The origins of Lews Castle College by Iain Minty
The origins of Lews Castle College by Iain Minty
Iain Minty was a lecturer at LCC from 1993-2013 and Education Subject Network leader for UHI from 2003 - 2013. This piece was originally written for the Stornoway Gazette and has been republished here with the kind permission of Mr Minty.
September this year sees the 70th anniversary of the opening of Lews Castle College. A significant event, made all the more so as the college is about to merge with two other UHI colleges; UHI North Highland and UHI West Highland (whose main campuses were based in Thurso and Fort William), which will mean the name Lews Castle College fades from existence. While its opening in 1953 remains within the living memory of many in Lewis, how the college came to begin life in the Castle is not so well known. It is a story rooted in the enormous social changes that took place at the end of WW2 and of some remarkable men from Lewis who changed the nature of education in the island.
The first suggestion of a technical college for Lewis was made by Dr John L. Robertson, born in Stornoway in 1854. In his book, The Castles of Lewis, Peter Cunningham records a recommendation from Dr Robertson in 1901 that;
“that there is a clamant need of a central Technical School in Lewis and the local resources are quite inadequate for its establishment and maintenance…..Such popular instruction as Household Economy, Wood and Iron Work, and Practical Navigation and Seamanship would be leading features.”
Robertson’s suggestion, as part of national discussions then taking place about further and technical education reform, even got as far as the House of Lords, but was rejected by the House of Commons.
Robertson was an eminent son of Stornoway, who became Senior Chief Inspector of Schools for Scotland in1888. In 1912 he was awarded an Honorary LL.D. by Edinburgh University and in 1919 made a C.B. When he died in Inverness in 1927, his body was returned to Lewis; flags flew at half-mast and all businesses were closed at noon. Senior boys of The Nicolson Institute headed the funeral procession to Sandwick Cemetery. Sir Henry Craik, M.P. for a Glasgow constituency, considered him to be ‘a landmark in the educational history of Scotland’. Robertson’s legacy endures today through the Stornoway Welfare Fund.
Following Robertson’s 1901 suggestion, another 40 years were to pass before discussions began to emerge about technical education in the island. While Leverhulme’s legacy in Lewis and Harris is still argued about, one of his bequests was to have far-reaching consequences. When he prepared to leave Lewis in 1923, his Edinburgh lawyers drew up a deed to establish the Stornoway Trust. One of the provisions in that deed concerned the Castle and that it;
“shall be used for Municipal purposes in connection with the said Burgh of Stornoway….”
Leverhulme’s intention was that the Castle would become Stornoway’s Town Hall, but his wish was to have another, if different, outcome.
At this point in the story, we need to introduce a number of remarkable Lewis Head teachers who, between them, were to directly and indirectly influence the path of technical education in the island during the inter-war years, and following the 1945 General Election in which Labour swept to power. One of them was John Macsween, who in January 1929, became the Head teacher of Aird School in Point.
(John Macsween with wife Joanna outside Lews Castle. Published with kind permissions of Catriona Nicholson.)
MacSween served as an officer in the Cameron Highlanders during the WW1 and proved an extraordinarily gifted teacher at Aird School, inspiring staff, pupils, and parents. He was passionate about navigation and mathematics, both of which he taught with considerable success. In the hours of darkness, junior secondary boys enjoyed communicating by Morse code with cargo vessels steaming through the Minch, and, on the following day, reporting to John Macsween their names, shipping-lines, destinations, cargoes
Comunn Eachdraidh Rubha records a letter written to Macsween in 1941, by the Director of Education for Ross and Cromarty, Dr George Thompson, that Aird Public School was the only Scottish school in which the teaching of navigation had been approved by the Inspectorate. The Board of Trade had officially recognised navigation in the curriculum and several pupils from the school had obtained appointments in the merchant navy as cadets with a remission of several months on the normal seagoing apprenticeship.
Another influential head teacher was Murdo Montgomery who in 1933 became the Head teacher at Laxdale School. His daughter, Catherine Montgomery Blight, records her father and Malcolm K MacMillan, then MP for the islands, intervening with the Lews Castle Trust (a sub-committee of the Stornoway Trust) to prevent the Castle becoming a hotel. The irony of that suggestion echoes today. Catherine is interesting in her own right; she was one of the founders of the David Hume Trust, an independent think-tank based in Scotland, to increase understanding of the economy and public policy. She died in 2020, aged 85.
Other influential Head teachers were John Murdo MacMillan at Back, John Smith at Lionel and Sandwick, Charlie MacLeod at Shawbost, John Murdo MacLeod at Balallan and Donald MacDonald at Tolsta and Bayble. These men had all seen service during WW2 and on being demobbed shared a wish that, following the end of the war, there should be no return to the old, semi-feudal, order. A number of them were key member of the local Labour Party and close associates of MK (as he was known) MacMillan, the MP for the Western Isles. After his retirement as Head of Back School John Murdo MacMillan went on to become Chair of Comhairle nan Eilean’s Education Committee. Head teachers in the 1940 and 50s occupied a status in the islands that their counterparts today would struggle to recognise. They were respected and their opinions listened to. They would have been heard across the Minch by the Education Committee of Ross and Cromarty County Council, and especially by the Director of Education, Dr George Thompson.
1945 and the end of WW2 was a time of momentous social change in the UK. The Beveridge Report signalled preparations for the introduction of the National Health Service and the Education (Scotland) Act 1945 introduced universal secondary education up to the age of 14. Thousands of men who had served in the war returned to civilian life, determined that there was to be no return to life as it had been pre-war. In Lewis, as elsewhere in the UK, the mood was a for change.
In September 1945, just a month after the Japanese surrender and the end of WW2, the Provost of Stornoway, A.J. MacKenzie, as Chair of the Lews Castle Trustees, obtained his colleagues’ agreement in response to a proposal from Ross and Cromarty Education Committee that a “Technical Institute ….. be established” in Lewis. The Education Committee met in Dingwall the following month, under the chairmanship of the Rev JG Nicolson. The committee minute records receipt of a letter;
“…… from the Clerk to the Stornoway Trustees stating that the Trustees had under consideration a proposal to place Lewis (sic) Castle at the disposal of the County Council, to be used as a Technical College, at a nominal rent. Before coming to any final decision, they wished to know if the Council were interested in acquiring the Castle for such purpose and if so, requesting that a comprehensive scheme, covering curricula and use of the buildings, be furnished to them. It was agreed to express appreciation of the proposal and to obtain a detailed report from the County Architect and Director of Education.”
Thus began lengthy and detailed negotiations to bring the plans to fruition; it was to take another eight years. The final agreement between Stornoway Trust not only included a nominal rent of the Castle but also about 10 acres of land, most of which had been the kitchen garden, to the north of the Castle.
Records of the Lewis District Education Sub-Committee are held by Tasglan in Museum nan Eilean. They relate a meeting in January 1949, where necessary building work was agreed for alterations. Some of this work may have been the result of Leverhulme’s “improvements”, when he created the present-day ballroom by taking out an internal wall.
In July 1949 the Lewis District Education Sub-Committee agreed to the appointment of a Janitor at the Castle; Neil MacDonald, wee Neillie, was transferred from the Stornoway Trust at a weekly wage of £4.8.0. Neil had lived in the Castle in the inter-war years where his father was the caretaker. Neil carried on the tradition as the newly appointed Janitor. Also in that year, in response to a question from Councillor Alan Cameron, the member for North Tolsta, ex Provost Roderick Smith (chair of the sub-committee), replied that navigation was already being taught in “…five Lewis schools and that further provision would be made in the Lews Castle scheme.”
In 1951 Ross and Cromarty Education Committee appointed Colonel John Macsween as Principal designate of Lews Castle College. Given his background at Aird School and his acknowledged navigation expertise, he was an obvious choice. He spent the next two years preparing the Castle and appointing his staff, all of whom were in place by the beginning of August, 1953. One of them, the boat builder, John Murdo MacLeod from Port of Ness, was still building boats long into his retirement. The curriculum was built around three main themes; textiles, navigation and building construction. 40 years later, when I began teaching in the college in 1993, these three pillars of the curriculum were still very much in evidence.
In the summer of 1953, a few weeks before the opening of the college, the only woman member of staff was appointed. Matron Miss Margaret MacLeod, Big Maggie, was to become an important figure in the lives of many of the 95 young lads who were enrolled in September 1953. In a later college magazine, Margaret wrote: “I get the occasional letter from past students, even if one of them did accuse me, possibly justifiably, of pouring cod liver oil down unwilling throats.” Not all the first intake of students were from Lewis; at least one was from England and some came from Harris.
Wee Neillie, the Janitor, was a much-loved character with a squeaky voice, while Big Maggie, towered over him and just about every student and teacher. The Art teacher, Murdo Macleod, Beetlecrusher, was about 6 ft 3in and may have rivalled Maggie in height. Neillie was about a foot shorter!
The college was opened formally on September 24th, 1953. The chief guest was Earl Home, Minister of State at the Scottish Office. The Principal, Colonel John Macsween, was too ill to be present; sadly, he was in the final stages of terminal cancer and died a month later in October. Earl Home later that day opened the town’s new fire station in Robertson Road. He became better known as Sir Alec Douglas Home, a short-lived Conservative Prime Minister (1963-4).
Murdo (Lava) MacLeod was among the first intake of students in September 1953. Encouraged by the Laxdale School Headteacher, Kenny Smith, (who went on to follow John Macsween as Principal of the college) Murdo enrolled in the building and wood work course, run by the late John Murdo MacLeod. Murdo recalls one of the first tasks he and fellow students were given was to build a timber frame workshop that stood in what is now the museum carpark.
In a recent interview, Murdo told me how he would watch from the Castle windows to see boats coming into the South Beach harbour, and how he obtained work as a casual docker, often well paid too. Contrary to the view that the college was just for boys. Murdo’s wife, Anna, completed a 20-week textile course for darners from MacKenzie’s mill. This was run by Donald (Dopey) MacKenzie, the textile lecturer; Anna still has her certificate to prove it. Murdo and Anna fondly recalled the Christmas dances in the ballroom as being one of the highlights of the Stornoway calendar.
The college passed from Ross and Cromarty County Council to Comhairle nan Eilean in 1975, and in 1992, following a reorganisation of how Further Education in Scotland was delivered, became independent from the Comhairle, much to the annoyance and frustration of councillors and the then Director of Education Neil Galbraith. There were many twists and turn along the way as the college became an integral part of University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), culminating in the award of university status in 2011. But all that’s another story.
I am indebted to ex- Convenor of Comhairle nan Eilean, Sandy Matheson, and Malcolm MacDonald from Stornoway Historical Society for their help in researching this story.