Education and Intellectual Life

Towns of any size or antiquity had a grammar school which might attract boarders from quite a wide area. Other towns shared parish schools. The later eighteenth century saw the introduction of academies, which offered a wider range of subjects, including sciences, and commercial and technical subjects such as book-keeping and navigation. Academies provided a top layer of education, replacing grammar schools and aiming to reduce the need for older pupils to go away to university. But their fees were higher, and they helped increase class divisions in education.

Photograph of hand bell from Haddington Grammar School.
Photograph of Montrose Academy, built 1815.
Handbell from Haddington Grammar School, dated 1680.
© SCRAN/East Lothian Museum Service		 Montrose Academy, built in 1815.
© SCRAN/Charles McKean

Academies were attractive to leisure towns as they brought in more resident gentry. The first was established in Perth in 1761. Subsequent foundations included Dundee (1786), Inverness (1791), Ayr (1798), Elgin (1801), Dumfries (1802), Kilmarnock (1807), Tain (1811), Irvine (1814), Forfar (1815), Kirkcudbright (by 1815) and Arbroath (1821). Some proposed academies, as at Thurso in 1812, failed to get off the ground, usually through lack of subscriptions. Most academies were established in handsome new buildings.

Printed subscription list for Kirkcudbright Academy, 1816. Note the inclusion of a number of overseas donors.
© SCRAN/Dumfries & Galloway Council

 Photograph of printed subscription list for Kirkcudbright Academy, 1816.


Libraries and bookshops were essential for an increasingly literate elite, hungry for access to the latest books and periodicals such as the Scots Magazine and the Lady’s Magazine. Subscription libraries allowed the sharing of the cost of books, and reading rooms allowed the sharing of newspapers. Kelso had a library in 1750, and Dunfermline in 1789. By 1825 there were libraries across the country, from Whithorn to Wick and Kirkwall, and Fort William to Coupar Angus.


The first local newspapers were established during the eighteenth century, including the Dumfries Mercury (1721), the Aberdeen Press & Journal (1747), the Kelso Chronicle (1783), the Dundee Courier (1801), the Greenock Advertiser (1802), the Ayr Advertiser (1803), the Inverness Journal (1807), and the Leith Telegraph (1808).

 

Advertisement from the Glasgow Courier, 1809, for the first passage boats on the Forth & Clyde Canal.
© SCRAN/East Dunbartonshire Council
Photograph of cutting from Glasgow Courier, 1809.


A few towns had intellectual societies such as the Literary and Antiquarian Society established in Perth in 1784.