A historic venue reimagined as a place for the life of the mind.
The School of Fordyce’ was founded in 1678 with an endowment from Walter Ogilvie of Reidhyth which was to yield, in perpetuity, an annual income sufficient to provide 20 boys from poor families with a higher education for five years at the school and four at the University of Aberdeen. In the course of its existence, it was located in various premises in what is now a beautifully preserved conservation village. It settled into its Victorian building in 1882. Renamed as ‘Fordyce Academy’ in 1900, it became, in time, one of the most important feeder schools to the University of Aberdeen and was described as ‘The Eton of the North’.
Magazine: Telling Tales out of School
Architect: Jill Andrews
Stone Mason: Andy Alan
Joiner: Neil Donald
Interior Designer: Karen Wootton
The stonemasons have completed their work on the external walls; new windows have been fitted throughout the building; the roof structure has been repaired; and the fallen stone finial has been reinstalled above the door on the North porch. The bell, founded in Glasgow for the school, has been taken down to avoid further damage to the bellcote, and will be positioned in the South porch where it can be rung again!
Soon, the concrete floors will be lifted, and the old boiler house will be dismantled and rebuilt. Then, the walls will be insulated, and a sustainable-heating system will be installed. In time, the chimneys, now swept of decades of birds’ nests, will be fitted with woodburning stoves to replace the original open fires; and the original hardwood floor-boards, the book-cupboard doors (some still with their keys), the cast-iron radiators and the glass light-shades will all be restored.
New front doors will be built and painted in a dark green-blue paint (‘Sgurr Alasdair’, manufactured by the Scottish ‘Isle of Skye’ paint company) - a fitting choice, we hope, for this village located “atween the fish an’ cattle”. And the original door key will be displayed in the front hall.
Our hope for a reinvented Fordyce Academy is that it might become a focus for those who, traversing the same terrain from different directions to different destinations, are thinking about what they should make of themselves, and how they should make something, too, of their own lives.
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