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Holidays and School Closures In
common with other schools in the area, Miller Institution closed for many and
varied reasons outwith what would be considered the normal holiday periods.
It is not possible to cover all the different reasons for closure let
alone list all the occasions when the School Authorities thought it reasonable
or desirable to take such action. Just
some of the more common or more interesting reasons for closing the school can
be described here. The
school was on occasions closed due to preparatory services in the town’s
churches in connection with the sacraments, for fast days and for Thanksgiving
services. During October of 1876
and early November three days were missed from school for this purpose.
It would appear that in those shortened weeks the progress of pupils was
always affected and noted thus by the Rector in his school record. In
1932 consideration was given to replacing the school closures on fast-days with
the new public holidays introduced by the Thurso Town Council.
The Council had decided that the second Monday of April, June and
September should be taken as public holidays rather than the fast-days. The move
was approved, though not unanimously, after Rector Ironside indicated that the
school did not mind whether there were closures on fast-days or public holidays
just as long as the days were taken. He
further noted that when there were fast-days in parishes other than Thurso,
pupils from these areas should still attended Miller Institution as usual. Other
reasons for school closure or poor attendance outwith the normal school holidays
included bad weather and the day of the Annual Town Holiday.
The latter is recorded in the log book for mid-July of 1875 and was
preceded by an early closure for Thurso’s Petersmas Fair.
It should be said that the entry states that no interval was taken so
that, ‘the boys might get away an hour
earlier to the fair.’ The
Petersmas Fair was one of four fairs held in Thurso. Weekly markets were held
originally on Saturdays but later moved to Fridays and then subsequently to
earlier in the week. However, the
fairs were grander affairs lasting longer and with a wider range of goods and
other activities. Two fairs, Our
Lady’s Fair in March and St Michael’s Fair in September, were not as
enduring as the Marymas at the end of August and the Petersmas generally held at
the end of June. From the logbook
entry for 1875, and for some subsequent years, it would appear that the
Petersmas was moved towards the
middle of July. The markets and
those fairs were held in the area of the High Street now known as the Town Hall
Square. Miller
Institution pupils would surely have been amongst those who thoroughly enjoyed
the Petersmas and Marymas. In the
1930 book, ‘Caithness Our Home’, John Cormack gives a graphic account of the
activities that took place at these fairs and the wonderful time youngsters had
on ‘fair day’. He describes
sweetie stalls with their slabs of toffee, piles of gingerbread and fizzy
sherbet drinks in the High Street. Also
the games of ‘skill’, rifle shooting and hoopla and the like, and
‘Cheap-Jack’ with his boxes of wares spread around him.
There were acrobats, musicians and contortionists performing throughout
the street and into the Market Square where there were stalls with every
imaginable delight. It
would appear that the holiday from school was well spent with every waking
minute being used to peruse the stalls and run from one attraction to the next.
Dinner and then Tea were taken but in a great rush so that not a minute
might be lost. Mr Cormack describes
how he, and the other lads, went early to the fair but carefully controlled the
spending of their hard saved but meagre resources so that it might last the day
and be available for the afternoon and evening bargains.
The
weather would appear to have an affect on attendance due to both the incidence
of colds and the difficulty of actually getting to school due to the weather
conditions. From early December of
1874 through to the end of January 1875 the weather was poor with much frost and
at least three notable falls of snow. For instance the 22nd January
1875 logbook entry states that ‘a fresh
snowstorm this week has added further to the sick list.’ In
1887, pupils appear to have been particularly lucky for, apart from the usual
Sacramental, Thanksgiving and public holidays, there were closures for the
Thurso Games and the opening of the new bridge.
The occasion of the opening of the new bridge across the Thurso River in
May of that year must have caused quite a lot of excitement amongst the public
and the pupils of Miller Institution. Perusal
of the logbooks reveals a variety of other reasons, in addition to those
mentioned earlier, for early closing or even school closure.
Two such reasons are given in the log for September 1932.
The school received a half-day for the centenary of Sir Walter Scott’s
death and there was an earlier closure for pupils to attend ‘Punch and
Judy’. Visits to the cattle show,
to films at the cinema and to theatre groups visiting the town seem to have been
seen as very good reasons for early closure.
School closure had, however, sometimes its down side as there are a
number of recorded instances of school having to open on the Saturday morning to
make up for lost time. For instance
on Saturday 19th June 1937 from 9.00am until noon a special
attendance took place to make up for the two days lost when the school was
closed for measles on 24th and 25th April.
Clearly the pupils would have to work extremely hard to replace two days
on a Saturday morning attendance!! It
is a pity that the practice of giving a half-day for the success of former
pupils in tertiary education no longer exists.
In May 1969, the school closed for a half day to celebrate the successes
of Judith Newman (a former Dux) and Peter Diggle in winning gold medals in their
classes at Edinburgh University. The
log notes that all the local schools benefited and I can only assume that the
other town schools also had free time to mark the occasion. Not
all planned holidays or half days from school materialised. In December 1918,
arrangements were made for a half holiday so that staff and pupils could take
advantage of a visit to the battleships of the ‘Grand Fleet’ which were to
be open to inspection in Thurso Bay. Unfortunately
the arrangements had to be postponed owing to a storm being predicted. A
very appropriate reason for a holiday and celebration was the Coronation of
George VI. The logbook outlines the
arrangements thus; ‘On
Tuesday afternoon each pupil was presented with a new George VI sixpence, a
pencil case full of toffee, both from the Education Committee, and a ticket to
the Coronation Tea given by the town on Wednesday afternoon, these proceedings
being carried out after a Coronation message from Mr Walter Elliot, Secretary of
State for Scotland, had been in read out in every class.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the school was closed for Coronation
holidays, but the pupils and teachers met at 2pm on Wednesday for H. G. (Higher
Grade) and 2pm on Thursday for Primary
before going to a free Picture Show. Tuesday
afternoon was also memorable from the fact that all H.G. classes went to their
new rooms in the new building which will therefore be in complete use from
Coronation Day.’ The
normal school holidays might not always be considered particularly normal by
today’s standards. The summer
holiday’s starting date in the early years of the school’s existence varied
considerably as did that at Christmas. In
1875, in Christmas week, the school was open for only two days, the other days
being taken as Christmas holidays and this was entered in the logbook on
Wednesday 29th December. The
New Year holiday ended on Monday 3rd January 1876 but it is not clear
which days were taken between the two Christmas days and the New Year break.
In some years it is quite clear that the Christmas holiday, as it is
described, began on or just after Christmas Day. For
instance in 1893-94 the school closed for the Christmas holiday on December 28th
and re-opened on January 11th with the note that, ‘only
243 were present.’ I assume
this is noted in disappointment at lower returning numbers.
Today the opposite is often the problem with a number of children being
regular ‘truants’ on the last day of term but most returning for the first
day of the new term. The cynic
might suggest that parents have had enough and a return to school of their
children is a welcome relief! By
the 1940s, it would appear that there was a certain degree of uniformity in the
holiday dates. While individual
schools were encouraged, indeed, expected to take the local Thanksgiving and
Gala holidays the main holiday dates had become more or less uniform.
Mr Ironside asked that school holidays be set by the School Management
Committees for their own districts and this was unanimously backed by his own
school’s committee and recommended to the Caithness Education Committee.
This committee was not convinced by the need for such flexibility and
ordered that holiday dates remain standard throughout the county. For
some pupils there were school trips that constituted holidays.
While the single day educational visit might simply have constituted a
day away from formal lessons the residential educational trip was in equal
measure a holiday for pupils and for parents left at home, if not always for the
accompanying staff. Residential
educational visits undertaken over the years are too numerous to record but one
worth mentioning indicates that such events are not of very recent origin.
In 1956, Miss Elliot, Principal Teacher of Modern Languages, asked the
Education Committee for financial support for an educational excursion.
The Director of Education reported to the Committee that twenty-six
pupils and two teachers were to go to Paris and the Loire district for a
fortnight during the summer vacation. He
indicated the cost to be £29 10s, exclusive of pocket money.
The Education Committee agreed to support the venture to the sum of £100
from the Caithness Educational Trust and £100 from the ordinary education
funds. The excursion to France
appears to have been a success and some members of the party wrote to the
Education Committee reporting on their visit. Janetta
Christie was one of the pupils on this visit to France and she graphically
describes her French classes and the educational trip to the continent as
follows; ‘As
for the French class, I remember a certain Mr Brown who always seemed to have an
unusual aroma around him. He would
sit on our desks with one foot on the seat beside us asking various questions
and breathing all over us! I never
learned much French during his stay. However,
we made up our knowledge of French when we were fortunate to have, for a time
Mrs D. K. Sutherland and thereafter, Miss Elliot.
Our French certainly from then took leaps and bounds and proved to be
most enjoyable. The highlight must
be, of course, the very first school trip abroad to Paris and the Loire Valley.
What excitement that brought about!
We had a wonderful time – very tiring but rewarding.
We could not have been in better hands than those of Miss Elliot and Miss
Veda Munro, a favourite Primary teacher and a friend of Miss Elliot.
One pupil who must be remembered by many on this trip was George Green
whose oral French was excellent. I
can still visualise clearly our group being split in two on entering the Metro.
One half was beyond the gate when it began to close, leaving the other
half on the outside. However, a
voice piped up, “Don’t worry, George is here, we’ll be all right” and so
we were.’ In
the primary sector residential visits to Edinburgh and London, generally known
as Capital Tours, and five or six day visits to York have been commonplace and
for a time Miller Academy pupils participated in the Dunera and Uganda cruises.
From 1972 I have many memories of a superb visit to Corunna in Spain,
Lisbon in Portugal, Gibraltar and Cueta and Tetuan in North Africa.
This cruise departed from Southampton and returned to the Clyde.
The Caithness party, including forty-three pupils and four teachers from
Miller Academy, travelled by bus to Inverness and then took a special train all
the way to Southampton via London. One
hiccup on the way was a hold-up caused by the derailment of another train.
This resulted in packed breakfasts in London becoming packed lunches and
the SS Uganda having to wait for some hours for its far north passengers.
Incidentally, as well as myself, the other staff members were Miss
Miller, Mrs Davenport and Mrs Shearer. I
have many pleasant memories of this long journey to Southampton and the cruise.
The excitement of the children was quite infectious and I found myself
looking forward to each new port of call with as much enthusiasm as my young
charges. The time on board was no
less exciting though the classroom sessions with so many pupils, and other
teachers looking on while lessons were taken, was daunting for a young
probationary teacher. The
more experienced staff, however, gave much practical and moral support and
sharing a cabin with Pennyland Head Teacher Ben Green was an experience in
itself. A Head Teacher of the old
school, much respected and supportive, to the end of his career, of his
colleagues in Pennyland, the Head Teachers’ Association and the Educational
Institute of Scotland. The
school trips were highly popular and the cruises over-subscribed.
In 1971 the bookings for the following year’s cruise so exceeded demand
that a ballot had to be held for places and five reserves chosen.
All the P7 pupils who had not been on the previous capital tour were
offered a place and the remainder of the P7 pupils and the P6 applicants had
their names placed in a ‘hat’. A
cruise on the SS Uganda to Holland, Denmark and Norway is remembered by Ann
Baird. She still has a small badge
she got on the ship but food brought the most vivid of memories.
She seems to recall awful meals and the shock of getting mayonnaise on
her chips instead of tomato sauce while in Holland.
My own memories of the food are quite different but then the staff meals
were certainly of a quite different standard! The
report by Heather Sinclair (MacLean) of her trip to Edinburgh is worth
reproducing here in full to give an indication of the breadth of activities. ‘In
Primary 7 we went on a school trip to Edinburgh.
We were allowed to take £10 each spending money with us but I think some
people took some extra. We left
Thurso on the mid-day train on the Monday and arrived in Edinburgh in the
evening. We stayed in a hotel in
Royal Terrace. On the Tuesday we
went to a fire station which also had a museum in it with lots of old pictures,
equipment and uniforms and even some old fire engines.
We also went to the Castle and in the evening we visited the Commonwealth
Pool. On Wednesday we went on a bus and visited Dunfermline in Fife where we
were shown around the abbey. We
stopped briefly in Culross where my grandparents lived.
I think our group called at Linlithgow Palace on the way back to
Edinburgh by the Kincardine Bridge. On
Wednesday evening anyone who had relatives in Edinburgh could be visited by
them. My Granny and Grandpa came
over from Culross to see me. They hadn’t seen us at Culross during the day but
some of granny’s friends had and thought we looked very smart – we all wore
school uniform all the time and we all had to wear blue coats or anoraks and
yellow woolly hats. On the Thursday
morning we left the hotel and put our luggage into the left luggage office at
Waverley. In the morning we went to
the Museum of Childhood and the Wax Museum.
In the afternoon we went to the zoo and were allowed to wander about
ourselves in small groups. In the
evening we visited the pictures and saw ‘Airport 77’.
We got the overnight train late on Thursday evening and arrived back in
Thurso on the Friday morning.’ In
the school log for May 1977 Mr McIvor notes: ‘A
very successful Capital Tour to Edinburgh involving 60 Primary Seven pupils and
seven members of staff took place at a total cost per child of £32-50.
Commendations received re. the pupils’ behaviour.’ This
was a quite astonishing party and must have been hard work before and during the
event for the Head Teacher and staff concerned.
Large numbers of pupils create practical problems even with a generous
pupil to staff ratio. Getting
twenty-five children across the road at the ‘Green Man’ is relatively easy
but with increasing group numbers the greater the difficulty in many different
situations. York
visits are now commonplace due to the accessibility of the city from the far
north and the compactness of the facilities while there.
Though nearly 600 miles away the new roads and bridges in the Highlands
have made the journey possible in a single day so allowing more time for
sightseeing in York. In earlier
times schools journeying to York
had to break their journey at Glasgow or Edinburgh. A
typical York itinerary includes a variety of museum visits, an outing to
Manchester to Granada TV studios and an afternoon at Flamingoland Fun Park.
In addition there are evening activities to get the best value from the
long distance visit. The evening
visits have included tenpin bowling and supper at the Megabowl, a visit to the
cinema, a ghost walk and a disco in the group’s hotel.
The
log entry for May 1999 states: ‘Thiry-six
pupils, accompanied by Mr Lannon, Mrs Sutherland, Miss Donaldson and Mrs
Rutherford, enjoyed a six day visit to York and Manchester.
The York itinerary included visits to the Jorvik Centre, the York Dungeon
and Clifford’s Tower. On Thursday
the group visited Granada Studios and Manchester United’s ground at Old
Trafford. The former visit,
including Coronation Street, was very worthwhile and the Old Trafford visit,
being excellent, will be well worth repeating.
As usual the Eden Camp and Flamingoland visits were well received with
the latter probably, for the pupils, the highlight of the York excursion.
As usual there were evening visits to the cinema, bowling alley and to
the centre of York for a ghost walk..’ For the year 2000 the programme changed so that a visit to the Millennium Dome, London Eye, the Trocadero Centre, Tower Bridge and other attractions in London could take place to celebrate the new Millennium. It is hoped that the start of the new Millennium and the Millennium Visit will make a lasting impression on the participating pupils and staff. |