Orkney Image Library

To my uneducated eye, the children look quite young to be up at the grammar?

Maybe it's just me getting old ("the secondary school kids look younger every year")!

In those days there was ONLY the Grammar School and it housed everybody from 5 to 15, or whatever the leaving age was. It wasn't until 1956 that the Infants moved to Papdale, and the rest of the Primary moved in 1962.

My dad was a schoolboy in the thirties and I remember him saying that there was an iron gate in the corridor which separated the 'lower' school from the 'upper' school. His dad was one of the last pupils at the old Glaitness School. I attended Papdale Infants in 1962, where the headmistress was Miss Work and our class teacher was Miss Fiddler.

To add to the "saga" of the above establishment, I think that it's only correct to point out, that at the time this photo was taken, the school was probably called Kirkwall Burgh School.The name Grammar being substituted at a later date.
Perhaps Paul will be able to give us a date of the change.!!?

Is it just my imagination or is the teacher very small?

I could have sworn that the booklet on the history of the Grammar School, published in 1976 when the present building was completed, gave the date, but I can't find it. From looking at Peace's Almanacs though it must have been 1931 or 1932. The Grammar School was actually the old name. When the Education Act of 1872 came into force, there were three schools on the School Place site, the Grammar, the Subscription and the Infant. These were amalgamated as Kirkwall Burgh School. There is a photo of these three schools taken from the Cathedral.