This is Invermoriston school. I went to school here from about 1930 to 1936, and then I went on to Glenurquhart secondary school. My mother taught here from 1918 till I was born I think in 1924. The school was built about 1880 and the first schoolmaster was a Grant, what was his first name?... Alexander Grant. He had a big family in this little schoolhouse. My father went to school here of course. In my day there were about 20 pupils, and we were in 3 rows of desks, 7 pupils in each desk. Mrs MacKenzie was teacher for quite a few years. She was a widow and she had 5 of a family. She came about 1930 and taught here till 1950 I would imagine.
Invermoriston school 1920
After that I went to school in Drumnadrochit. It wasn't a big school; still not a big school about 50 pupils, I would imagine, in the secondary department anyway. About 4 teachers we had then for all subjects. The schoolmasters were very strict. The belt was very much in evidence. The Broch, the headmaster Mr Fraser was always known as the Broch anyway. Hewas quite mad. "You boy! Out with your hand!" He would twist the belt on his hand going "Eek! Eek!", squealing, jump up and down, and then he would take two hands, and jump in the air, whoosh! like that, and you'd get six of the best. Apart from the pain it was quite terrifying. Ha! That's true. I got the strap quite often myself. Mainly for not doing my homework. I was the laziest boy in the school! But I wasn't the only laziest boy. There was one in every class, or two.
1923
The school here was closed down for lack of pupils, not long ago in, say 1990. The roll went down to about 3 or 4. I transported the pupils into this school from Blaraidh and Alltsaigh. I also did the school run into Dulchreichard school for many years. At one time, the Dulchreichard school was closed, and there were two teachers in this school, and I carried the pupils down from as far as Tomachrasgaidh to school here for a spell. That was before the hydro scheme started about 1950. But after that, both schools were open and both had two teachers for a while. All the pupils are up the glen now.
1930
At one time I carried pupils from Ceann a' Chroc to Fort Augustus. With two school cars I used to do a mileage of about 150 miles every day carrying pupils to school. So I was kept quite busy. The closure of the school here didn't have a great impact on that. It was minor mileage in the school runs. About two years ago the school contracts were out for offer as usual every three years. But my offer was not the lowest, so I lost the school contracts. So that was me more or less retired. The buses weren't always breaking down but eh... the last year I had a lot of bad luck. At one time I ran about six buses on the hydro schemes carrying workmen in the 1950s mainly. I ran these buses as far as Buckie and Aberdeen taking men home for the weekend.
1935
This hole in the wall here, there was a tap there where you could get a drink of water. There was also a sink and a tap in the school lobby there. And the toilets were down at the bottom of the playground. When I came to school first they were dry closets down there. But in my late schooldays they fitted water closets there. That was the boys' playground there. The girls' playground was over there, the other side of the wall. We were very much segregated all the time I was in school here.
We played football, we played shinty. It wasn't much of a pitch bit it was big enough. We also spent a lot of time running around with a piece of stick, which was a car. Broom, broom, broom! Round there, up here, round there, round and round and round. Broom, broom, broom! Beep! Uurrk! Broooooom! When it snowed we could slide down the bank on a tin tray or similar. We hadn't advanced to plastic bags in those days.
Here was the school garden which was fenced off. We were taught gardening here. We grew potatoes and I don't know what. Over the wall was the school teacher's garden.
