The Orkney Image Library
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Picture taken today. Objects probably date from 1930s.
On the right is the only image I have of a Stromness Academy crest (the one carved at the top of the Dux board - image #23407). Essentially, the only difference from its predecessor on the left (apart from the lack of red and blue paint) is in the change from Secondary School to Academy.
I'm rather puzzled. Image #22725 shows youngsters at Stromness SECONDARY SCHOOL in 1935, whereas the first Dux of the ACADEMY is dated 1924 on the board. Presumably the board was created after the change to 'Academy' and some names entered retroactively.
So when exactly was the name of the school changed? And what determined the distance into the past from which Dux names would be retrieved? Was there a SECONDARY SCHOOL Dux board in existence up to 1924? Is there an Academy store labelled 'Non-PC Items' where all the Dux boards are gently mouldering?
There are folk still around who attended the school under both names and can probably shed some light. (If my family had settled in Stromness a few years earlier, I just might have been one of them.) And there's probably an Academy archivist - official or otherwise - who knows a lot.
I've found no help on the internet but I may be looking in the wrong places.
Picture added on 02 June 2010 at 14:41
In a display I did for the school library some years ago, I trawled through the school logbooks in the Orkney Library and Archive. I have just looked back at the timeline created and I have it recorded that the school named was changed in 1937.
Added by Frances Sinclair on 18 April 2014
Your comment Frances was in direct reply to my question - and I rudely failed to acknowledge it, let alone thank you.
Please accept my belated thanks now, and my apologies.
So the Academy 'Dux board' at picture #23407 opened with names from the last 13 years of the Secondary School's existence. Not a particularly 'round' figure, so rather than just an arbitrary choice perhaps it dates from when the Dux system was introduced (across Scotland?).
<< back
Please accept my belated thanks now, and my apologies.
So the Academy 'Dux board' at picture #23407 opened with names from the last 13 years of the Secondary School's existence. Not a particularly 'round' figure, so rather than just an arbitrary choice perhaps it dates from when the Dux system was introduced (across Scotland?).
Added by Ian Hourston on 07 March 2016
Stromness
