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Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1096932
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1096932
150. Carved Stone, Royal High School.
An armorial panel, brought from the High School of 1577-8, was inserted in 1897 above the doorway in the W. wall of the hall of the modern Royal High School buildings above Regent Road. It has a triangular pediment, enriched on one side with fragmentary crockets, and containing in the tympanum a crown above the initials I(acobus) R(ex) 6, which are flanked by two thistle-slips. The panel itself has a moulded margin and displays the triple-towered castle of the burgh with the initials I S above and the following inscription below: MVSIS RESPVBLICA / FLORET ("The state flourishes by the Muses"). A thistle-head separates the last word from the date. (Fig. 34.)
The Grammar School, or Schola Magna, from which the Royal High School originated, is mentioned in charters of 1547 (1) and of 1552 (2), at which period it occupied a site on the S. slope of the Cowgate valley and was approached from the Kirk O' Field Vennel, or College Wynd. The "principal grammar school of the burgh" is mentioned in 1519 (3), but nothing is said of its situation. From another entry in the Burgh Records (4) it appears that the premises were rebuilt in 1554, a house at the foot of Blackfriars' Wynd having been taken over to accommodate the School while the work was in progress (5). In 1577 the School was removed to anew schoolhouse, built for the purpose in the garden of the Blackfriars' Monastery; this building appears in Gordon's view of 1647 and an illustration of it is given by Steven (6). By 1777 the School had outgrown these quarters, and another building was begun in that year on the adjacent site at the foot of Infirmary Street (7). The foundation-stone of the existing High School was laid in 1825 (8).
RCAHMS 1951, visited c.1941.
(1) Reg. Mag. Sig., 1546-1580, No. 93. (2) Reg. Cart. St. Egid., p. 258. (3) B.R., 1403-1528, pp. 193 f. (4) B.R., 1528-1557, p. 210. (5) Ibid., p. 218. (6) History of the High School of Edinburgh, p. 14. (7) Ibid., p. 123. (8) Ibid., p. 21 4.
