The famous faces of Hutchesons' School - Scotland’s ‘power school’

As Ursula notes: “The extreme tenderness with which JB [Buchan] describes his band of six ragged children, who form themselves into the ‘Gorbals Diehards’ in Huntingtower (published in 1922), stems from the knowledge he had acquired of the plight of orphaned or just abandoned street children, who he encountered daily on his way to school in the 1890s.”

His brother, Willie, also attended Hutchie, and his sister, Anna, went to the Hutchesons' girls’ school nearby. Today, Buchan, who died in February 1940, is included among Hutchesons' distinguished alumni, as befits someone who was not only a prolific novelist (his books included T he T hirty-Nine Steps) but was also a director of wartime propaganda, an MP, and a Governor General of Canada.

Hutchesons' Grammar school Ladies Centenary. 1st XI hockey team, 1924, Flora Smith (now aged 102) far left, front row. (Image: free)

Hutchesons', a co-educational, independent school, was founded in 1641. To quote from an introductory line on its website, it has a long-held record of academic achievement “and offers pupils an unrivalled choice of extra-curricular activities at its primary and secondary schools”. That Crown Street building, opened in 1841 then redesigned and extended in the 1870s, has long since given way to the school’s current, ultra-modern base in Beaton Road, on the city’s south side. Its boys’ and girls’ schools amalgamated in 1976.

Hutchesons' was in the news recently when a former pupil, Humza Yousaf, was voted by the SNP membership as their new party leader and as the sixth First Minister of Scotland. While at Hutchesons' he was a couple of years behind another pupil, Anas Sarwar, the current leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

Yousaf has this week been urged to intervene in what have been described as the school’s “bully tactics” amid fire-and-rehire accusations. The NASUWT union has balloted its members at the school, with 87% in favour of industrial action amid claims that the school is forcing teachers to agree to new contracts that would see their pensions downgraded or face dismissal. Hutchesons', however, has “strongly rejected” the accusations. Sarwar has called on the school to “see sense” over the alleged policy.

As prominent as they are, Yousaf and Sarwar are far from being the first politicians who were pupils at Hutchie. A notable early instance was none other than James Maxton, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) MP for Bridgeton. He was there between 1897 and 1900, serving as a pupil teacher, before going on to Glasgow University.

Novelist John Buchan (Image: free)

When he died, aged 61, in July 1946, his Glasgow Herald obituary described him as “one of the most striking figures in the Socialist movement ... He did not seek to disguise his role as that of a revolutionary in social and political warfare”.

When in March 1995 the Labour MP Tam Dalyell was invited to deliver the James Maxton Memorial Lecture at the school, he did not have far to look for information about Maxton. His mother-in-law Lady Wheatley – Nancy Wheatley – had been the secretary of Shettleston ILP in the days when Maxton was Bridgeton’s MP. Dalyell told her he was going to talk to the senior pupils about Maxton. “Well,” she said, “you’d better tell them he was a chancer.’’ In the event, Dalyell informed the pupils of her assessment, but added: “I think that’s perhaps less than generous.’’

Other Hutchie alumni include Archibald Leitch, a leading designer of football grounds; Bessie MacNicol, one of the Glasgow Girls group of artists; Madge Easton Anderson, the first woman to be admitted to the legal profession in Scotland; Sir John Brown, the renowned naval architect; Muriel Clara Bradbrook, an expert on Shakespeare and Professor of English at Cambridge; Moira Beaty, an artist and, during the Second World War, a cryptographer at Bletchley Park; the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst RD Laing; Evelyn McNicol, the youngest member of the first recorded all-female Himalayan expedition; tennis star Winnie Wooldridge; Alison Di Rollo, a former Solicitor General for Scotland; and Gareth Bayley, the British Ambassador to Egypt. Entrepreneur Stefan King and the late Simon Kinder, a leading figure in the British food industry, were also taught at Hutchie, as were Derry Irvine, a former Lord Chancellor; Lyn Macdonald, the eminent First World War historian; Olivia Giles, founder of the 500 Miles charity; Adam Fleming, chief political correspondent for BBC News; and Carol Smillie, the television presenter.

Former pupil Explorer Evelyn McNicol (Image: free)

Speaking in 2008, Smillie said: “My friends were going on to the local secondary school, but my parents wanted me to go to the fee-paying Hutchesons’ Girls’ Grammar, aka ‘Hutchesons’ Grammar School for Young Ladies’. Were we young ladies? By today’s standards, we were angels!

“I knew it was a huge financial effort to send me there, so I had to knuckle down,” she added. “Academically I didn’t shine, but I learnt confidence and a lot about life. There were some very bright children, but I wasn’t one of them. The school guided them towards the professions, which weren’t for me, but I didn’t feel a failure. My children are now at Hutchesons’, and I tell them, ‘I don’t care as long as you give it your best shot’.

“I got seven O-levels – fabric and fashion was one – and I scraped some of them. I left the following year with three Highers, but I needed five to get into Glasgow School of Art, so I went to Langside College to get the other two. I only got one.”

Ken Bruce, the long-standing BBC Radio 2 presenter who a few weeks ago made his debut on Greatest Hits Radio, has spoken with affection of his days at Hutchie. Interviewed in 2010 he recalled: “I went to Hutchesons’ because my siblings had all gone there; there was also a girls’ school for my sister. I sat the entrance exam and passed, to everybody’s surprise. I stayed there until I was 18 and had a pretty happy time.

“The belt was still in use in those days and I was beaten with it a few times, but only for feeble schoolwork. I failed one history test so spectacularly that the teacher took me out in front of the class and gave me four of the best. They felt I hadn’t tried, and they were right.”

Speaking in 2011, Flora Smith, nee McMurtrie, recalled her own days at the school, in the years between 1922 and 1927. She enjoyed history, English and grammar and nature studies at Rouken Glen and Newton Mearns, and also played in the 1st XI hockey team and attended hockey camp at Ballater.

“The headmaster was a true Victorian and he was very interested in good behaviour,” she said. “They didn’t have a sports day because he said it wasn’t ladylike, and the girls weren’t allowed to run across the hall because it wasn’t ladylike either.”