Cookies

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set optional analytics cookies to help us improve it. We won't set optional cookies unless you enable them or accept our recommended settings. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences.

Options
Necessary cookies enable core functionality on our website. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.
We use marketing cookies to personalise your visit to our website and show you tailored advertising based on your likes and interests.
We use analytics cookies to monitor visitor behaviour patterns and improve our website performance.

Your preferences have been set. If you wish to change your preferences, you may do so on our cookies page.

Search My Trust
Join now
Join
Close

Looking for places? Use our place search to find them by name, town or postcode.

See all stories
27 Mar 2020

Schooldays gone by

Written by Lily Barnes, Morton Photography Project Documentation and Digitisation Officer
A sepia photograph of 4 rows of schoolchildren (girls and boys) with their teacher standing to the right. The children look to be aged around 7. Beside the photograph is a mount with the text: Wohlgemuth & Co, 108 Renfield St, Glasgow.
Due to current events, children, teachers and families are having to fundamentally re-examine their relationship to education. While we as a country – along with people across the world – explore new methods, embracing the opportunities and overcoming the challenges that come with them, we wanted to share photographs from our collections that show the different experiences of school between 1895–1939.
A group of around 40 schoolchildren (girls and boys aged between 5 and 10) stand on some steps outside a stone building. Their teacher stands on the top step. Deep snow lies at the base of the steps and the children all wear boots and coats. A sepia photograph of a large group of schoolchildren (over 100), standing or sitting on a set of steps outside a school building. Many of the girls wear white smocks or blouses; most boys wear a darker wool jacket. Teachers line the steps at the edge of the group. A tree branch with new buds is in the foreground. A sepia-tinged photograph of a young lady sitting for a formal head-and-shoulders portrait. She wears a dark school blazer and her bobbed hair is neatly pinned to the side. A full-length formal black and white photograph of a young boy. He stands by a banister and looks away to the left. He is wearing a white shirt, tartan tie, kilt, sporran and woollen knee-high socks. A black and white photograph of three young schoolboys standing at the edge of a road. Hills and a single cottage stand in the background. The boys all wear black jumpers with dark shorts. The boy in the middle is holding a slate with a chalk drawing on it. A black and white photograph of eight young schoolgirls standing in a row in front of a corrugated school building. They wear a mixture of styles of dresses and smocks. A black and white photograph of a group of 14 schoolboys (of mixed ages) standing in front of a corrugated schoolhouse and a white-framed window. Most of the boys are wearing a tie. A black and white photograph of a group of around 30 schoolchildren, sitting on rocks on a hillside on a sunny day. The boys in the front row all wear shorts, with no shoes or socks. A black and white photograph of a group of people sitting on some rocks on a beach. A tin mug is balanced on the rock in the foreground. A small dog sits on the sand and looks up at a young boy, who is sitting on the knee of a young woman. A sepia photograph of 4 rows of schoolchildren (girls and boys) with their teacher standing to the right. The children look to be aged around 7. Beside the photograph is a mount with the text: Wohlgemuth & Co, 108 Renfield St, Glasgow. A black and white photograph of around 30 young schoolchildren, arranged in rows in front of a stone building with ivy growing up its walls. The windows in the background have lacy curtains. The children are dressed quite formally, with the boys in jackets or kilts, and the girls in white pinafores. Their teacher stands at the back in an austere black dress with a white lace bow. A black and white photograph of 36 schoolchildren, in a neat group in the playground in front of their stone school building. Their uniform is dark, with the girls in blazers or jumpers and a kilt; the boys wear jumpers, ties and shorts. A sepia photograph of a class of 23 young children with their teacher. They stand in three rows outside the school building in a gravelly yard. The boys wear wool jackets and trousers with boots. The girls wear light pinafores over long-sleeved tops. Their young teacher wears a wonderful spotty blouse, with a lace neck and a long black skirt.

Support us today

Your donation to help us protect everything that makes Scotland special and unique is more important than ever.

Donate now

Read next

A page of a photo album, with just a small gold monogram in the centre and the date, 1861.

Cartomania: the portrayal of women in carte de visites

In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting historical female characters and their influences at our properties.

The Second Morton Photography Symposium

On Thursday 29 October the Second Morton Photography Symposium on ‘Ways of Seeing’: Women and Photography in Scotland will take place as an online webinar hosted by Glasgow Women's Library.

A single page in a scrapbook album. In the bottom left corner of the page are two oval photographs, showing the Walter Scott Monument and Princes Street Garden, Edinburgh. Above this is piece of pale blue notepaper. This has ‘LUFFNESS, Aberlady, NB’ printed on it in black ink, and three handwritten signatures. In the top right corner of the page is a black and white photograph of Luffness House. Beneath this is a black and white photograph of Mount Stuart, a large stately home on the Isle of Bute. Vines have been painted across the page in green watercolour.

Scraps of the past – Violet Brodie’s photo albums: Part I

Follow in the footsteps of Violet Brodie by exploring her scrapbook photo albums.

Margaret Fay Shaw’s photographs of the women of South Uist – Canna House

Exploring the stories of women and girls preserved in our historical collections in the west of Scotland.

Read more stories on

Back to top