Thread by @cocteautriplets

This fascinating book is full of treasure and keeps on giving. Last week's thread was about how Board Schools were designed to try and combat TB. But they were also designed to try and stamp out something else; Left-handedness! ✍️

How do you try and design-out left-handedness? You make sure the classroom is lit in favour of right-handedness.

In a time before electric or effective gas lighting, you made sure that the sun light entered the classroom to the pupil's left, so the writing (right) hand cast no shadow on what you had just written.

This was a practice copied from Germany whose school system and designs were an influential model for the development of board schools in Victorian Scotland.

Left-handedness was commonly seen as a "defect" at the time and something that had to be trained/forced/beaten out of children.

Following the passage of The Education (Scotland) Act 1872, the parish School Boards found themselves with big building programmes. This was particularly true in the cities where populations were rapidly growing, and Edinburgh was no different.

While the Edinburgh School Board employed its own architects, the plans had to be overseen by the "Scotch Education Department" (as it was then called) in London. "Their Lordship's Architect" was Edward Robson, also architect to the [English] Education Department.

Robson effectively had veto on school designs in Edinburgh (and Scotland) and was very influential, indeed he wrote *the* book on School Design in 1874; "School Architecture : being Practical Remarks on The Planning, Designing, Building, and Furnishing of School-Houses"

In this book he frequently refers to the German zeal for lighting classrooms from the left and recommends that it "is of such great importance as properly to have a material influence over our plans... and cannot therefore be too clearly remembered"

This wasn't just anti-lefthandedness. There were concerns at the time of poor eyesight developing in childhood caused by improper classroom lighting. Indeed Robson refers to a caricature of Germans as a nation of spectacle-wearers on account of their universal education.

Robson stepped in and ordered changes to the plans of London Street School (now St. Mary's R.C.) when it was being built in 1886, to ensure the "proper" lighting of the classrooms to his satisfaction.

And the next year, the Edinburgh School Board architect, Robert Wilson, was summoned to Robson's desk in London to discuss Torphichen Street school as his initial plans had classrooms lit from the right! (pic CC, © M J Richardson via Geograph)

The issue was evolving as the way the Board Schools were teaching was changing. The concept of defined classrooms, one per class and per teacher was relatively new (another German import) so schools were getting more and smaller rooms and natural lighting more of a challenge.

The 3rd floor in the centre of Torphichen Street school there deliberately has very small windows - as it was a drawing room and therefore was lit from above by skylights.

While Robson at the Scotch Education Department dictated many things, it was Wilson, the Edinburgh School Board architect who was responsible for style. Having worked in London for 10 years, it was he who gave the ESB schools a very London-like and secular appearance.

A typical Wilson ESB school is Broughton and you can *really* see the London influence if you put it alongside a typical Robson school like Primrose Hill. The big exception being the switch to traditional Scottish stone (pic CC Stephencdickson)

It was *very* important to Robson that schools should appear secular in nature, as eduction had been wrested from the grip of "the clergyman" and into the hands of "the lawyer". Schools should be instantly recognisable as such, just like churches were.

It's interesting that Wilson's first schools for the ESB were of a plain, gothic style, with some ecclesiastical stylings, and it took about a decade for him to fall into line with Robson's favoured "Queen Anne" style.

The ESB had inherited a number of schools from the Heriot Trust, and it was keen to avoid the richly ornamented Jacobean style that they used in homage to the original Heriot's School.

Those schools were St. Bernard's -originally known as Stockbridge Public School - Davie Street and Regent Road - originally Abbeyhill. The ESB never really favoured these buildings and they were all early disposals from their original purpose.

The School Board made an exception for its schools on the Royal Mile, and Milton House (later Royal Mile) and Castle Hill took on a Scottish Baronial style to better match their surroundings, with crowstepped gables, topped with finials and more prominent chimney stacks

And at Canongate School, the Canongate Kirk was a clear reference with its Dutch-style gables and central oculus.

Another anomaly is South Morningside School. Although Wilson was the architect, the ESB was not the client, t was provided by St. Cuthbert's School Board (the school boards for the city were on Parish lines until 1893).

For that reason it is missing the Edinburgh School Board's roundel of a wise lady dispensing education to a child. (pic CC, Kim Traynor via Geograph)

S. Morningside School is located where it is, on the St. Cuthbert's side and right on the then city boundary because of a long campaign by the feuars and residents of Morningside to avoid having the school more centrally located in the district and affecting their property values

Edinburgh School Board had wanted to build a school in their territory since 1887 but was thwarted by a "committee of apprehensive feuars" who pointed out that the feus were for "housing of a superior class" and the school would "destroy the quiet suburban character" of the area

In an effective act of Victorian NIMBYism, the committee wrote screeds of green ink into the press and lobbied the Scotch Education Committee, who made it be known they would but the school to a public enquiry if ESB tried to build it

They succeeded in delaying the construction of the school by almost 5 years, and it ended up being located in what was then a quite disadvantageous situation for the catchment it served