It was 80 years ago that Nona Robb stepped through the doors of Kingsbarns Primary School for the first time.
And as she helped Fife’s oldest surviving primary school celebrate its 200th anniversary, she recalled her days there from the age of four until she went to the Burgh School in nearby St Andrews.
Nona, 84, told how she and her school chums would make ice slides in the playground during winter – a stunt unlikely to be permitted by head teachers today!
And she told how the belt or a thrown blackboard duster or chalk would be used to chastise those who stepped out of line.
She said: “In the winter time at night we used to take buckets up to the school and throw water down at the side of the wall – that was for the little ones’ slide the next day.
“Then we put water down to freeze across the corner of the playground and that was the big ones’ slide.
“They had the belt then, or it was either the blackboard duster or a piece of chalk that got flung at you.
“That didn’t happen to me at all luckily!”
Gone from Kingsbarns Primary School today is a big furnace Nona remembers in the classroom, which was surrounded with an iron fence and emptied into an ash pit in the playground.
Also gone, fortunately for today’s pupils, are the toilets in the shed outside.
Nona, who still lives in Kingsbarns, also remembered living across the road from her head teacher, Mr Wilkie, and going for tea at the home of teacher Miss Page.
And at Christmas the school would be gifted a Christmas tree by the Cheape family of Strathtyrum.
Nona, who went on to become a Woolworths staff supervisor before having her two sons, said: “It was a happy time. All the kids in the in the village used to play together, there was no this little gang and that little gang.”
There was plenty more history to pore over for visitors at the school’s bicentenary celebration.
Pupils helped to create a display charting the school’s timeline, which also included a collection of photographs from through the years.
And children turned back the years at their Victorian-themed fair, playing old games and hosting traditional stalls, including a coconut shy.
Pictures from Kingsbarns Primary School centenary celebration:
What else happened in the year Kingsbarns Primary School opened?
Quite a few notable historic events occurred in 1822, when Kingbarns Primary School was founded. Here are a few:
- King George IV visited Scotland for the first time, two years into his reign;
- The Royal Navy’s first steamboat HMS Comet was launched;
- The last public whipping was conducted in Edinburgh;
- One of the first pieces of animal rights legislation was passed, the Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle;
- The Caledonian Canal fully opened linking Scotland’s east and west coasts.
Kingsbarns Primary School chickens start laying during their own lockdown
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