BY MICHAEL RUSSELL
Photos and newspaper articles and attendance registers from the 19th century were among the exhibits on show last weekend to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the old primary school in Kyleakin.
It was a particularly emotional day for two families from the southern hemisphere, the Mansells from New Zealand and McColms from Australia.
Hylton Grigor was a pupil at the school in the early 1950s, and he is pictured along with his brothers in photos that were on display in what is now Kyleakin Connections. Their father owned the butcher’s shop in the village and the family lived on Kyleside. Hylton’s daughter Ruth (now Mansell) came over with her husband Paul for a flying visit to Skye and is now back in New Zealand.
One of the exhibition’s organisers, Caroline Clouston of the Kyleakin Local History Society, commented: “It meant so much to Ruth to visit Skye for the first time and meet Hector and Anna Belle who had so many memories of the family and their school days.”
Five members of the McColm family came over from Australia on holiday and were delighted to read about the lighthouse on nearby Eilean Bàn (built in 1857 by the Stevenson engineers) where their great-grandfather was the keeper in the late 19th century before the family moved, initially to Montrose.
Caroline added: “Their grandparents who attended the school are on the school roll. This was the first time three of the family had visited, and they were delighted to spend the morning viewing the exhibition. They stayed in the lighthouse cottage where their grandparents lived.”
In total, 198 children were on the Kyleakin Primary School roll between 1883 and 1904, according to a copy of the register. Also on display was a Bible, presented to Murdo MacIver, headmaster at the school, in September 1937 by the Free Church Congregation at nearby Strath. This Bible was discovered in 2018 in an Oxfam Bookshop in Stirling, on sale for £2, and given to Mr MacIver’s surviving relatives, via the history society.
An obituary from the Free Press was also on display, commemorating another head teacher, Flo Reid, who, along with sister Kay, helped the Free Press into existence in 1972 by providing its first premises, Collie Bhurich, a large house near the-then ferry terminal.
Opened in 1876, the old primary school, now the home of Kyleakin Connections, was replaced by the current school in 1982.
