Some Reminiscences and Reflections of former pupils and staff of Bathgate Academy – edited by Dr. Andrew Bain.
Thomas Davidson
I remember well that September morning in 1910 when, at the age of seven, my brother and I made our way past the playground of Mid Street School (the Wee Pairish as we called it) to our new school – the Academy. The Academy began with the five Standards, as they were then called – Primary 3 to Primary 7 of to-day.
In the lower classes we were at times aware of a burly figure, blue-clad and terrible – it was Janitor Spokes! On the anniversary of Nelson’s victories, Trafalgar above all, he flew the flag from the pole in the playground. As an old salt, he insisted that we boys salute the flag on our entry into the playground and was quite capable of dusting with his cane the pants of anyone who omitted this gesture of respect.
Each September brought the thrill of buying new text-books. No free books in those days! To Clark’s or Russell and Freeland’s in Engine Street would we scurry with our important little lists.
And then came the War! We saw the Second Tenth* drilling on various open spaces in the town. We knitted scarves, mittens, and other comforters for men at the Front. And did not Lady Baillie of Polkemmet come to collect our offerings and to thank us for our gifts.**
Remember that our Academy at that time was The School for the whole of the southern half of West Lothian. Before St. Mary’s Secondary School opened, all Catholic secondary pupils who wished to proceed to higher education had to come to the Academy. We profited greatly from their joining us: many a brilliant pupil came to us from the Catholic Primary School in Livery Street, with Mr. Wallace as headmaster. For the same reason pupils came to us from Armadale, Blackridge, Whitburn, Fauldhouse, Stoneyburn, Blackburn, Uphall, Broxburn, Torphichen, Westfield, and all the farms in the neighbourhood. Broxburn, for example, could take them only as far as the third year of the Secondary department, and they had to come to Bathgate to complete their education.
July, 1919 was the last occasion on which the John Newland Trustees would be seen as governors of the school. For, by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918, they were empowered (not compelled) to sell the school to the County Council.
*2nd/10th (Cyclist) Battalion Royal Scots.
** Her son, Lieutenant Sir Gawaine Baillie was killed by an Uhlan on 7th September, 1914 at the battle of the Aisne. During the War his house was used as a Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital . His name is on Whitburn War Memorial. When I was at Bathgate Academy we had Maths and English in an extension called the Baillie Block. In 1907 Lady Baillie had given £1,500 to provide for the building of this extension.
Agnes Drennan:
Then the Second World War broke out: windows had to be protected; shelters were built; first-aid equipment provided; biscuits bought in case of long alerts and raid alarms; evacuations organised. Every tenth night two ladies and two gentlemen were on duty fire-watching, with two girls in the earlier part of the evening, and two boys all night, with supper at 10pm and breakfast the following morning. A friend and I were on duty the first night of the Clydebank air raid. At one time that night there was some concern at the Air-raid Warden Centre as several members had not reported to sign off. They – amongst them a former pupil – were up with us on the steps of the Academy having a grand-stand view of the planes passing over the dark sky while we dashed periodically to make cups of tea in the staff-room for the interested watchers.
Basil Slater:
I was at BathgateAcademy from 1940 till 1945. There were no school meals in those days. Some of us from Armadale rushed to the Steelyard to catch the bus at 12.05, had lunch, and then caught the 12.30 bus for the return journey. When buses were off the road because of snow, we walked to school and ate sandwiches for lunch. We did have school milk, and occasionally were told that its taste of turnips was due to the war-time diet of the cattle. Air raids occasionally made us troop off to the shelters built behind the school and, since we did not really sense any danger, they were a welcome relief from school work. Deaths by enemy action of friends and relatives of school colleagues were, however, a grim reminder of the days in which we were living.
John L. Broom:
The inventor of the adage that one’s schooldays are the happiest of one’s life must either, in my opinion, have had a shockingly bad memory or have spent his adulthood in a slave-labour camp. The reality, so far as I was concerned, corresponded rather to Bernard Shaw’s dictum that most schools are child prisons, or to Shakespeare’s image of the whining schoolboy creeping unwillingly to his citadel of learning. I would certainly be less than honest were I to pretend that my nine years in Bathgate Academy were among the most pleasant I have ever spent. Indeed, the sweetest sound of each day to me was the tolling of the skailing bell at five to four, or the shrill tones of Adam Mungall’s whistle (that man must have had lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows) signalling the end of a particularly hated lesson. There were, of course, some lessons I enjoyed but these, I fear, were far outweighed by the disliked majority.
My father had been a pupil at the Academy in the 1890s. The janitor at this time was an irascible Englishman called Spokes, and an anecdote my father loved to relate concerned him and a boy called Black. Black had annoyed Spokes by some misdemeanour, and the janitor remarked sarcastically, “Ye know my lad. Two blacks don’t make a wite.” (Like all Sassenachs, he could not pronounce the “h” after a “w”); to which Black responded, “Yes, and two spokes don’t make a weel.”
I spent four years in the Primary Department being taught successively by the Misses Webster, Shaw, Newlands and Nicholson. I liked them all with one notable exception (whom I have no doubt several generations of pupils will have no difficulty identifying*), and indeed this period was the happiest I spent at the school. In the Secondary Department, however, to which I proceeded in 1937, a few of the teachers were semi-sadists who should never have been allowed within a hundred miles of even the most insensitive child. I cannot, of course, name the offenders. The belt was wielded by some indiscriminately, occasionally, for the most trivial offences.**
* Having suffered at the hands of this little creature, I have no difficulty in identifying her as Toaster Shaw.
** In my time at Bathgate Academy (1947 – 58) we were belted for such things as talking in class, failing a test, and being unable to answer a question.
W. Ian H. Shedden:
To my chagrin, I failed to pass Higher Latin. It meant that one of my possible career plans to study English at honours level at university, was no longer tenable. The university authorities in their ineffable wisdom required Latin at Higher Level as an entrance requirement. It also ruled out Law, which also required Latin, albeit at Lower Level. So I decided to take up Medicine. Of all careers, it offers the maximum flexibility for self expression. As Sir Derrick Dunlop used to point out, “The catholic mantle of medicine can be adapted to all tastes. If you love the human race you can be a general practitioner. If you hate the human race you can be a pathologist.” I never regretted my decision, and in retrospect, I have never regretted failing Latin.
Jim Easton:
Charlie Carnegie said to the class, “Well boy, tell me, what’s gravity?” There was no answer, so he grabbed a boy and suspended him by his braces out of the open window of the science lab. He was thirty feet from the ground, and as he bounced on his elastics Charlie cried, “That’s gravity, boy, that’s gravity!”*
When I was in 6th year we found a stuffed lion in one of the old air-raid shelters. With April 1st a few weeks away, it was an opportunity too good to miss, and we set about selecting a suitable victim. The new Head of the English Department, Alex. Gillespie, lived near Edinburgh Zoo, so we took the lion and left it on his front lawn. Unfortunately, we must have awakened the household and their response was prompt and positive. The police patrol sent to investigate had the five of us in custody before we could cough. However, the joke was taken in the right spirit, and helped to establish a lasting amicable relationship.
*I was taught by Charlie Carnegie and I did hear of this story. Charlie was very eccentric but I don’t think he was that daft. Hugh Watson, a member of my class, hid his tawse to save us from being belted.
Tam Dalyell:
What has always impressed me has been the concern of the school with academic excellence. The redoubtable Dr. Somerville was not perhaps everyone’s cup of tea, and he did not always see eye to eye with the West Lothian Education Committee. Their relations were quite often cryogenic.
Bathgate Old Times 