School’s out
Just back from a quick trip to Scotland to watch Dundee United play UNA Strassen of Luxembourg in the second qualifying round of the UEFA Conference League.
I drove to St Andrews – which is 13 miles from Dundee – and stayed not in a hotel but in a small self-catering apartment in my old school. Yes, you read that correctly.
From 1967 to 2021, when Madras College moved to a single £50 million campus on the edge of town, the school was located on two sites a mile apart. In 1970, when I was eleven, first and second years (years 7 and 8 in England) went to a new building, opened in 1967, on Kilrymont Road, a residential area of St Andrews.
After year 2 those pupils deemed more academic moved to the original building in the centre of town. Constructed in 1832, when Madras was founded, the South Street property has now been purchased by the university and is due to re-open, in a year or two, as New College.
Meanwhile the Kilrymont building has been repurposed and now offers en suite accommodation including self-catering apartments. Sadly there were very few reminders of my time there apart from the assembly hall (now an ‘event space’), the old dining area (now an open plan lounge area), and the staircase I used to run down in the daily race to be first on the school bus.
There is a nice reception area (above) but the bright and airy corridors that once led to classrooms on the first and second floors are now narrow and windowless. Outside, the sports hall and tennis courts have been replaced by a new building offering student accommodation, and similar buildings are in various stages of construction on what used to be the school playing fields.
At the front there’s a faux garden area and the playground where we played football at lunchtime has been given a makeover with the addition of grass and a small car park (one of three on site). There is also a smoking shelter, which I definitely don’t remember from my school days. (I mentioned this to an old schoolfriend who commented that in our day the smoking area was in the boys’ toilets.)
In truth, my happiest school days were at South Street when I was a bit older and we had the freedom to roam around town during the day. Kilrymont, in contrast, was more restricted which is why it felt mildly rebellious to spend my lunch money not in the school dining hall, as intended, but on ham rolls and sweets in the solitary shop nearby.
I was especially happy to move on from woodwork (year 1) and metalwork (year 2), subjects I neither enjoyed nor was any good at. Torture might be too strong a word but they were the longest two hours of the week, and the only saving grace was that they were on Friday afternoon and we had the weekend to look forward to.
My biggest regret whilst I was at Kilrymont was not auditioning to be in the school production of Oliver. I’m not saying I would have got a leading role (it’s safe to say I wouldn’t) but when I saw the show I regretted my decision because it was so good.
I do have some good memories though: sports day, the annual five-a-side football competition, even the year 2 Christmas party in the assembly hall. On my final day at Kilrymont in June 1972 I actually eschewed the school bus in favour of cycling to school (twelve miles each way). Goodness knows why. I may have been trying to impress someone.
See also: Back to school
