Dundee, City Square, 'grammar School'
School (16th Century)
Site Name Dundee, City Square, 'grammar School'
Classification School (16th Century)
Canmore ID 33510
Site Number NO43SW 50
NGR NO 4035 3022
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/33510
- Council Dundee, City Of
- Parish Dundee (Dundee, City Of)
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District City Of Dundee
- Former County Angus
NO43SW 50 4035 3022.
(NO 4035 3022) Old Grammar School (NR) (Site of)
OS 25" map, (1959)
The site of the Grammar School built in 1588-9, partly on the site of St Clement's Church (NO43SW 49) in which it had probably been housed since 1548 when a former school built in 1435 was destroyed.
This building, plain and of two storeys, served until the end of the 18th century (when another school was built in St Mary's Churchyard, at the bottom of School Wynd) after which the school building served as a magistrate's court-room. It was demolished in 1872.
A Maxwell 1884; A Maxwell 1891; A C Lamb 1895.
Site occupied by City Square.
Visited by OS (J L D) 17 April 1958.
Publication Account (1988)
In the late 16th-century building renewal after the English invasions and Reformation crisis, a new grammar school was built in 1589 on the south-east corner of The Vault. A two-storeyed building with an outside staircase, it remained upstanding until demolished in 1871 when the Town House was extended.3 In 1789 the grammar school had been transferred to School Wynd, where it was housed with the English School founded at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1785 Dundee Academy was founded and used as its premises the old hospital outwith the Nethergate Port. All three schools united in 1829 as the Dundee Public Seminaries, and were rehoused in 1834 in the present building, the name being changed by royal charter in 1859 to the High School of Dundee.4
NOTES
3. Maxwell, Dundee (1891), 90.
4. The High School of Dundee, (anon) (Dundee 1964).
Information from ‘Historic Dundee: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1988).
