Gilbertfield House School Explained

Gilbertfield House School was an academy at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, which between 1863 and 1878 prepared boys for entrance to universities, the Civil Service and commerce. Among its pupils were the statesman Bonar Law, the philosopher John Henry Muirhead and the sons of David Livingstone.

Foundation and character

Gilbertfield was established in 1863 at the private initiative of John Adams “to supply a want hitherto felt in Hamilton and its neighbourhood”[1] and occupied premises which he had recently bought and enlarged on High Patrick Street. He conducted this fee-paying establishment in tandem with his headmastership of St John’s Grammar School, a Free Church foundation in Hamilton with over 400 pupils. Many of his private students had previously attended St John’s and proceeded to Gilbertfield for higher education, but he also attracted (and offered boarding for) boys from families based further afield including continental Europe, India and the Caribbean.[2] Pupils were generally between the ages of 12 and 15 years. Their number was never large: in the 1872-3 session the total was 54.[3]

The school was advertised as an “English and Classical School” and an “Establishment for the Board and Education of Young Gentlemen” where “pupils are prepared for the Universities, the Civil Service Examinations, and Commercial Pursuits”.[4] From the outset it had English, Classics, Modern Languages (“French and German read and spoken daily”), Mathematics, and Writing Departments, taught painting and drawing, and provided instruction in dancing, deportment, gymnastics and fencing.[5] Drill, under ex-army instructors, was an important element of the school regime.[6]

Some of the school’s masters were resident, and others visited regularly; most were graduates or held institutional qualifications. John Adams himself was an Edinburgh University prizeman who had been on the teaching staff at Moray House. He kept abreast of best practice in education, regularly visiting the leading teaching colleges and major public schools in England and Scotland.[7] He was a first cousin of the missionary-educationalist John Fordyce, whose two sons[8] were pupils at Gilbertfield at the same time as Adams’ elder boy.[9]

History

Early examination success for the school came when its pupils John Mackintosh and John Wallace Kidston were placed high in the Edinburgh University Local Examinations of 1865.[10] Kidston and his brother William Hamilton Kidston were cousins of Bonar Law, and the quality of education they received at Gilbertfield resulted in Bonar Law being placed there in 1871.[11] He won prizes for Greek and English in 1873,[12] and Adams recorded him as being “a boy of great mental power”.[13] Law’s fellow prizeman in Greek in 1873 was William Lewis Robertson, who served as General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in England, 1918–30, and was its Moderator in 1931.

Among other siblings who attended Gilbertfield were John Henry Muirhead and his three gifted brothers[14] and David Livingstone’s sons Thomas, who captained the school’s cricket eleven, and Oswell, who won numerous academic prizes.[15] Livingstone himself was present at the school’s 1865 prize-giving when he addressed the pupils, telling them to “Fear God, and Work Hard”. This was his last public speech in Scotland,[16] credited by Frederick Stanley Arnot as the inspiration for his own missionary work in Africa.[17]

By the early 1870s, particular emphasis was given at Gilbertfield to the teaching of Classics and arrangements were in hand for awarding annual Classics scholarships at examinations to be overseen by Glasgow University professors. In 1872 it was reported that “owing to the school’s increasing prosperity, large additions have been made to the schoolrooms, which are now more than ever admirable in their internal arrangements, perfect in ventilation”.[18] But in 1874, against the background of the Hamilton School Board proposing to make Hamilton Academy the “Higher Class School” of the Burgh under the 1872 Education Act, Adams elected to withdraw from his role at Gilbertfield and transferred the conduct of the school to William Wood, formerly of Dollar Academy.[19] Wood ran the school from the Gilbertfield House premises for four years.[20]

Closure

In 1878 Wood removed the school to premises in Douglas Street, Hamilton, where he was joined by D. G. Kinmond, also formerly of Dollar Academy, and as joint-headmasters they styled this new establishment “Clydesdale College (formerly Gilbertfield House School)”.[21] In the following year Wood left Hamilton to keep a School for Young Ladies in London, and by 1887 Clydesdale College had closed and Kinmond was teaching at Circus Place School in Edinburgh.[22]

Notable alumni

Notes and References

  1. Hamilton Advertiser, 25 June 1864.
  2. Hamilton Advertiser, 23 July and 27 August 1864, 27 October 1867.
  3. Hamilton Advertiser, 7 June 1873.
  4. Hamilton Advertiser, 25 June 1864, 24 June 1865, 4 June 1870 and 1 June 1872.
  5. Hamilton Advertiser, 27 August 1864. Scripture, History, Geography and Elocution were taught within the English Department; Modern Languages included Italian and, later, Spanish; Mathematics included Arithmetic, Algebra and Euclid (Geometry); drawing included architectural and industrial drawing and mapping.
  6. On prize-days, all school classes were drilled on the front-lawn of Gilbertfield House and reviewed by officers of the Lanarkshire Rifles. On the first such occasion, the prize for drill exercises was awarded to William H. H. Williamson who was later ordained and served as Rector of Montego Bay (1881-85) and Vicar of Holy Trinity, Ipswich (1886-1919), where his portrait is a feature of the church’s stained glass (Hamilton Advertiser, 25 June 1864, 15 April 1871).
  7. Hamilton Advertiser, 21 January 1905.
  8. The elder son, Boston Elphinstone Fordyce, graduated in Medicine at Edinburgh and practised in Cambridge; a member of the British Medical Association’s Council, 1912-14, he was a City Councillor and County Alderman.
  9. This was Esslemont Adams, aged only 7 when he began attending the school (Hamilton Advertiser, 31 May 1873). He was later Minister of the West Free Church, Aberdeen, and, while serving as a chaplain with the Gordon Highlanders, conducted the joint-service between the British and German trenches on Christmas Day 1914. https://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww1-biography/?id=515
  10. The Scotsman, 15 August 1865; Inverness Courier, 24 August 1865. Mackintosh (otherwise McIntosh) distinguished himself at Glasgow University before dying from diphtheria, aged 20, while serving as a Red Cross volunteer during the Franco-Prussian War: Hamilton Advertiser, 26 November 1870. J. W. Kidston (1851-1926) graduated in law from Oxford, was called to the English Bar in 1878, and was subsequently ordained.
  11. [Robert Blake, Baron Blake|Robert Blake]
  12. Hamilton Advertiser, 31 May 1873.
  13. Pall Mall Gazette, 26 January 1922; Hamilton Herald and Lanarkshire Weekly News, 8 January 1904.
  14. viz: James Muirhead (http://www.glasgowwestaddress.co.uk/1909_Glasgow_Men/Muirhead_James.htm), Islay Burns Muirhead, MD, and Rev. Lewis Andrew Muirhead, DD. John Muirhead’s recollection of their days at Gilbertfield appears in his Reflections by a Journeyman in Philosophy (ed. John W. Harvey, George Allen & Unwin, 1942).
  15. Hamilton Advertiser, 24 June 1865. In the 1864-5 Session, within the Second Class (Highest Division), Oswell Livingstone was Dux in Bible Knowledge, Geography, History and Composition, 1st in Latin Exercises and 2nd in Map Drawing.
  16. W. G. Blaikie, Personal Life of David Livingstone (John Murray, 1880), p. 356. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.51103/page/n377
  17. F. S. Arnot, Journal from Natal to ... the Zambesi in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol. 11, No. 2 (February 1889) at p. 69, and see Robert I. Rotberg’s "New Introduction to Arnot’s Garenganze or Seven Years Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa" in Cass Library of African Studies, Missionary Researches and Travels, No. 10 (Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1969). In Ernest Baker’s The Life and Explorations of Frederick Stanley Arnot (New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.), pp. 18-19, it is stated that Arnot was a pupil at Gilbertfield, but this seems unsupported.
  18. Hamilton Advertiser, 1 June 1872.
  19. Hamilton Advertiser, 6 September 1873; Glasgow Herald, 5 July 1875. Adams continued as Rector of St.John’s Grammar School until his retirement in 1899, aged 74.
  20. Glasgow Herald, 7 July 1877; The Scotsman, 17 January 1879.
  21. Alloa Advertiser, 28 September 1878; Glasgow Herald, 27 September 1878.
  22. Islington Gazette, 13 October 1879; The Scotsman, 29 September 1887.

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