries of milling and tanning. In January 1961 the school closed, its roll having reduced to just 37 pupils, less than 10% of capacity. Those remaining were transferred to Flora Stevenson’s and the empty building was leased to the defence electronics company Ferranti Ltd. of Crewe Toll for a period of seven years as a training centre for apprentices and assembly line staff. The Evening News felt it an appropriate symbol of the city’s growing demand for specialist technical education that its oldest public school should have made the transition “from the Three R’s to transistors“.

Christine Robertson, age 10, photographed alone in the school on its last day, 20th January 1961,

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Ferranti did not require the two basement rooms and these were given over to the use of the Edinburgh Union of Boys Clubs as a base for an outdoor education scheme, the Adventure Centre for Use. A number of Ferranti staff were involved in this, including the works’ own Mountain Climbing Adventure Group for its younger employees. This provided equipment and specialist training to established clubs in activities such as climbing, mountaineering, canoeing and dingy sailing. After Ferranti’s lease was up, in 1969 the school became an annexe to Telford College, whose domestic courses were based nearby at the Dean Education Centre, the former Dean Orphanage.

Dean School in the 1960s. Picture from Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh Collected

In May 1984 the school was disposed of on the open market (offers over £100,000) by Lothian Regional Council and was converted into flats in 1986 by James Potter Developments. Eighteen two, three and four-bedroom properties were created which would have cost between £39,000 and £55,000 when completed.

Former Dean Public School in 2025. Comparison of the photo with that further up the page shows how extra floors were cleverly inserted by reducing the window heights significantly from those of the Victorian schoolrooms. Photo by Fiona Coutts, via Britishlistedbuildings.

The previous instalment in this series looked at the Davie Street School(s) in the Southside. The next looks at Gilmore Place Public School.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#April20 #Army #BritishArmy #EdinburghCastle #Gaelic #Leith #May29 #Military

From “Rewards For Good Boys” to “Britain’s most unusual school”: the thread about the Davie Street School(s)

Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.

The fifth chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” looks at Davie Street School; with which I made the mistake of proclaiming “there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about this one” before I had taken a proper look see. Naturally I proved myself completely wrong! And so actually what follows is the quite interesting story of the various schools that have called Davie Street home.

The first school at Davie Street was the Lancasterian School whose foundation stone was laid by the Lord Provost and Magistrates on Monday 12th October 1812. It replaced a temporary home which had been built on the Calton Hill, a “long, low, wood and brick erection“. The school was the work of the Edinburgh Education (Lancasterian School) Society, a charitable institution founded in 1810 by “several respectable Gentlemen…” to address the lack of education for the lower classes of the city by providing it at the “least possible expense of time and money“. It had been determined to use the educational system of Joseph Lancaster, thought it to be both the most economical and the most extensively tested system in practice.

Joseph Lancaster, portrait by John Hazlitt c. 1818 in the National Portrait Gallery, NPG99.

Lancaster’s was a Quaker and early pioneer of education for the masses, his schools being highly unusual at the time in being reward-based and almost entirely lacking in punishments. Like the contemporary Madras System of Dr Andrew Bell (familiar to generations of Leithers as the Dr Bell), the Lancasterian System taught large classes in a single “school room” with one teacher supported by multiple pupil monitors. These were older children who relayed the instructions to the younger and kept an eye on their work. The contemporary engraving below shows the pupil monitors walking amongst the rows of younger children, helping them with their work, with the teacher seated on a podium at the front. On the wall a sign reads “REWARDS FOR GOOD BOYS” and the walls and ceiling are hung with toys such as kites, hoops, racket and shuttlecocks, balls and bats which the children could win.

Contemporary engraving of a Lancasterian School – the Royal Free School on Borough Road. The teacher sits on a podium at the front, the children are arrayed in ranks by age (and ability) and the older Pupil Monitors move amongst the rows, relaying the lesson and checking the work.

Davie Street had two school rooms, boys and girls being taught separately, sufficient to hold 1,000 scholars and was one of the first steps on the route to a free, mass education in the city. For a subsidised fee of just 2s 6d per quarter, children over 6 years old were taught their Reading, Writing and Arithmetic with the only book in use for teaching being the Bible. However with its Quaker roots, the school was non-sectarian and counted amongst its founding directors in Edinburgh both Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Children were taught the Church of Scotland’s approved Catechism by rote but “the Directors, from respect to the rights of private judgement, do not impose it on children whose parents have conscientious objections to it“.

Davie Street showing the Lancasterian School, 1849 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The school was “the achievement of the Whigs and of the pious” and was well supported at the highest levels of Edinburgh and Scottish society, as evidenced by the titles of its presidents and directors in the below newspaper advert. It was not universally popular however and according to “Memorials of His Own Time” by Lord Henry Cockburn it was “cordially hated by all true Tories, who for many years never ceased to sneer at and obstruct it.”

Principal office bearers of the Edinburgh Education (Lancastrian Schools) Society in 1812 as published in the Caledonian Mercury.

A report of the Committee of Council on Education of 1844 noted that the headteacher, Mr Robert Dun, had supplied “at his own expense, a considerable assortment of philosophical apparatus, with which he performs, before his pupils, the more useful and interesting experiments in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy“. Dun was praised as running an institution being representative “of a well conducted monitorial school“.

There is no educational institution in Edinburgh which does a more extended share of substantial good than the Davie Street Lancasterian School, now 25 years established, and none upon which the public spirited and philanthropic can, to better account, bestow their money.

The school at this time was very much a family affair; it had 200 older boys taught by Robert and an assistant plus 100 infant boys by his father, Robert Senior. 250 girls were taught by John and Miss M. Dun – Robert’s siblings. Including evening classes, the total roll was 622 but it was noted that absence could run high, between 10 to 20 percent. The Duns had joined the school in 1826 and remained there for 35 years until Robert resigned in 1861 and received wide praise for their long-term efforts to educate and better the lot of the poorer children of the city.

Mr Dun, of the Edinburgh Davie Street School, decidedly the best Lancasterian teacher I have yet met, has introduced much useful knowledge into his plan; and, if the means were afforded him, would yet do much more.

James Simpson, “Necessity of Popular Education as a National Object”, 1834

A notable alumnus of the Lancasterian School was George McCrae (1860-1928), later Colonel Sir George McCrae DSO DL VD. A self-made man in the textile and drapery trade, McCrae was knighted in 1908 for his services as MP for Edinburgh East. He is best remembered in Scotland for raising and commanding the 16th Battalion, The Royal Scots during World War 1. This unit, better known as McCrae’s Own, was composed of Edinburgh men and its ranks included 16 members of Heart of Midlothian Football Club as well as players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers, East Fife, St. Bernard’s, Falkirk and Dunfermline football clubs. Much of the rest were drawn from the supporters of these clubs.

George McCrae during his time as an MP, by Sir John Benjamin Stone, 1901

At the time of the Duns’ departure the school was proving to be a financial liability for its directors. In that year its expenses were £147 14s 5d but they had raised only £98 9s 7d in subscriptions and fees; outgoings exceeded income by 50%. The Lancasterian School was being kept solvent only by the £900 proceeds of the sale of a bequeathed house. The trustees had therefore been looking to put the institution on a sounder financial footing and in 1857 had proposed to the Governors of the Heriot’s Hospital Trust that it be transferred to their care.

George Heriot’s Hospital (School) in 1966, looking towards the Castle. Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.

The Governors in turn remitted the request to a sub-committee who reported favourably on the idea “when the state of funds admitted to an increase“. In the event it was not until 1874 – with the State’s financial support as a result of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872) – that Heriot’s were able to complete the takeover of Davie Street which was to be converted to one of its Outdoor Schools. These schools, instituted in 1838, were outdoor in the sense that they provided education outwith the walls of Heriot’s Hospital itself. They were run on the Madras System and financed by the surplus of the Heriot Trust to provided a free education for the “children of burgesses and others“: in practice this meant the poor.

In October 1874, temporary accommodation was arranged for the non-paying pupils of Davie Street while their school was to be demolished and replaced with a larger and more modern building for 650 children. The architect of the Heriot Trust, John Chesser, drew up plans for a two storey school in a Jacobean style, richly ornamented with the roses and stars from the coat of arms of George Heriot and mouldings and corner towers directly inspired by the mother Hospital School.

Davie Street school as rebuilt by Heriot’s in 1875

The school reopened on Whitsunday 1875, the tablet on its principal gable now reading George Heriot’s Hospital School. Its first – and only – headmaster was to be Mr John McCrindle who held this position until his retirement in 1905. The infant headmistress was Miss Jane Johnston from 1877 to 1908, she herself having been educated at one of the Trust’s the Outdoor Schools at Heriot Bridge.

An engraved portrait of John McCrindle by the Edinburgh Evenening News upon his retirement, July 18th 1905

In 1879 a tragedy occurred when a pupil, Ellen Bennet, died from burns she had received at the school; on a cold November day she sneaked unsupervised back into her classroom at lunchtime and climbed over the guard of the fire that heated the room to warm herself causing her clothing to catch fire. The following year there were 180 infants and 320 older children on the school roll and “almost all the children… are the boys and girls of parents of the strictly working and artisan classes. They all appeared scrupulously clean and very tidy at the examination“.

Davie Street showing the Heriot’s School, 1876 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The school’s life with the Heriot Trust was to prove short lived. In 1886 the Edinburgh School Board agreed to purchase it for £2,368 16s 8d. The Heriot’s schools at Stockbridge (later St. Bernard’s) and Abbeyhill (later Regent Road) were also acquired at this time, the Trust having decided to dispose of all of its Outdoor Schools and move its remaining day scholars to the Hospital itself. The Trust approved the sale and transfer in January 1887, part of the transfer arrangement being that they would continued to fund the free education of its existing scholars – the School Board charged fees, unlike the Outdoor Schools – any pre-existing arrangements for free education, so long as the beneficiary continued to pass the relevant exam standards.

The Board “were not at all satisfied with the internal arrangement” of Davie Street and so spent a further £2,379 2s 9d on expansion and alterations. Their architect, Robert Wilson, added an additional wing to the south with accommodation an additional 130 pupils, increasing its capacity to 690. By re-using the additional ornamental stonework this addition appears almost seamless, beyond the plainer style of the roof line. Despite the change of administration, the “Heriot’s Hospital” tablet remained on its façade, never being replaced by the School Board’s roundel.

Davie Street showing the School Board’s public school, note the large projection of the new wing to the south. 1893 OS Town Survey of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The peace of Davie Street Public School – as it was now known – was breached in October 1889 when a wave of excitement spread throughout British schools via newspaper reports of an attempt by schoolboys in Cardiff to institute a general strike. Their demands were a half-day Wednesday, no homework, shorter hours and no corporal punishment. The action spread contagiously and by the following afternoon the boys of Davie Street had organised themselves, marching behind a banner (reported to be “a handkerchief nailed to a stick“) to Castlehill and Dalry schools in an effort to instigate risings there too. Their demands – reasonable to modern eyes – were conveyed on a scrap of paper; “strike for short hours and no home lessons and free education for the whole school“. The action rumbled on for a few days more with “strikebreaking” pupils at some schools reporting being hissed at the gates by the holdouts before it petered out. Those who were judged to have been ringleaders found themselves punished for their efforts with the tawse – a short, sharp reminder of how things had changed since the days of the reward-based Lancasterian School.

Headline, Evening Mail, 9th October 1889

Perhaps memories of the brief uprising of 1889 died hard as in October 1913, once again boys from Davie Street marched out of their school in spontaneous protest in an effort to get their compatriots in the district – at Causewayside, South Bridge and St Leonard’s Public Schools – to join them in resisting rumoured (and entirely spurious) plans to force them to attend school on Saturday mornings.

Life was harsh for many of the children in the Old Town and Southside and a particularly extreme case was reported in the Evening News in November 1908 involving children from Davie Street. Philip Lavin of 150 Dumbiedykes Road was sentenced to three months imprisonment at the Sheriff Court for ill-treatment and neglect of his five children, aged six months to 13 years. He had been repeatedly visited and warned of his conduct by the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SSPCC) over the course of five years. Finally, Headmaster R. James Reith wrote to the SSPCC to inform them of bruising on the face of one of Lavin’s daughters which he suspected was the result of assault. Visiting the house again, they found the childrens’ “clothing was scanty and on [their] bed the only covering was an old quilt.” The hungry children had sometimes shared just two rolls between four for their breakfast or five potatoes for their dinner. Lavin earned good money as a painter, 30s a week, but spent it on drink and gave none to his wife, Marion Hewit. She instead had to go out to work for the upkeep of herself and the children and continued to do so when she became ill until collapsing and being sent to the City Fever Hospital suffering from acute consumption (TB). She died less than a year later, on 20th October 1909; her husband however lived until the age of 76.

Boys of Davie Street School in 1910, many barefoot, waiting for tickets for a day trip to Ratho organised by the charitable Courant Fund.

In 1917 the School Board undertook an extensive reorganisation of education in the city to provide additional “supplementary education” – that for children over the age of 12 but who had failed to pass the qualification exams for Higher Grade schools. They recognised there was a demand for specialist commercial and technical education at this stage for children who soon be entering the workplace when they finished their compulsory schooling at the age of 14. It was therefore agreed to establish specialist institutes in the city and Davie Street was selected to become part of one of the city’s first specialised supplementary Technical Schools. In 1918, Davie Street closed without ceremony as a primary school and became an annexe for the nearby James Clark Technical School.

Former James Clark School with its remarkable corner tower.

Initially Davie Street provided rooms for practical subjects such as art, home economics and science while these facilities were constructed at James Clark (which had been planned for elementary education and therefore was not originally built with them). In 1924 it was then taken in hand to be properly modernised (including being converted from gas to electric lighting) and converted into specialist technical workshops for teaching the trades of brassfinishing, tinsmithing, upholstery, plumbing, tailoring and printing. In this guise it provided centralised training in these crafts for the Southside, successful completion of its printing courses could lead to bursaries for a print qualifications at Heriot Watt College and entry into one of the city’s most prized blue collar careers.

An exhibition of work in the printing and allied trades by students of Davie Street in 1957 – a bookbinding for HMS Caledonia is admired.

The specialist technical education at Davie Street was moved from the curriculum of James Clark School to those of Telford and Napier Colleges after 1966, its workshops being run-down and moved to those institutions shortly thereafter. James Clark school itself closed in 1972 as part of the citywide secondary education shake-up required to move to a fully comprehensive system; by this time its roll had declined steeply from an inter-war high of over 1,000 to just 300.

Davie Street School in 1959 from the Dumbiedykes Survey by Adam H. Malcolm © Edinburgh City Libraries L973B

Davie Street sat vacant for a number of years until it started what was to be an altogether very different chapter in its life story. In 1969 it was turned into the Theatre Arts Centre, the brainchild of Edinburgh Corporation’s drama advisor Gerard Slevin. Slevin approached English teacher Leslie Hills, a self-described “newly minted teacher“, to run this project on the basis that she had upset her school establishment by abandoning the old “chalk and talk” methods and using instead the medium of drama to engage and teach her students. On her first visit to Davie Street she found:

The paintwork was ancient; the boiler was coal-fired and the toilets indescribable. I said yes. I was 23.

Leslie Hills, describing her first visit to Davie Street School

On a shoestring budget, the school was converted to its new purpose which involved removal of a large quantity of old printing machinery, outfitting the hall as a drama studio and cleaning the toilets as best as could be done. With a drama teacher, art teacher and music teacher under Leslie, by the autumn of that year the centre was open for business: “It was an extraordinary position to be in. No-one knew what we should be doing, so we made it all up.”

Edinburgh Corporation’s Theatre Arts Centre sign (Art was a spelling mistake), rescued from Davie Street when it was replaced by a sign for Lothian Regional Council in 1975. Picture kindly provided by Leslie Hills.

The first pupils to attend came from the city’s Junior Secondary schools, those destined to be replaced by Comprehensives in the coming years. “Many came from difficult backgrounds, some from the surrounding housing soon to be flattened, where water was obtained from a tap in the yard. Many were underfed, ill-clothed for Edinburgh’s winters and, leaving school at 15, just too wee to be sent, bewildered, out to scrapyards and tyre depots with a bit of paper on which was written an address in a part of town of which they had no knowledge.“

Slum housing in Edinburgh, 1969. Marshall’s Court, Greenside, . S. G. Jackman photo, Edinburgh City Libraries, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection.

Up to 500 secondary-age children a week came through the doors of the Theatre Arts Centre from across the city, including from “List D” reformatory schools, those pushed to the very extremes of the education system. Leslie Hills takes up the story:

I talked to every class on their first day, explaining that we did not use the belt – still in use in schools – and that the rules were behave yourself and no graffiti – except in the toilets into which they were allowed to take felt-tipped pens which were in plentiful supply. The boys’ toilet became a wonder to behold – absolutely covered in intricate designs. I never worked out how they did the ceilings. The rest of the building remained pristine.

With its radical approach to learning through the mediums of drama, art and music, the laid back approach to uniform, lesson structure and timetabling and the lack of corporal punishment, the “school-in-a-theatre” was dubbed “Britain’s most unusual school” by the Daily Record. It was a fitting coincidence that Davie Street School had unwittingly been returned to its roots of education without punishment.

Drama teacher David Prince is “attacked” by his pupils at the Theatre Arts Centre in an exercise learning about the value of movement in drama. Daily Record, 2nd December 1970

The initial success of the Theatre Arts Centre gamble allowed the facilities and services on offer to be improved. Finding out from the Corporation’s painters that they didn’t need to follow the official schools’ colour palette of mushroom and cream, re-painting made use of colour. One room was colour drenched in pale green and fitted with an epidiascope and light box for projecting and copying designs for poster; An in-house theatre company – Theatre in Education – was set up who undertook outreach visits to city schools; A technician and a van was acquired to run a stage equipment lending library; The curriculum was widened to include photography, printing and film; Evening drama clubs for teenagers were run and later, Edinburgh Youth Theatre found a home here and it was a regular performance venue during the annual Festival Fringe.

The reorganisation of local authorities in 1975, the Centre became part of Lothian Regional Council and the geographical remit expanded accordingly. Leslie Hills departed in 1980. Ten years later it survived a threat to its continued existence at Davie Street when the site was short-listed as a potential location for a new medical centre for the district. It was announced in 1993 that a central arts school for Lothian Region would be created in the former Leith Academy building on Duke Street, which would have seen Davie Street closed and relocated there. This plan never came to fruition, likely as the result of Lothian Region losing control of its further education colleges later that year. Having survived these threats, it was the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994 – which abolished Lothian Regional Council in 1996 – that did for the Centre. It was closed by the new, unitary City of Edinburgh Council in 1997 when the Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth, refused to provide sufficient funding to the newly established councils. Dr Bell’s Drama Centre, the primary-age equivalent of the Theatre Arts Centre was closed at the same time. A “cheery wake in the rather battered studio” was held by staff past and present to celebrate its 28 year life, which also marked the end of 185 years of continuous educational use of the site.

Over the next three years the Council sought to dispose of the old school and it saw only intermittent use as a Fringe location. It was finally sold for redevelopment in 2000 and was converted into flats, a change which at the very least preserved its fine Jacobean-style masonry for the future.

Davie Street School in 2021, estate agent’s photo from the sale of one of its flats

The previous chapter in this series looked at Causewayside School. The following chapter covers Dean Public School.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The previous chapter of this series looked at Causewayside School.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#April20 #Army #BritishArmy #EdinburghCastle #Gaelic #Leith #May29 #Military

Mount Alvernia: the thread about the “Princesses of Poverty” would not leave Liberton in life or in death

Every so often houses come up in Liberton on the Edinburgh property listings for a charming-sounding place called Mount Alvernia. You don’t have to look twice to guess that this development has been converted from some sort of past ecclesiastical use. And you’d be right, it was once a monastery. But it had no monks: it was home instead to a community of nuns. Perhaps more unusually, two times the authorities of the Catholic Church tried to use legal methods to displace these “Princesses of Poverty“. And twice they failed!

Estate agent’s photo of a nice-looking housing development in Liberton, which quite obviously appears to have been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.

This monastery was opened in August 1897 by nuns of the Poor Clares (Colletines), a branch of the Order of Saint Clare. This order takes its name from St Clare of Assisi who founded it for women who gave up their worldly possessions to devote themselves to the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi. Mount Alvernia itself is in Sicily and its name is associated with the Franciscan order.

St Francis and St Clare, inside cover plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

Six Poor Clares had come to Edinburgh in July 1895 to found a new house north of the Border. They had traveled from Baddesley Clinton in the West Midlands, where their order had established itself in England in 1850 for the first time since that country’s reformation. Two acres of ground at Liberton was acquired for their purpose, adjacent to Mount Vernon House which had recently been occupied by nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart as a Home for Penitents and where a Roman Catholic Cemetery had been established. It was noted at the time that this site was particularly suitable owing to its proximity to the ancient estate of the Convent of St. Catherine of Sienna.

Ordnance Survey 1:25 inch map, 1914, of Edinburgh, centred on Mount Alvernia at Liberton

These Poor Clares were a closed, contemplative order who took solemn vows to lived a life of poverty. They fasted frequently and rejected the wearing of shoes. They observed continual silence and did not leave their cloister. They devoted themselves entirely to the worship of God and prayer for all people, particularly the suffering and needy. The rules of their house prohibited them being supported by endowments and instead they lived entirely upon charity. To facilitate communication between the Intern Sisters – those within the cloister – and the outside world there were a small number of Extern Sisters, who lived in quarters adjacent and to which they were not restricted. The Externs helped support the community through the baking of communion bread (St Clare and her order have a particular association with blessed loaves), producing handmade religious scrolls and through practical tasks such as marketing eggs and undertaking secretarial services.

The foundation stone of the monastery was laid by Archbishop Angus Macdonald of St Andrews and Edinburgh on 19th May 1896. The buildings were in a Collegiate Gothic style to the designs of A. E. Purdie, a London Architect, and it was built from local Craigmillar Stone faced with Dunfermline Stone.

Artist’s impression of the Monastery at Mount Alvernia from the Edinburgh Evening News, 15th May 1896

In a Presbyterian city, whose Catholic minority was notably poor, the nuns struggled to attract alms and the first 20 years of their existence saw a considerable debt being acquired. £1,384 was raised in time for their Silver Jubilee in 1920 to clear it. The money had been entirely collected by two local men, Bernard Flannagan and a Mr Higgins. However just 5 years later the community was in distress once more and the Glasgow Observer and Catholic Herald carried an urgent appeal for help, “their distress was never more pronounced“. Once more, Bernard Flannagan acted as collector on their behalf.

For 33 years, Mount Alvernia‘s resident chaplain was Rev. Father Patrick McMahon (1863-1945) and his golden jubilee of service was celebrated there in March 1938. But all was not well behind the closed doors of the cloister and an irreconcilable schism, brewing since 1934, had arisen between the five Extern Sisters (Sister Margaret Mary Clare – Agnes Burns; Sister Marie Colette Theresa – Laura Elizabeth Harrison; Sister Mary Clare – Edith Harris; Sister Mary Theresa – Catherine Morgan; and Sister Mary Joseph – Susan Higgins) and the 17 Interns, which included the Abbess and the Vicaress. The Externs Sisters refused to submit to the authority of the Abbess and had chosen Sister Mary Clare as leader, from their own ranks. The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Andrew McDonald, was unable to resolve the situation and took the drastic action of closing the monastery and dispersing the sisters to other houses.

Archbishop Mcdonald in 1920, when Abbot of St Benedict’s Abbey at Fort Augustus; By William Drummond Young. CC-by-SA 4.0, Blairs Museum via Wikimedia

The Diocese served notice for the community to leave in April 1938. The Intern Sisters left a week later but the Externs refused to go. The Church then had a Sheriff’s writ served evicting them from their home and cut off their electricity and gas. They were banished from their order and excommunicated. Sister Mary Clare, leader of the Externs, told the Evening News that they had been served a letter by the Church’s law agent informing them of their expulsion and stating they were no longer entitled to wear their habits. They were to return these on or before the 28th April in exchange for the sum of £10 towards replacement clothing and a pension of £1 10s per week, for just 13 weeks, to help them establish themselves in civilian life.

St Clare repelling the Saracens, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

Despite threats from the Church to withdraw even this pitiful pension the Extern Sisters remained defiant; they had made their vows and the Priest had commanded their Abbess” Receive this new spouse of Christ, keep her and guard her pure and spotless until you present her at the judgement seat of God. To Him you will have to give an account of her soul“. In short, their vows were sacred and perpetual and to leave the Monastery to return to civilian life would be breaking them. “Rome, and Rome alone, we must obey“, Sister Mary Clare told the Evening News, “Here we will live and here we will die.” The Externs intended to challenge their eviction and “trusted an answer would come from God“.

Fresco of Saint Clare and nuns of her order praying, Chapel of San Damiano, Assisi

That answer came in the form of their supporters whose number included the lawyer Doull Connolly, who acted for them and organised a defence at the Sheriff Court. A sympathetic cardinal Cardinal was written to, asking him to make an appeal to the Pope on their behalf. The Archbishop of Glasgow decided the Externs were not excommunicated in his jurisdiction and gave them the sacraments, for which transport was arranged thrice weekly. Even the local coalman slipped them a couple of bags every fortnight. While the dispute split opinion amongst Scotland’s Catholics, in Edinburgh it aroused considerable curiosity; numerous sightseers took a trip to Liberton to see Mount Alvernia for themselves, to bring gifts and to offer their support to the nuns within through the grille of the Monsastery’s doorway.

The case went to the Sheriff Court where T. J. D. Connolly acted as defence advocate. On July 5th Sheriff Substitute James Macdonald KC ruled in favour of the Extern sisters, who told the Daily Record that they hoped to be left in peace, but the Church appealed.

SUMMARY EJECTION NOT ALLOWED. Evening News headline, 6th July 1938

That appeal was heard in the Court of Session the next year. Connolly told that court the case, with 2 churchmen and 2 nuns as pursuers and 5nuns as defenders, was “unique” in its annals. On June 14th Lord Robertson held the defence was irrelevant and granted a decree for the Nuns removal.

EDINBURGH EXTERN NUNS MUST REMOVE. Evening News headline, 14th June 1939

The nuns appealed in turn and in March 1940 – on the same day that the Evening News reported 2 German bombers had been shot down in the North Sea – it also reported the case had been concluded in their favour and Lord Robertson’s decision was overturned.

LIBERTON NUNS WIN APPEAL. Evening News headline, 29th March 1940

The Externs could finally live on in piece, and alone, at Mount Alvernia. This they continued to do for over a decade until the early 1950s when a determined effort was made by Archbishop McDonald’s successor, Archbishop Gordon Gray, to heal the rift and re-open the Monastery to Interns. Two of the Extern holdouts were amongst the first Interns of the re-established Monastery, the other three agreeing to move to new homes in England at this time.

Portrait Of Cardinal Gordon Gray (1910 – 1993), Former Archbishop of St Andrews And Edinburgh

The re-established Poor Clares got on with their holy lives in peace and harmony until the decision was taken by the Abbess Mother Frances to close the monastery in 1992. Their ranks had dwindled from 22 to 13 and those who remained were of advancing age and unable to support themselves. A final Mass was given by Bishop Kevin Rafferty on 28th August. Their community was dispersed to other houses of the order, but left behind the bodies of the 24 nuns who had died during their lives at Mount Alvernia and who had been laid to rest in its burial ground.

The Funeral Procession of St Clare, plate from “Princesses of Poverty: Saint Clare of Assisi and the Order of Poor Ladies” by Father Marianus Fiege, 1900

The premises were sold for £200k to the “Pastoral and Social Charity Ltd”, whose board was bishops and archbishops of the Scottish RC Church. They provoked outrage in 1994 when they proposed disinterring the 24 nuns laid to rest at Mount Alvernia and moving them to nearby Mount Vernon cemetery

Contemporary newspaper photo of the Mount Alvernia burial ground. Edinburgh Evening News, 23rd September 1994

The removal of the nuns’ remains was to prepare the site for sale to developers – they contented that future developers would be at liberty to remove headstones or cover the grave plots. But when the petition for the warrant to disinter came before the Sheriff Court, the District Council objected and were ordered to advertise it in the press to try and trace any relatives of the nuns (which was something in which the Pastoral and Social Charity had failed in its attempts).

Legal Notice inserted in the Scotsman, 15th March 1994, of the petition to disinter the nuns buried at Mount Alvernia

Of the nuns in question were Mother Mary Joseph (Susan Higgins) and Sister Mary Clare (Edith Harris) – who were the 2 Extern sisters who had been involved in the 1930s court battle and had become Interns when the house was re-established. Relatives were duly identified, including Sister Mary Clare’s great niece, and they appealed against the petition. Their objection noted the findings of the Court of Session in 1940 that when a woman joined the order, she bound herself “to live her whole life in the convent, thereafter being laid to rest within the convent grounds“.

Richard Carson, the Director of Environmental Services for the District Council submitted that four of five of the bodies in question would be in “horrific condition” due to having been buried relatively recently, the last in 1991, and stated that the District Council was willing to take on stewardship of the burial ground as it had done for other sites in the city. After hearing from both sides, the Sheriff Peter McNeill QC threw the Church’s petition out on the grounds insufficient evidence had been provided that the sale of the site was contingent on the burial ground being cleared. He ruled that “the remains were sacred” and could only be moved if a pressing reason could be proven. Veronica Harris told the Evening News “It’s a sign of the greed of this century that people can dispose of the remains just to make a fast buck” and that it was a “great relief” that the disinterment would not go ahead.

Mount Alvernia in 1998, after six years of closure, neglect and vandalism having taken its toll.

In 1998 planning permission was granted by the District Council to AMA (New Town) Ltd to redevelop Mount Alvernia for housing on condition the burial ground be walled off and maintained. The ever tasteful Daily Record reported this under the headline “Tomb With a View”.

Mount Alvernia, viewed from the burial ground, with the modern flats on the right, chapel on the left and range of the monastery between.

“Rest in Peace. But be Quick About it. Hallowed ground now bears a sell-by date and the grave is not necessarily forever.”

Annette McCann, Scotland on Sunday, 29th January 1995

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

#Catholic #Church #Court #Edinburgh #Liberton #Monastery #Nuns #Written2025

The thread about the Salisbury Arms and the famous literary association that never was https://threadinburgh.scot/2025/06/27/the-thread-about-belleville-house-and-how-the-famous-literary-association-that-never-was/ #ConanDoyle, #House, #Newington, #Pub, #Pubs, #Southside, #Usher, #Written2025