Moray House, Edinburgh
| Moray House School of Education and Sport
| |
 Moray House Gate | |
|---|---|
| Principal: | |
| No. of students: | c.2000 |
| Website: | ed.ac.uk/education |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NT26447362 |
| Location: | 55°56’60"N, 3°10’46"W |
The Moray House School of Education and Sport ('Moray House') is a department within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
The college is based in historic buildings on the Holyrood Campus, principally in Moray House, in Edinburgh, Midlothian. located between the Canongate and Holyrood Road. The school offers academic programmes at all levels of higher education, including teacher education, Community Education, Digital Education, Outdoor and Environmental Education, Language Education, Physical Education and Sports science.
The School has approximately 2,000 students and nearly 500 academic and professional staff.[1]
History
The school has existed in one form or another since the mid-19th century, joining the University of Edinburgh in 1998. The institution currently known as Moray House was originally opened as a normal school following the Disruption of 1843. Known as 'The Free Church of Scotland's Normal and Sessional School', it was originally located in Whitefield Chapel, and then in rooms below the Music Room in Rose Street. In 1848, the school moved to its current location in Moray House, in the Canongate.
From 1864 to 1907 its Rector was Maurice Paterson LLD.[2]
In 1907, this institution merged with its Church of Scotland equivalent (the Church of Scotland Training College) and the 'Edinburgh Provincial Training Centre' was formed, with the church training colleges subsumed within this organisation.[3] The new teaching building opened at Moray House in 1931.[4]
'Moray House College of Education' was officially formed in 1959. In the early 1980s, Callendar Park College of Education, in Falkirk, was merged with Moray House, and in 1987 it merged with the Dunfermline College of Physical Education based at Cramond, and continued to exist on two separate campuses (Holyrood and Cramond) until 2001.
In 1991, the institute was linked with Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh; and was retitled 'Moray House Institute of Education'. On 1 August 1998, Moray House Institute of Education merged with the University of Edinburgh becoming its 'Faculty of Education'.
Following internal restructuring of the University of Edinburgh in 2002, Moray House became known as the 'Moray House School of Education',[5] and in 2019 was renamed 'Moray House School of Education and Sport'.[6]
Old Moray House
Old Moray House is an aristocratic mansion built after 1618. The building boasts massive obelisks flanking the gate and two very fine rooms up a turnpike stair, with elaborate original plaster ceilings and 18th Century panelling. Mary Sutton, dowager Countess of Home was the builder. Although it has been much altered by its occupants down the centuries, it remains one of the few original aristocratic houses built in the Canongate in the 16th and 17th centuries. Lady Home employed the master mason William Wallace (d. 1631).[7]
The west wing survives with two important interiors, the "Cromwell Room" which had originally had a balcony overlooking the garden, and the "Balcony Room", identified in Lady Home's inventory as "the new rowme that hes the balconie nixt the streit." Both rooms have ceilings of early 17th-century design. The Cromwell Room has an 18th-century decorative scheme involving neoclassical Roman scenes by Roderick Chalmers and James Norie. The decoration is believed to refer to the Jacobite cause.[8]
According to Lady Home's 1631 inventory there was a gallery room hung with 30 paintings.[9] A suite of vaulted rooms had access to the garden, which was landscaped with terraces, mount, walks, and a wilderness. There were two summerhouses. In February 1633, the Earl of Morton obtained her permission for the house to be used by King Charles I during his visit to Scotland, but the plan was cancelled by the death of her son, the Earl of Home.[10] In May 1650, the house was used for the wedding party of Mary Stuart and Lord Lorne (later Earl and Countess of Argyll), and it is said that the family and Archibald Johnston watched the captive Earl of Montrose being taken up the High Street. Their encounter was depicted in 1859 by the history painter James Drummond.[11]
In the 1650s the house was taken from Margaret Home, Countess of Moray for the use of Oliver Cromwell.[12]
The current Old Moray House, developed from a group of three buildings of different ages, originally grouped around a small courtyard. The earliest building was Mary, Countess of Home's 1618 mansion. The Regent's House to the east followed, probably before 1647. Finally the New House was built to the south in 1755.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Moray House, Edinburgh) |
References
- ↑ "Fast Facts". https://www.ed.ac.uk/education/about-us/fast-facts.
- ↑ "Maurice Paterson". 10 July 2015. https://www.ed.ac.uk/education/about-us/maps-estates-history/history/maurice-paterson.
- ↑ "Free Church of Scotland Training College". University of Edinburgh. https://ourhistory.is.ed.ac.uk/index.php/Free_Church_of_Scotland_Training_College.
- ↑ "The New Edinburgh School. Opened by Sir Thomas Holland. The Teachers' Task.". The Glasgow Herald: p. 19. 28 May 1931. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BaJAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iaUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3071%2C4387193.
- ↑ "Top job for bully expert". The Scotsman. 19 June 2002. http://www.scotsman.com/news/education/top-job-for-bully-expert-1-844460.
- ↑ "School of Education name change honours sport". University of Edinburgh. 1 August 2019. https://www.ed.ac.uk/arts-humanities-soc-sci/news-events/news/current-news/school-of-education-name-change-honours-sport.
- ↑ Nick Haynes & Clive B. Fenton, Building Knowledge: An Architectural History of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 2017), pp. 236-9, 237-8.
- ↑ Nick Haynes & Clive B. Fenton, Building Knowledge: An Architectural History of University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 2017), p. 239.
- ↑ Antonia Laurence Allen, "Trading Spaces", Pamela Bianchi, Displaying Art in the Early Modern Period: Exhibiting Practices and Exhibition Spaces (Routledge, 2023), citing Michael Pearce, "Vanished Comforts: Locating roles of domestic furnishings in Scotland 1500–1650", University of Dundee PhD thesis (2016), pp. 268–270
- ↑ Marilyn M. Brown & Michael Pearce, 'Lady Hoomes Yairds: The Gardens of Moray House, Edinburgh', Garden History 47:1 (2019), pp. 1-17.
- ↑ Montrose by James Drummond, NG 624
- ↑ Marilyn M. Brown & Michael Pearce, 'Lady Hoomes Yairds: The Gardens of Moray House, Edinburgh', Garden History 47:1 (2019), pp. 1-17.