#causewayside — Public Fediverse posts

Causewayside Public School: the thread about the epicentre of a very sectarian Southside scandal

Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) have for some reason a particular fascination for me, one which is more profound where they 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 each of the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but rapidly snowballed into an intention to cover each, in alphabetical order, on its own and in rather more detail, but not so much that they can’t be posted quite frequently.

The fourth chapter of our series looking at the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” investigates Causewayside School. In 1875 Edinburgh School Board purchased the house of Grange Villa at 140 Causewayside for £3,218 13s 11d with the intention of erecting a new school. This half acre plot was a parallelogram in shape on account of its northern boundary being defined by an old drainage ditch that cut diagonally relative to the main road. Prior to this, schooling in the district was conducted at a school run by the United Presbyterian Church on Duncan Street, which moved with that church to the corner of Salisbury Place in 1864.

An overlay of the 1876 Ordnance Survey town plan of Edinburgh (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) and modern Google Earth aerial imagery showing the location of Causewayside School. Note the parallelogram shape of the building plot. The UP Church can be seen to the top of the map, its school building to the rear being marked as a Sunday School. Move the slider to compare

The Board had already held a competition in 1874 to find architects for its first batch of new schools and divided the work between the most successful applicants. Causewayside was awarded to Robert Rowand Anderson, who would rise to become one of Victorian Scotland’s most notable architects. He was also awarded the work for schools at West Fountainbridge and Stockbridge and the three shared a number of design and style features (“the dimensions of the various rooms repeat to within a few inches… and the ventilating and playground arrangements are also precisely similar“) but with significant variation in the layouts to make use of three very different sites, all of which had significant constraints.

Front elevation by Robert Rowand Anderson of the Causewayside School, dated 1875. University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, Coll-31/2/EC.74

Anderson set Causewayside back from the main road and spread it across two storeys, each with a large central school room with two smaller classrooms on either side at the rear, giving a roughly cruciform footprint. There was a single large gable projecting forwards whereas at Stockbridge (below) there was one on each flank. His early work designing churches translated easily to the Collegiate Gothic style much in favour at the time for schools except now the “steeples” did not contain bells, but hid an Archimedes screw ventilator to promote good air circulation through the buildings.

Stockbridge Primary School by Robert Rowand Anderson, sharing many design features with Causewayside. CC-by-SA 4.0, Drnoble via Wikimedia

The construction contract was worth £7,974 11s 0d and work commenced in late June 1875. Progress by January 1876 was reported as “slow” but by June was “well advanced“. Although it was to be completed for 1st December that year opening did not happen until 9th January 1877. The chairman of the School Board, Professor Calderwood, performed the honours and at this time already 500 of its 600 spaces had been subscribed to.

Rear (left) and north side (right) elevations of Causewayside School, dated 1875. The pair of blocks to the back housed stairs, toilets and offices on intermediate floors, hence the extra sets of windows. University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, Coll-31/2/EC.74

An inspection in its second year of operation reported favourably on the quality of teaching at the school:

Report of HM Inspectors on the Edinburgh Board Schools for Session 1878-79.

Causewayside School.

Mixed School. — An extremely good tone pervaded this School, and the class movements were very orderly. As regards the work of the three lower Standards, some weakness appeared in the spelling and intelligence of the third Standard, but everything else was most satisfactory. Of the upper Standards, the fourth might have done rather better in arithmetic, and the fifth in composition, while both the fifth and sixth Standards answered unequally in history and geography. On the other hand, for grammar, general intelligence, and acquaintance with their specific subjects, all three Standards deserve praise. In judging of the School, it must, of course, be remembered that the staff is strong. Needlework and music are both carefully taught.

Infants’ School. — Discipline and instruction in this Department both deserve the highest praise. It is evident that the Mistress and her Staff exercise a most beneficial influence alike in quickening the intelligence and in regulating the behaviour of their young pupils.

A subsequent inspection in February 1885 by the local Superintendent, Colonel Campbell, “complained strongly” about the drawing examination at the school; the children were using their pencils as a measuring gauge when doing freehand work and that they were placing lined pages beneath their drawing paper as a further guide. The teacher protested that this was how she had been taught to draw but the Colonel demanded that the exam be cancelled: the matter was not dropped until representations in defence from both the Headmaster and Flora Stevenson of the School Board.

Flora Stevenson, a redoubtable figure on the Edinburgh School Board and in the Suffrage movement. 1895 photograph by G. Watson, from the Edinburgh & Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.

In common with the first wave of schools that the Board built, Causewayside was really too small to cope with demand and already by October 1878 it was over capacity, with 638 pupils. By 1883 it was so oversubscribed that an extension for 200 further children was authorised, widening the front of the building to the same width as the rear to add additional classrooms. In 1894 a further extension was approved but by the following year there were 250 vacant spaces on account of the recent opening in the district of Sciennes School. By 1901 the school was once again reported to be suffering form overcrowding – this was still a time of urban population growth.

1893 Ordnance Survey town plan centred on Causewayside School, with the original footprint (orange) drawn over the extended footprint which added additional classrooms either side at the front. The wall across the playground was to separate girls from boys, the structures with dotted outlines on the left (west) side being open play sheds. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Located as it was between the Grange and Newington, you could be forgiven for thinking this school as being in a middle-class catchment. However, like most Board schools at this time, it drew its intake largely from the working classes and its pupils were subject to a life in the harsh social environment of Edinburgh at this time. In a court case in February 1884 Helen Dick, or Taylor, was brought before Sheriff Rutherfurd and charged with “failing to provide elementary education for her children and also with failing to secure their regular attendance at school“. She told the court that “she could not do more than she had done” for her two children – Jessie (10) and George (8) – her husband had abandoned the family 6 years prior and to support them she worked anti-social hours at a laundry. She had to leave early in the morning and was not allowed to return home to wake her children and get them ready for school, so they inevitably did not go. The Sheriff ordered that they be made to go to school at Causewayside. Another example comes from an 1896 meeting of the School Board which heard that of the 722 children at the school only 21 had baths in their homes. 71 boys and six girls reported that they went – occasionally – to the Corporation baths to wash. In 1901, it was estimated in 1901 that 15 percent of the juvenile department of the school were working after their school day to help support their families.

Causewayside children, 1927, at Grange Court. The tall building with the Gothic window in the background is the UP Church where the Causewayside School was located prior to the opening of the Board school. Photograph by John Smith, via Edinburgh City Libraries.

In 1905 the headmaster, Robert Mathewson, retired owing to ill health after 20 years in service. He was briefly replaced by James Clark, promoted from St Leonard’s Public School, who soon returned to the latter institution as its head to be replaced in turn by Thomas W. Paterson of North Canongate. Paterson had begun his career in 1879 at Causewayside and remained there until retiring in 1922 after 51 years in the profession, the pupils and parents presenting him with the gift of a typewriter for the occasion.

On October 1st 1913, pupils from Causewayside joined their compatriots from Davie Street, St Leonard’s and South Bridge in a spontaneous protest march through the district, a rumour having spread through the streets that they were to begin attending school on Saturday Mornings.

Evening schooling began at Causewayside only a month after it opened, when the Edinburgh School of Cookery was allowed by the School Board to run courses here which were open to the general public. This became known as Continuation Schooling; continuation of education for those who had left school (at 14) but had not qualified for a Higher Grade school (or could not afford to go to one). Causewayside became the principal such school for young women and girls in the city, offering both basic academic subjects and practical classes focussing on employable skills – cookery, millinery, laundrywork, dressmaking and needlework. While these classes were not free, in 1915 a term cost 5 shillings, an excellent attendance record could result in the fees being reimbursed. Completion of these classes could qualify women for the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, where employers provided bursaries. In 1915, 177 pupils earned the return of their fees and forty qualified for the School of Cookery. Headmaster Paterson of Causewayside wrote to the editor of the Scotsman in 1917 that continuation classes were “to the better equipment for life’s battle for those children who leave school at 14 years of age without passing the qualifying examination.”

Advert for Edinburgh School Board’s Continuation Classes, including Causewayside, Musselburgh News, 21st September 1906

An almighty brouhaha erupted at Causewayside in 1925 when the Education Authority announced plans to close the school, transfer its pupils to other nearby schools, and re-open it as a Roman Catholic school. The background is complex but stemmed from the fact that R. C. schooling in Scotland was not transferred from that church to the state until 1918 at which point the newly formed Education Authorities inherited a rather poor portfolio of school premises. Few, if any, of these had been purpose-built and almost none were really fit for purpose; St. Columba’s R. C. School, which served the Southside, was teaching 291 children (with a waiting list of 27) in a totally inadequate converted town house at 81 Newington Road. Causewayside’s school roll had slumped after WW1 due to urban depopulation and with only 321 children at less than half its capacity. The authority’s bean-counters were convinced that Sciennes, Preston Street and Bristo schools could comfortably accommodate Causewayside as they too had falling rolls and that nobody would have a problem with making the most economical use of their buildings.

81 Newington Road, former St Columba’s R. C. School.

How wrong they were! Edinburgh, in case you didn’t know, was a hot-bed of radical, anti-Catholic political Protestantism in the first half of the 20th century and the nascent Scottish Protestant League, led by the rabble-rouser Alexander Ratcliffe, went all in on trying to use the school proposal as a wedge issue in their efforts to repeal the provisions of the Education (Scotland) Act 1918 that saw the state obliged to provide non-secular R. C. schooling. You can read the full details of the vitriolic campaign that they orchestrated to oppose this change in the thread about the Sciennes School Strike of 1925. Suffice to say, the Education Authority was unmoved by the accusations it was handing over a “Protestant school to the Roman Catholics” and “putting Rome on the Rates” in “the city of Knox“. It maintained its position that it had a legal obligation to meet and that its only other option was to build a new school in its entirety – which would add even further to the tax burden of the local rates! And so it was that Causewayside School closed at the end of the 1923-24 term and re-opened after the summer holidays as St Columba’s R. C. School.

Pupils and teacher nun of St. Columba’s R. C. School in 1925, the year after they moved – controversially – to Causewayside. Copy of photograph in “St Columba’s Edinburgh, Centenary Year” by Mark Dilworth OSB for St Columba’s Centenary Committee, 1989

The Continuation School was unaffected by all this, a matter quietly and conveniently overlooked by those claiming the school was being “given” to the Catholic Church! The Scottish Protestant League were still publicly and vocally agitating against St Columba’s, well into 1925 – until the focus of their ire was drawn to the opening of a Carmelite Convent in Merchiston in September.

As St. Columba’s the school also became a Supplementary School, i.e. for children over the elementary age of 11 and below the leave age of 14 and who were not in High School education; what we might now call a Secondary School. It took children from other R. C. primaries in the city; St Mary’s on York Lane, St Patrick’s on St John’s Hill, St Ann’s in the Cowgate, St Peter’s in Morningside and St Ignatius’ at Tollcross, adding 300 students and 9 teachers to the school. This brought the school to over 600 pupils, but the effects of depopulation soon began to take their toll and by 1938 it had dropped to 409. There were only 190 children in the elementary department and so the following year it was closed, the pupils displaced to those other R. C. schools, and the girls’ supplementary department transferred to St Thomas of Aquin’s at Lauriston. St Columba’s was to be converted and expanded into a dedicated junior secondary school for boys aged 12 to 14 and the Education Committee authorised expenditure for this scheme. This coincided with the outbreak of WW2 and so no work ever took place. Evacuation caused a further drop in the remaining school roll, part of the school was requisitioned by the Auxiliary Fire Service and the remainder suffered from a lack of coal which caused the heating to stop working, pipes and toilets to freeze and then flooding when they thawed. In February 1940 the authorities called it quits and the remaining 150 boys were sent to other schools and it was closed permanently.

This was not the end for the building though and it was given a new lease of life by converting it into an emergency cooking centre, the work undertaken by John Kelly & Son (Kitchen Engineers) Ltd of Rose Street. What became “the largest kitchen in Edinburgh“, capable of cooking 10,000 meals at a time, was intended to help feed the populace in the event of a catastrophic air raid. Fortunately it was never required for this purpose and so was transferred to the Education Committee in 1942 as a central kitchen for producing school meals. Together with the existing centre at the former West Fountainbridge School, together they could produce 9,000 two course lunches daily, sufficient for every child in the city who wanted one. Its official opening took place on Friday 11th September, when Thomas Johnston MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, made a speech imploring the nation to double its consumption of home-grown oatmeal and potatoes. He also announced that school cookery classes would now focus on these ingredients and local and national schools competitions for their use.

Thomas Johnston in 1955 when chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, by Sir Herbert James Gunn. © artist’s estate, via National Galleries Scotland.

Closure of the Causewayside centre was proposed in 1952, both as an economy measure and also reflecting the fact that most schools now had their own kitchen facilities. Newspaper adverts from 1955 record the disposal of its cooking equipment to the highest bidders.

Adverts for staff at the Causewayside Cooking Centre. Edinburgh Evening News, 25th May 1943

After this it lay vacant for a decade until in 1965 the newly formed Scottish Certificate of Education Examination Board (SCEEB) acquired and demolished it as a location for its new headquarters. A modern, three storey, brutalist office block by Alan Reiach & Eric Hall was built in its place, the only notable feature of an otherwise unremarkable building being an abstract concrete panel over the entrance by Charles Anderson. This includes the crest of the Board and their motto In Trutina Ponentur Eadem which, according to the Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, translates from Latin as “These Matters are to be Weighed in the Balance“. The SCEEB moved in during 1967 but lasted less than a decade, moving in 1975 to Dalkeith on account of needing more space. They were replaced in turn by the Scottish Law Commission but their coat of arms remained, the motto perhaps equally appropriate for both institutions.

Anderson’s relief above the entrance to the SCEEB building

No trace of the old school now remains and as of the time of writing (February 2026) the redevelopment in turn has been empty for a number of years and a full planning application for its demolition and replacement has been submitted to the Council. A previous plan for the site in 2023 was asked to consider the re-use of the sculptured panel but I the current developer has offered it as a gift to the Scottish Qualifications Authority – SQA, the spiritual successor of the SCEEB at Dalkeith. Thank you to Peter Gillett for this update on their future. The SQA of course now needs to follow through in accepting the gift and having it removed and appropriately relocated…

The previous chapter of this series looked at Castlehill School. The next chapter examines the Davie Street Schools.

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The thread about the Tenth Day of Christmas; Lord Russell Place and why the City honoured this name

This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.

This part in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread is preceded by a post about Lady Fife’s House, Well and Brae.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Lord Russell. Why did I pick Lord Russell? Well, despite Edinburgh being the place to be for landed Lords for many a century, and despite there being an infinite number of streets named after the Lord of this or that, there’s actually only a single street address in the city that actually has the word “Lord” in it. That is Lord Russell Place in Sciennes.

Lord Russell Place

Lord Russell refers to John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792-1878) who was British Prime Minister from 1846-52 and again from 1865-66. Russell was English but attended Edinburgh University between 1809-1812 (although he never graduated, being frequently in ill health).

Lord John Russell in 1861

In 1830, he was made the Paymaster of the Forces in the government of the Earl Grey. In this position he became a principal leader of the Great Reform Act of 1832. The building was named for Russell when it was built in 1833 as a mark of respect for this. He was not the only politician so commemorated by the city for this reason; Earl Grey, had a section of Lothian Road named for him as Earl Grey Street. Somewhat ironically, this was renamed from Wellington Street and it was the Duke of Wellington himself, hero of Waterloo, who had lead the opposition to the Reform Act. In 1834, Earl Grey was made a Free Burgess of the City and was treated to a celebratory dinner in a pavilion constructed the grounds of the High School. A similar honour was given to Lord Russell in 1845.

An 1831 cartoon of Russell as the man to treat the country’s ills. The men in the background are Tory MPs for “rotten boroughs”, requiring to be purged by Russell. “Grey’s Renovating Pills” in the tin between his legs refers to Prime Minister Earl Grey.

Notice that I’ve referred to Lord Russell Place as a “street address”; it is not a street in itself. Rather, it’s an example of the traditional Edinburgh practice of giving rows or blocks of buildings along the principal streets different addresses from the actual street (there’s a whole thread about that practice here if you are interested). Lord Russell Place forms only a short section on one side of Causewayside, with the block opposite being Summerhall Place. It was initially built as just the single building at the head of a gushet* of land where Causewayside met the ancient route from St. Giles Cathedral to the convent of St. Catherine of Sienna at Sciennes (* = Gushet, a Scots term for a triangular portion of land). This land is shown as being owned by a Mr Moodie in a town plan of 1817 and the building was expanded in 1859 in a similar style to complete a row as far as Sciennes Place.

Lord Russell Place highlighted on the 1893 OS Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Lord Russell Place would be an otherwise unremarkable Georgian block in a city of Georgian blocks, but its distinctive feature is the rounded bow window, appearing rather like a tower, on its northern façade. It is marred somewhat these days by the false windows – which were included to maintain a classical symmetry – in 2 of the 5 bays having lost their paint. The block was listed Category B in 1970.

The Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread continues in Portobello, with a post about Pipe Street.

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The thread about the Sixth Day of Christmas; the geese of the Guse Dub

This post in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas is preceded by a thread about “Fiveways” and Goldenacre.

On the six day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; the Guse Dub (a laying), where Guse is the old Scots word for a Goose (see also the Guse Pye or Goose Pie house), and the Dub refers to a pond and spring where geese or ducks were once kept. Guse Dub was a common Scots term for a farm or village duck pond. If you are interested in golf, you may know it as a the name of the 14th hole of the Prestwick course, which at one time was alongside an old pond.

The Guse Dub reproduction historic place name sign CC-by-NC Leo Reynolds

But in the context of Edinburgh, this place name has long been applied to a little gushet* of the Southside, where the Crosscauseway meets Causewayside (* = Gushet is the Scots term for a triangular portion of land). The dub itself, described as “rather an unsavoury pond” was sold by the city in 1681 to one John Gairns, who built a house hear called Gairnshall and is first directly referred to in 1698 when the then proprietor of the house and land wanted to be freed from his feudal obligation of watching and warding (i.e. enforcing the law) of the district.

Kincaid’s town plan of 1784, showing the location of the Guse Dub in the triangle of land at the western end of Crosscauseway, where it meets Causewayside, now Buccleuch Street. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The pond itself was recognised as a health hazard and drained around 1715 (in connection with the draining of the nearby Boroughloch for the same reasons) and turned into gardens. It originally drained naturally east, towards St. Leonards, and then down through Holyrood Park towards the Canongate, where it joined the East Foul Burn.

“Cross Causeway and Buccleuch Church, Edinburgh”, William Smeall, c. 1820s. The artist is looking up Chapel Street, the Guse Dub is on the right, behind the wooden shack and barrel. Museums & Galleries Edinburgh – City of Edinburgh Council

A house of this name once stood here, on 2 acres of ground, which was also known as the Yardhall. In 1786, an avert in the Caledonian Mercury lists a shop and house for sale in this area, described as being “on part of the lands of Goosedub and Yardhall, lying on the east side of the street, leading from Bristo Street and Chapel of Ease to the Sciennes”. In 1788, there is an insurance record for Peter Stewart, described as a baker in the “Goose Dub, near Edinburgh“. From 1805, William Brown, blacksmith, is listed as resident here in the city’s postal directory. He is joined in 1809 by James Reid, a grocer. In 1815, a Mr McCrea, resident in the Goose Dub, subscribed one pound to the city’s Waterloo Patriotic Fund. Brown is still listed under Goose Dub in 1822, at which point the place name disappears from the directories.

Looking towards the Guse Dub along West Crosscauseway, an 1830 sketch by Walter Geikie. © Edinburgh City Libraries

Walter Scott refers to the place in his Waverley Novels, where a Scot in London attempts to argue that Edinburgh is indeed a riverine city:

“The Thames!” exclaimed Richie, in a tone of ineffable contempt- “God bless your honour’s judgement, we have at Edinburgh the Water-of-Leith and the Nor-loch!”
“And the Pow-Burn, and the Quarry-holes, and the Guse-dub, fause loon!” answered Master George, speaking Scotch with such a strong and natural emphasis.

The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822

Since the pond was drained, the Guse Dub has been a bit of a neglected wedge of open space that can’t seem to find a purpose. For many years it was the site of a drinking fountain and horse trough, but since the city turned itself over to motorcars it has been little more than a forlorn tarmac island-cum-carpark. The Causey Development Trust have been trying for a long time to improve this situation, they’ve more on their project and the history of the Guse Dub here;

The Guse Dub in 1912, a photograph by J. C. McKenzie of the Edinburgh Photographic Society. A horse drinks from the trough in its centre. © Edinburgh City Libraries

It is probable that Scott’s decision to list it that kept the place name in the popular imagination after this, and left a well known record of it that was rehabilitated in more recent times when the traditional place name signs were put around the city.

Goose, Patrizio Belcampo. © the artist. Image credit: NHS Lothian Charity – Tonic Collection

The Edinburgh and Leith Twelve Days of Christmas thread continues with a post about Swanston and the Swan Spring.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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The thread about the First Day of Christmas; an Edinburgh Pear Tree connection

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

Because of the time of year, let’s do a “Twelve Days of Christmas“-themed thread based around some Edinburgh and Leith local history. Do you remember the tune and the words? Altogether now! And a 1, and a 2, and a 1, 2, 3!

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a Partridge in The Pear Tree House. Better known to most these days as the as The Pear Tree pub and beer garden on West Nicolson Street. It’s an early Georgian 2-storey merchant’s house, built in 1756 for William Reid as his residence as West Nicolson House. There is a date stone of 1749 embedded in its walls, but apparently this is a later, anachronistic addition.

The Pear Tree House and its popular beer garden

Lady Nicolson, Elizabeth Carnegie, moved here after 1762 when she allowed her own house and parklands to be feud and cleared to make way for Nicolson Street and Square (which took her family name). The Nicolson Baronets had owned the land here since the early 16th century, the title becoming dormant in 1743 on the death of Elizabeth’s husband, the 7th Baronet.

RHP5587 Plan of part of Lady Nicolson’s Park, Edinburgh 1762 © Crown copyright

The building is typical of the Edinburgh style from the time, with a gable end and chimney on the façade. It is faced with rubble but would likely have been harled. Part of the fueing conditions were that the front courtyard be enclosed and used only for “the planting of trees;” the beer garden area was this garden and a coach drive.

Outline of the Pear Tree House, Kirkwood’s Town Plan of 1817. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The house passed to the Kilkerran Baronets – the Fergusson Family. Sir Adam Fergusson (3rd Baronet) entertained James Boswell here in the late 1760s and took tea with him. He sold it in 1770. The poet and minister, the Rev. Dr Thomas Blacklock then resided in rented rooms here and entertained both Dr Johnson and Robert Burns, again tea was taken along side various other “refreshments”. Blacklock had been blind since infancy and gives his name to the upstairs bar of the Pear Tree, the Blind Poet. He is credited with having saved the life of Burns, as a letter he wrote to him in 1789 dissuaded Burns from travelling abroad to the West Indies; the ship he had been due to travel on sank on the voyage.

Thomas Blacklock, 1721-1791, © Edinburgh City Libraries

After Blacklock’s time, the ownership changed again, this time coming into the hands of the Usher family, in whose time it was known as The Usher House.

The Pear Tree House in 1905, “the” tree is on the left of the shot. photography by A. H. Baird. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The Ushers, who gave their name to the concert hall, were an Edinburgh brewing and distilling dynasty. They donated c. £13 million in today’s money to build the hall, and its internal dome is reputed to be modelled on the one at the top of the stairs in the Pear Tree House. Andrew Usher (senior) was a brewer and for a time in the mid-19th century, they used the house as such. However it was with whisky and distilling where they really made it big. Usher pioneered blending malt with grain whisky; his son Andrew (junior) made a fortune in this business and in 1885 – along with John “Green Ginger” Crabbie and William “VAT69” Sanderson – founded the North British Distillery at Gorgie. This is one of the biggest and most successful vertical column grain distilleries and is still going strong.

A photo of the Pear Tree during the Usher’s days, 1905. The front wall is being rebuilt. The eponymous tree can clearly be seen. The house is the neighbour of the Pear Tree House and the bulk of the Buccleuch Free Church towers behind. © Edinburgh City Libraries

When the brewery outgrew the house, it moved nearby to St. Leonards at the Park Brewery, with the house used as offices, storage and distribution. In 1918, Usher’s whisky business was acquired by the Distillers Company Limited (DCL) and formed into Scottish Malt Distillers, DCL’s lowland whisky operation. The house passed to a subsidiary, J. & G. Stewart, another long-established Edinburgh whisky name and responsible for Stewart’s Cream of the Barley. It became known locally as The House of Stewart.

The Pear Tree, the Pear Tree House and its neighbour, in 1912. © Edinburgh City Libraries

When Stewarts moved to Leith in 1972, the house was shut up and abandoned behind its courtyard wall. It was mooted for a potential site of the City Arts Centre, but in 1976 it was restored for use as a pub with the courtyard becoming a beer garden. It took its modern name from an old pear tree growing in the corner of the courtyard.

The Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas continues with a thread about The Lochend Dovecot.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Political sectarianism and redoubtable mothers: the thread about the Sciennes School Strike of 1925

As often seems to happen, I start off reading a little bit about one thing and then fall unwittingly yet compliantly down a deep rabbit hole with all kinds of unexpected tangents. So let’s unravel a bit of the Sciennes School Strike of 1925.

Sciennes, if you don’t know, is a neighbourhood in Edinburgh. You pronounce it to rhyme with machines (it’s a Scottish corruption of Sienna, after a convent that long ago stood here) and it is home to a school of the same name. To get to the root of our story we go back to 1872, when the Education (Scotland) Act of that year brought responsibility for mandatory schooling in Scotland under the control of local School Boards. For the Burgh of the City of Edinburgh (the formal name of the city) this was the Edinburgh School Board.

The roundel of the Edinburgh School Board, “the female figure of education” dispensing knowledge to the young. Dean Public School, one of the ESB’s first new schools after the 1872 act. © Self

Most of the existing schools at that time were either church, parish or charitably provided and those of the Presbyterian churches (that is the majority of all churches in Scotland at that time) and parishes were transferred directly to the School Boards. Most of these facilities were too small and found to be inadequate as teaching spaces for modern methods, so a crash building programme was initiated. Sciennes School was a product of this program, completed in 1892. Other public schools in the Southside of Edinburgh at the time included the 1877 Bristo School on the long demolished part of Marshall Street, Causewayside School on that street and later Preston Street school of 1896 on the east part of that street.

Sciennes Primary School, CC-BY-SA 4.0 Stephencdickson

Board schools, while largely Protestant in outlook, were strictly speaking non-denominational and there was no direct church control (although the churches had a reserved seat in the board’s membership). Crucially to what would happen in the future though, Catholic schools were not covered by the 1872 act and remained in control of that church, with the Scottish Episcopal Church also choosing to remain independent at this time, fearing the erosion of their denominational, religious education. To provide for a Catholic education in central Edinburgh therefore that Church set up a school, St. Columba’s. It moved around a bit, repeatedly outgrowing a series of unsuitable premises, before settling in a converted townhouse at 81 Newington Road. You can still see where the sign once was.

81 Newington Road, you can see where the sign would have been above the central window.

Edinburgh’s Catholic population was growing quite rapidly at the time with immigration into the city centre from both Ireland and Italy. And then came the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act, which brought the Catholic schools into control of the state sector, with the School Boards rationalised into larger local Education Authorities, with wider responsibilities. Like the old School Board, the Edinburgh Education Authority (EEA) was directly elected by popular ballot and was outwith direct control of the City Corporation or any church; although a system of proportional representation meant a balance of Presbyterian, Episcopal and Catholic members had reserved places on its board. The new authority was unimpressed by the size and quality of the facilities it had inherited off the R. C. Church (actually, it bought them off them under the provisions of the 1918 act) so set about trying to find a better home for St. Columba’s.

The post-WW1 economic slump meant there wasn’t the money to go around to build a new school – particularly a minority school – so the EEA looked to rationalise its public schools in the Southside, which it found had an excess of capacity, and make one of them into a new Catholic school. The plan seemed simple enough; move St. Columba’s to the half-empty Causewayside School and transfer that school’s roll to Sciennes, Bristo or Preston Street schools, whichever alternative was closest to children’s homes.

Causewayside School, architectural elevation by Robert Rowand Anderson, which would later become St. Columba’s

After the numbers were crunched, 154 children were to be relocated from Causewayside to Sciennes, 101 to Preston Street and 66 to Bristo. 291 children were to transfer in turn from St. Columba’s into its new home and 81 Newington Road would be disposed of. All simple enough and making better use of the Authority’s resources, so it should be relatively uncontroversial administrative change, yes?

No. What happened next was the emergent Scottish Protestant League decided to wade into things and try and make it a wedge issue – stirred up in part by local lawyer, political dabbler and green inker, Robert Sterling Craig Esq SSC, known as Sterling Craig. Sterling Craig was nominally a Liberal and therefore opposed to any place for religious education in schools, but it seems clear from his writing and speaking on the subject that he also had a clear anti-Catholic bent. When the Authority announced its decision towards the end of the school term in June 1924 he and a local parish councillor, Mrs Inglis Clark, organised a public meeting in protest “in the strongest way“.

What followed next was a rather predictable series of conflicting arguments by Sterling Craig and Clark, which began to descend into the disingenuous, e.g. the alternatives would be too far, causing 2 or 3 mile walks to school (Sciennes and Preston Street were less than 500m away). The EEA was accused of inflating the roll of St. Columba’s by “stuffing” it with children from the Catholic Home (an orphanage), a claim the Authority flat out denied: they claimed 477 children were being displaced – the Authority said it was 321. Sterling Craig simultaneously claimed that Causewayside was a non-denominational school (it was) but also “Protestant” (it wasn’t, although likely much of the school roll was). His loud and authoritative voice drowned out the views and representations of the parents and children impacted by this. He had previously sat on the Edinburgh School Board and was standing for the upcoming Edinburgh Education Authority election and decided to make this issue a key plank of his campaign. His letters to the Scotsman refer to “the Roman Catholics” and “the Roman Catholic Children” in a very othering tone – they are quite unpleasant to read in places with retrospect.

Sterling Craig was upset that a “central” school (i.e. one serving a wide rather than strictly local catchment) was being located in the Southside of the city; that children would be bused-in (actually, trammed) at the Authority’s expense and that they would be given school meals at the EEA‘s expense (at this time most school children went home for their lunch time) – despite these all being provisions in line with the 1918 act and therefore a legal obligation for the authority. To boil his arguments down to a single sentence, they would be: I’m not anti-Catholic, but can’t they just go some place else? To this extent he suggested wholly inadequate facilities at Old St. Patrick’s in the Canongate (the Authority pointed out that they didn’t own these and so would have to buy and renovate them at its own expense). It was all very not from round here and he and his allies in Mrs Inglis Clark and others began to go rather seriously down the route of sectarian scaremongering. However the EEA, to its credit, stuck to its plans and even managed to get most of the parents would would be impacted by the changes on side. The nay-sayers were not placated however and together with the nascent Scottish Protestant League (SPL) under Alexander Ratcliffe and a number of local Presbyterian churchmen, they organised a “Great Protestant Rally” at the Livingstone Hall on South Clerk Street in January 1925, which was attended by around 500.

Advert for the Great Protestant Rally, Edinburgh Evening News, 3rd January 1925

The meeting denounced the Education Authority as “traitors” and as a result the SPL – which claimed itself apolitical – and Sterling Craig agreed on a platform of trying to take over the Education Authority at the upcoming elections and campaign for repeal those provisions of the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act that they disliked; namely the state provision of R. C. education. Sterling Craig’s words were reported as “the only thing that prevented ‘the Catholics’ walking back to St. Columba’s and the old school going back to Causewayside was the laziness of the ratepayers” (if only people would turn out and vote for him, he would sort it out).

1935 reprint of The Protestant Advocate in Ratcliffe’s own newspaper, the Protestant Vanguard

In case you didn’t realise it by the way – 1920s and 30s Edinburgh local politics was quite a hotbed of anti-Catholicism. The Protestant League stood seven candidates in the 1925 Authority election, Sterling Craig stood himself as an independent. Just one of the those candidates – Alexander Ratcliffe (who styled himself “Scotland’s Modern John Knox” and went as far as to refer in public to St. Columba’s as “the now misnamed St. Columba’s“) – was elected, as was Sterling Craig. Ratcliffe soon turned his ire to the opening of a Carmelite Convent in the city before getting altogether a bit bored of Edinburgh local politics. He would move to Glasgow where he made some inroads with the SPL in that Corporation’s elections of 1931, exploiting and stoking that city’s long-standing sectarian tensions. In Edinburgh it was to be the Protestant Action Society under John Cormack that would later take up the anti-Catholic political mantle. As a party held together purely by a common hatred, it was inevitable that the SPL would eventually become unstable. It split with the Ulster Protestant League in 1933 when Ratcliffe’s wife Mary and another SPL member attacked and defaced a (factually correct) painting in the Northern Irish parliament that showed the Pope celebrating William of Orange’s victory at the Boyne

William III, the Duke of Schomberg, and the Pope (top left, blessing the Protestant monarch from a cloud), by Pieter van der Meulen, c. 1690

After falling out with the UPL, the SPL itself fell apart due to irreconcilable internal divisions. The Scottish protestant mainstream distanced itself from the increasingly extremist and unpredictable Alexander Ratcliffe. The man who had started his political life at the Edinburgh Education Authority moved on to dabbling with the Scottish fascists, who in turn kicked him out as being too extreme for even them. He has been described as “one of the very first Holocaust deniers in the country and perhaps even the world“. He was an extreme anti-Catholic and anti-Semite to his core who thought that Hitler and Mussolini were in league with the Pope to smash Protestantism… This conflicting and thoroughly distasteful man died at his home in Glasgow in 1947.

A wartime anti-Semitic pamphlet issued by Alexander Ratcliffe

But back to Edinburgh and back to 1925, when St Columba’s opened its doors after the summer holidays, the former pupils of Causewayside School instead made their way to Sciennes, Preston Street and Bristo schools. How did this end up in a strike? Well what happened was that – in true local authority style – after winning parents over to its controversial plans the Education Authority went back on its assurances and rightly aggrieved a lot of parents. Sciennes, it said, was actually too full and so 150 or so children who had just recently been settled in at Sciennes would instead need to go to Bristo School.

Bristo Public School on Marshall Street. © Edinburgh City Libraries

This poured salt on a wound that had not yet had any chance to heal and the mothers of the Southside were having none of it. Official phraseology such as “arriving at a more equitable distribution of scholars” just made things even worse. The problem was not just the repeated relocation of children, it was where they were to be moved to. Bristo was notoriously small and dark and dingy on the inside and as you can see from the aerial photo below it had a tiny playground that was penned in on all sides by tall tenements. Furthermore, it was fundamentally on the wrong side of the (tram) tracks for many parents.

Bristo Public School from the air – it is the building in the centre with the flat roof to the rear and the corner tower. You can see how penned in the playground at the back was, and how many of the school windows were in the shadow of neighbouring tenements. From Britain From Above

Without the distraction of Sterling Craig or Mrs Inglis Clark and their anti-Catholic agenda, the mothers of the affected children quickly formed themselves into an effective deputation to the Education Authority. They literally marched strait there and beat on the door – turning up at its offices on Castle Terrace on September 2nd 1925 to demand an audience. For good measure, a flying squad was also send to the home of the Authority’s chairman – Councillor P. H. Allan – to wait for him in case he was there. When it became clear that the Authority was not for budging the mothers organised a public meeting on September 4th, packing out the Nicolson Square public hall. Councillor Mrs Adam Millar tried to cool things down but only inflamed the situation by saying it was not the Authority’s fault but the fault of parents as they had voted for the same EEA (or hadn’t bothered; turnout for the previous election was only around 20%). At the meeting the mothers of around 110 of the affected children agreed to stop sending them to school entirely if they could not send them to Sciennes. The Sciennes School Strike had begun.

Councillor P. H. Allan, Chairman of the Education Authority

On September 8th it was reported there were rumours that the strike would spread as a result of some children from Craiglockhart, Roseburn and Gorgie schools being dispersed to Dalry in the name of a “more equitable distribution of scholars“. The strike did not end up spreading but neither did it go away. The Authority tried to offer an olive branch and say children from the Buccleuch Street area could stay at Sciennes, however those from George Square would still have to go to Bristo. Whether this attempt at strikebreaking was a deliberate ploy to divide and conquer their opposition is unclear, but it failed. By September 15th, the 3rd week of the strike, it was still ongoing with 55 children remaining out of school. The mothers caused uproar in the Authority board room by turning up en masse with their children in tow and “infants in their arms“. But they did have sympathisers on the Authority and Mrs Swan Brunton* spoke out in their favour. At a deadlock, the Authority did what Authorities do best when they don’t know what to do and conceded to set up a Special Sub-Committee on School Congestion to look into the matter further.

Janet Swan Brunton 1882 – 1932. * = The redoubtable Mrs Swan Brunton JP, a suffragette of the Scottish Cooperative Women’s Guild. In 1928 she became only the 5th woman elected to the Corporation of Edinburgh, as a Labour member. She died suddenly in 1932 aged 50, in Glasgow at a meeting of the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society, and was buried in North Merchiston Cemetery

September 21st. No resolution was in sight, 58 children were on strike from Sciennes and in total 86 across the city were. On September 24th the Scotsman reported that the Education Authority declared the strike had been broken and most of the children had returned to the schools it had allocated them to. The next day, September 25th, they had to print something of a retraction; the children had not in fact gone back to school and were still on strike. At a public meeting of ratepayers it had been agreed that a general strike of children should be called for in the Central District. Come September 26th the Authority remained unmoved, issuing a statement that it had acted in accordance with its statutory obligations and that if the 42 children on strike were not sent to school then they would start taking legal action to enforce it. But still the strike was not broken and so one month into the walkout, on October 6th, the Authority held an exceptional meeting. Mrs Swan Brunton implored her colleagues to use their common sense and allow the 40 children to go back to Sciennes as they had been promised, with Mrs Mclaren speaking in support. Unfortunately, Mrs Swan Brunton’s motion, seconded by Mrs Mclaren, was voted down. Alexander Ratcliffe blamed the Catholics as usual.

October 14th, five weeks in and the strike dragged on. It was suggested at an Authority meeting that if only the Corporation would repave the street outside Bristo School with wooden setts that the noise of traffic that affected it would be reduced sufficiently to entice the strikers to attend. Chairman Allan tried to force through a resolution to this effect but Mrs Swan Brunton challenged the count on the grounds that it had not reached a quorum of three quarters of members. She prevailed this time and the meeting then collapsed into farce and had to be adjourned. The Authority tried again the next week. One typically bureaucratic proposal that came out of this was to set up yet another sub-committee – the Special Committee on School Areas. Alexander Ratcliffe yet again agitated against “the Catholics” and also this time the Episcopalians, supported by Sterling Craig as seconder. It was agreed to set up the sub-committee and spent the rest of the meeting was spent listening to the extremist ramblings of Ratcliffe .

Eight weeks in on October 26th another meeting was held by the Education Authority. It lasted precisely two minutes before again collapsing into chaos when the chairman over-rode Mrs Swan Brunton’s motion for resolution. He left to the mothers in the gallery crying “Shame!” November 2nd. Week 9. The Chairman called a private meeting restricted to a sub-set of members of the Authority, with the mothers forced to wait outside the offices. The Authority could not bring itself to publicly concede but fundamentally capitulated when it agreed that the 46 children who had been moved from Sciennes to Bristo could instead have their pick of Castlehill, Preston Street, Tollcross or St. Leonard’s schools.

Castlehill School, now offering a very different sort of education as the Scotch Whisky Experience

The mothers decided as one that they would send their children to Preston Street. They were true to their word, and 37 mothers and 46 children arrived at the school door the very next day, November 3rd, exactly 2 months from the start of the strike. The strike was over. Almost: the Authority meeting had ended so late in the day that nobody had bothered to write to the Headteacher at Preston Street to inform them of the decision! The school refused to admit the children and sent them away. It was not until November 4th that the Head was satisfied with the paperwork and the children were admitted to Preston Street School. The Great Sciennes School Strike of 1925 was finally over.

Preston Street School, CC-BY-SA Kim Traynor

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

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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.

#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret