Ivory tower or wasted asset

“IVORY TOWER” OR WASTED ASSET? WHY DID RESIDENTIAL ADULT EDUCATION FAIL TO TAKE ROOT IN SCOTLAND?
Alan Ducklin and Stuart Wallace
Paper presented at Seventh International Conference on the History of Adult Education, University of Dundee, July 1998

The partial closure of Newbattle Abbey College in 1989, after the withdrawal of Scottish Education Department (SED) funding, ended a half century of full-time residential adult education (RAE) in Scotland. This was not simply a result of the application of Thatcherite policies, but should also be seen in the context of longer term reluctance of the SED and other potential funders to support the principle of RAE. Amidst public controversy over Newbattle’s future, the release of government documents in 1988, under the “thirty-year rule”, revealed that withdrawal of funding had been an option discussed within the SED since the early 1950s. The 1945-51 Labour Government, and its Conservative successors, had sought to extricate themselves from any financial commitment to the College, which had been established in 1936 after Newbattle Abbey (six miles south of Edinburgh) had been gifted to the Scottish nation by the Lord Lothian¹. Public records also revealed that trade unions and local authorities, referred to specifically by Michael Forsyth, the Education Minister, in 1989 as alternative sources of financial and other support for adult education, had been equally unenthusiastic about residential provision at Newbattle from its inception.

Adult education has a long history in Scotland, stretching back to the eighteenth century. John Anderson, the Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1760 to 1796, “instituted in addition to his usual class, one for the working-classes and others whose pursuits did not enable them to conform to the prescribed routine of academic study”. After his death, the Andersonian Institute was established from funds he left specifically “for the use of the unacademical classes”.² Between 1799 and 1804 Natural Philosophy was taught in the Institute by George Birkbeck (a medical graduate of Edinburgh University), before he moved to London to do similar work which culminated in the founding of a Mechanics Institute there. Birkbeck was a Yorkshireman, but the Scottish contribution to adult education was considerable, as the names Leonard Horner³, Samuel Smiles⁴, Professor James Stuart⁵ and Richard Burdon Haldane⁶ testify. Yet it is also clear that adult education in Scotland lagged behind similar developments in England. Of the names mentioned above, only Horner was concerned primarily with Scottish adult education. One of the reasons for Birkbeck leaving Glasgow had been that the response to his classes had been disappointing. The fortunes of other later Mechanics Institutes (or “Institutions” as they were called in Scotland) were “very mixed”. “After the initial enthusiasm, many ran into financial difficulties or closed.”⁷

Later comment on adult education provision in Scotland focused on this relative backwardness. Writing just after the First World War, Albert Mansbridge noted that the weakness of “organised voluntary educational work” was “probably due in large measure to the comparative ease with which poor students…secured access to the Universities and also to the fact that the love of knowledge and argument is quite common. In other words the Scottish people have not found it necessary to develop new activities.”⁸ In the mid-1930s the picture was a similar one of adult education provision still “far behind that of England, and the organisations concerned with it much weaker in finance and influence.”⁹ Perhaps the fullest explanation for this had been given some forty years earlier by the then Secretary of the Glasgow University Extension Board. Referring specifically to the absence of a leading role for universities in adult education, Robert Wenley found the “causes traceable to the condition of popular life in Scotland". “The wide diffusion of popular education for generations”, “the network of local ‘literary’, ‘philosophical’, and ‘dialectical’ societies”, and the work of educational trusts, all affected the demand for extension teaching. In addition, the “sparse and scattered” population, “outside of some fair-sized towns”, made organisation more difficult, while “the Scotsman’s well-known failing, or virtue, in matters financial" (Wenley, it should be noted, was a Scot), was “a surprisingly formidable element”.

Wenley’s intention was to defend Scottish universities against the charge that they were uninterested in adult education (compared to Oxford and Cambridge, where extension work had begun in 1873). The debate on university reform in Scotland (after the Royal Commission of 1876 and the Universities Act of 1889) had diverted much of the energy which might have gone into extension work. Also, the heavy teaching load of the Scottish professor, who coped with large classes without the assistance of lecturers and other junior staff, meant that there were “few, if any, men of real leisure attached to our universities”. Equally important was the attitude of Scots themselves: “the general public are as much to blame for academic apathy as are the unfortunate teachers, whom it has become fashionable to saddle with responsibility for everything that goes wrong”, he concluded.¹⁰ Much of this could be applied to Scottish adult education in general.

The context in which Newbattle opened as an adult residential college in 1936 was thus one of a “modern adult education movement…later in origin and weaker in growth…than in England”, with the added factor of economic depression, “peculiarly severe in the Scottish industrial areas”.¹¹ This had affected demand for Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) classes (mostly established ten years after the English ones, following the First World War). University extension had also been slow in expanding, and received no financial assistance from central government as in England. On the other hand, Scottish universities (despite the introduction of entrance examinations for the first time in 1892) still recruited more widely than in England. They were non-residential institutions, meeting local demand (especially in the case of Glasgow and Aberdeen), with teaching organised around the professorial lecture (rather than a college tutorial) and with bursaries for poorer students. There was even some part-time study for degrees. In short, Scottish universities still reflected those values of accessibility and utility which had set them apart from Oxford and Cambridge, and which had provided a model for English civic universities in the nineteenth century.

The model for Newbattle Abbey College, on the other hand, was a Welsh one, which Lord Lothian knew of from his old Liberal colleague Thomas Jones.¹² In December 1931 Lothian had decided to offer Newbattle Abbey to the universities of Scotland to be used in perpetuity as an educational centre for Summer Schools and…for the kind of University Extension work which…[was] being done so successfully at Harlech College in Wales”. ¹³ Coleg Harlech in turn had been inspired by the example of the Danish Folk High Schools, ¹⁴ and Lothian had visited some of these in the summer of 1936, accompanied by the Rev. Alexander G. Fraser, his Warden-designate. Fraser, a Scotsman who had previously worked in adult education in Ceylon and West Africa,¹⁵ shared Lothian’s antipathy to socialism and his desire to see Newbattle imbued with “a true Christian spirit”. Lothian later wrote:“...I am sure in my own mind that Newbattle Abbey College cannot succeed without that force of Christianity at the top and adequately infused in the staff. The central conclusion I formed after our tour of Denmark and Sweden was that the real success of the folkschools depends on what old Grunding [N.F. Grundtvig] had put into them, and that when they were run by mere intellectuals or Marxists they really did more harm than good to their inmates....It is the same in Scotland. Unless N.A.C. is founded on that spirit - symbolised by the Chapel - it will...breed a destructive, harshly intellectual temper in its members, corrosive and corrupting.” ¹⁶ Later we shall see that Lothian’s suspicion of “mere intellectuals” was shared by politicians in central and local government, educational administrators and, probably, significant sections of public opinion.

The Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews and Aberdeen now agreed to become trustees of the proposed college, on condition that it involved no cost to themselves. The Carnegie Trust gave £15,000 to fund reconstruction of the building, a seventeenth-century stately home, and another £14,000 was raised privately for capital equipment and working expenses. The Scottish local authorities reluctantly agreed to offer bursaries, and the SED promised a capitation grant of £28 for each student. When it was officially opened in January 1937, Newbattle Abbey College had 130 acres of grounds and was free of debt, but it would cost £7000 a year to run and it had no endowment. For the next fifty years the Newbattle Governors attempted to get the Scottish Office to commit itself financially to the College, but with only partial success.

Recognition as a Central Institution (CI), and hence secure funding, was not possible because Newbattle did not provide “the highest form of specialised instruction”. “So far as Adult Education is almost entirely concerned with broad cultural education, it is difficult to reconcile the aims of Newbattle with those of a Central Institution”, a civil servant minuted. It was also pointed out that the capitation grant of £28, was also more generous than that paid to CIs.¹⁷ Equally, SED funding rules did not allow for the provision of residential (as opposed to educational) costs under the 1908 Education (Scotland) Act, which was the source of funding for continuing vocational education. This mixture of administrative inflexiblity and lack of sympathy with liberal educational provision was to dog Newbattle for the next fifty years.

Relations between the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir John Colville,¹⁸ and the College Governors in the last years before the outbreak of the Second World War were not good. Colville was convinced that the Governors had been neither “very energetic or skilful in conducting their appeal” for funds from local authorities and the public. This impression was reinforced when Lothian and the College Governors argued that in Scotland there was “considerable feeling that working-class education should be paid for entirely by the State”.¹⁹ Historically this may have been correct, but it was not the kind of message that ministers in a cost-conscious Conservative government wished to hear. When the war broke out in September 1939, plans for a record intake of students (55 compared to 26 in 1936-7) had to be shelved, as did any further discussion of government financial assistance, and Newbattle was turned over to army use. Writing to the College Warden from the United States, Lothian reflected on “the ultimate future of Newbattle” and looked back on the first three years: “...I never realised what a tough job you would be up against, either with the executive committee [of the College] or the hard materialist underlying point of view of many of the students from the industrial areas....”²⁰

When Newbattle re-opened after the war (and after Lothian’s death), the same financial problems remained, and there were only 20 students in residence. On the other hand, a new Labour Government was in power, and the College understandably hoped for a more sympathetic hearing in its quest for funding. There was strong support for the idea of residential adult education, from at least one Junior Minister, Peggy Herbison.²¹ The students were mostly “industrial workers” who had left school at fourteen and who showed “a real desire for further education”, she informed the Secretary of State, Hector McNeill.²² “More and more I am becoming convinced that if Social Democracy is to have any hopes of better success we require better leadership in our factories etc.” If trade unions could “contribute more”, then perhaps Newbattle could help achieve this objective.²³ Unfortunately, McNeill was less convinced of the necessity of RAE, considered Newbattle’s “staffing preposterously extravagant”, and believed “that some of the full-time resident staff might easily be replaced by part-time non-resident tutors”. He reluctantly approved a £60 capitation grant, with £7000 as a one-off “exceptional measure” to meet the College deficit and the costs of re-opening after the war, on the understanding that if Newbattle could not keep its costs under control he would “not come to their rescue and ...[was] prepared to see the College sink.”²⁴

These misgivings about the financial burden of RAE were soon compounded by “grave doubts” about the way Newbattle was being run by its new Warden, the distinguished Scottish writer Edwin Muir.²⁵ McNeill found his apprehensions shared by “two reputable Directors of Education”, and by a former Warden of Ruskin College (Lionel Elvin) who “described Muir as ‘a man of great lustre but entirely lacking in any administrative or organising ability’.” Worse still, a group on the Newbattle Board of Governors led by Lord Greenhill (Chairman of the Scottish WEA) now considered the appointment of Muir to have been “a mistake”. Although this later developed into an acrimonious open dispute between Muir and the Governors of the College, the more fundamental issue of the SED’s attitude to Newbattle remained hidden from the public gaze. “We in the Department have always been doubtful of the extent to which Newbattle Abbey College could succeed as a residential college for adult education”, the Secretary of the SED informed McNeill, while one of the Directors of Education argued that Newbattle was irrelevant “under conditions of full employment and higher education open to all”.²⁶

Here, in essence, were the arguments deployed against RAE thoroughout the 1950s, both within the SED and local authority education departments. Thinking in central government was neatly summarised by the civil servant who doubted whether “the sober respectable type of man who is making his way in the world will (even if he has no family responsibilities) think twice before throwing up his job, when the chances of returning at the end of the course, even where he left off a year earlier, must be rather remote”.²⁷ With this the Director of Education for Dundee largely agreed, adding his own doubts that the trade unions would ever support RAE in general and Newbattle in particular: “The average Trade-Unionist of to-day is not sufficiently interested to attend his own Union meetings and he is very suspicious of the academic type of individual who he regards rightly or wrongly as a non-producer. One is tempted to ask the question as to whether or not this same feeling does not pervade Trade Union circles at top level as well as lower down....” As for Muir and his teaching staff: “Each is the scholarly type, and I would say first rate for University teaching. But I am doubtful and even sceptical of their appeal to the average working man. The kind of people I would choose for the staff of Newbattle would be of the Officer type developed during the war, who could maintain easy relationships with the men and at the same time hold their respect, who are not only first-rate academically but can approach their students easily. I cannot imagine Dr. Muir approaching any student with ease, he is much too shy himself, and I would say definitely not a social type.”²⁸

This mixture of simple prejudice and acute observation is expressed in the language of the early post-war years, but the official view of Newbattle did not shift significantly over later decades. The reluctance to provide secure funding, beyond the capitation grant paid for each student completing his or her studies, was justified by reference to the cost of RAE compared to other forms of further education. In addition, it was asked why the SED should pay for the expensive upkeep of a former stately home. The dry rot problem was a source of official concern in the 1950s as in the 1980s.

Another consistently-held view was that Newbattle could somehow make itself more attractive to non-governmental funders by running short vocational courses. For example, the Director of Education for Dundee, claimed that the one-year course,“suitable for the more leisurely days prior to the war”, was now “totally unsuitable”. “At most, conditions in industry are such that three months is likely to be the longest period for which employers will release workpeople, but even shorter courses will have a greater appeal”, he told McNeill. If this were the case, then weekend schools and short courses in “Management Studies” (perhaps with sponsorship from the Scottish Council for Industry) could “bridge the gap between school and industry for hundreds of young people”. Under the existing system, “students, uprooted from factory life or conditions of employment, did not always benefit intellectually and morally from the sudden transfer into the casual, dilettante atmosphere of Newbattle. The atmosphere was further vitiated by the well-intentioned pampering of Lord Lothian”.²⁹ Even the benefactor, who had been dead for over a decade, could, it seems, be dragged into the discussion.

There were a few official voices raised in support of the principle of RAE. Peggy Herbison conceded that short courses for workers and management might help fill the College accommodation, but she took “the greatest objection” to the idea of “using it as a cramming school for entrance to university”. “I should hate to think that we couldn’t afford one Adult College to provide more or less liberal education for any of our people who have been denied it”, she informed McNeill.³⁰ Some civil servants also pointed out that the whole point of RAE was “to provide education for living, not education for earning a living”, and that the purpose of training and vocational courses was too far removed from that of liberal adult education for both to easily be undertaken in one institution.³¹ The Secretary of the Scottish Institute of Adult Education even made the point “that the best kind of adult education is one where communal living and learning are united”, but such arguments in favour of the immersive liberal education experience were rare. Scottish local authorities were “looking for less claimant needs in education with a view to economising”. RAE, where the unit cost was high, was bound to suffer because “authorities naturally enough would prefer to grant 15 bursaries of £10 rather than one of £150”. ³² This was to be one of the key arguments revived by the SED in 1987.

The advent of a new Conservative government in October 1951 did not appear to change official policy, though the few friends that Newbattle had in high places, like Peggy Herbison, were removed. None of the Conservative Secretaries of State for Scotland were as close to the most influential of the College Governors, Lord Greenhill,³³ as Hector McNeill had been. The new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (1952-7), Sir James Henderson Stewart, was soon warning that unless the College was “quickly successful in interesting the public...we cannot go on supporting it”. He had to be persuaded by his civil servants that replacing Greenhill would mean losing someone whose “enthusiasm and...association with people in the trade union and W.E.A. movements were useful assets at this time”.³⁴ This was not an isolated case of the civil servant steering the minister away from hasty decisions, but the special grant (to deal with Newbattle’s growing deficit) continued to be paid throughout the 1950s, though always accompanied by warnings that it could not continue indefinitely.

With the continuation of SED funding the College Governors seem to have calculated that these warnings could safely be ignored. This judgement was probably correct as far as the attitudes of the civil servants were concerned. Comparative figures for spending on RAE south of the Border circulated between the SED and its sister Education Department in Whitehall, revealing that expenditure on Newbattle compared “not unfavourably with the English and Welsh colleges”.³⁵ The top SED civil servant then summarised the political costs of withdrawing the annual grant to the College (now over £8000) for his Minister: “Whether its closure would be an educational or national disaster [as the College Governors claimed] is a matter of opinion, but it would be certainly represented as such, and there is little doubt that, though Scottish Opposition Members are far from unanimous in support of Newbattle, the blame for closure would be laid at the door of the Government. You will wish to consider how much weight should be given to this aspect of the matter. I would suggest, however, that quite apart from this consideration, it is desirable to give the College one last chance to realise its potential value to the community....”³⁶

The resemblance of all this to the world of “Yes Minister” should not obscure the fact that the Sir Humphreys do not always get their way in the long run. Henderson Stewart grudgingly agreed to the suggestion that the special grant should continue, though he was still convinced that Newbattle was “a serious waste of money”. “What Mr McNeill said in 1951 is surely more than ever true today: it is almost absurd to think of normal young men giving up a years work to attend such courses. Men who do must be unemployed, unemployable or odd, and I don’t think it is our job to provide a large expensive institution for a mere handful of such people.”³⁷ The Secretary of State, James Stuart, echoed these views down to the last prejudice:“I don’t suppose we can shut the place up right away but if we don’t warn them seriously, they will go on wasting money happily....In my view, normal young men who are earning steady wages are unlikely to desert good jobs to be turned into high-brows at Newbattle. As to the English practice, should we not - before actually taking any drastic action - try to get them into line? Otherwise we may be criticised for ruining this scheme while the English go ahead with similar projects in their wisdom.” The idea of the expenditure on RAE south of the Border being reduced to come “into line” with Scotland’s was obviously attractive to a Secretary of State “searching for economies” in his own Department, but as long as “English practice” was willing to run residential colleges “at a deficit”, ³⁸ there was little that could be done.

More research needs to be done to know how far this antipathy to Newbattle was common outside ministerial circles. Stuart, the third son of the 17^th Earl of Moray, was later described by his Minister of State, another aristocrat, as a man of “down-to-earth common sense”, “at ease with all and sundry in palace or public house or Parliament”.³⁹ Perhaps his prejudices were widely shared. Trade unions and local authorities still seemed lukewarm, and in some cases positively hostile to Newbattle. In October 1955 Greenhill had to answer criticism from Lanark County Council that Newbattle provided courses which “were largely high-brow, literary, and divorced from the affairs of the world”.⁴⁰ A year later the Scotsman newspaper printed an article under the headline “Education for Adults. Is Newbattle worth £10,000 a year?” Readers were informed that despite attempts at disruption by “Anarchists” and subversion by “Communists”, “its critics and payers of rates and taxes who subsidise Newbattle by well over £10,000 a year, can now rest assured that no subversive activities could escape the attention of Mr W.B. de Bear Nicol”, Muir’s successor as Warden. “Experience in journalism, the Army, and adult education has trained him to beware of cranks and agitators.”⁴¹

Since the focus of this paper has been the attitude of the SED towards Newbattle, little has been said about Edwin Muir. He and a group of College Governors had fallen out with Greenhill over the latter’s attempts (under SED pressure) to introduce short courses to generate income for the College. Maintaining the integrity of the one-year course with a full range of subjects and adequate full-time staff, was Muir’s first priority. Years of uncertainty about the future had made his plan of creating “in the College a centre, Scottish in tradition and character” almost impossible. Now emphasis on short courses threatened “to dislocate the whole economy of the College, or to ruin what...[had been] built up in the problematic hope of building something on the ruins.”⁴² This, then, is the final historical irony. In 1985, on the advice of the SED and with its “pump-priming” funding, Newbattle committed itself to open and distance learning (ODL). This precipitated a new financial crisis, followed by a vote of no confidence in the College Principal by staff and students. In 1985 (as in 1955) new means of generating income were sought, though neither short courses not ODL were expected to achieve this in the short term. The difference, however, was that in March 1955 Muir finally resigned the Wardenship to take up the Chair of Poetry at Harvard University, creating an opportunity for changes to be made. In 1983 a SED report criticised the College for its “present lack of dynamic leadership”,⁴³ but this time there was no change at the top. Four years later the SED grant was withdrawn.

1 Philip Kerr (1882-1940), 11^th Marquess of Lothian, Secretary to Lloyd George 1916-21, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the India Office 1931-2, British Ambassador to the U.S 1939-40.

2 R. Chambers cit. W.H. Marwick, “Adult Early Education In The West Of Scotland”, Journal of Adult Education, IV, 2 (April 1930), 191. In 1828 the Institute adopted the title of “university”.

3 Founder of the School of Arts in Edinburgh in 1821. Described as “of Yorkshire origin, but a naturalized Scot” by W.H. Marwick, “Adult Educationalists in Victorian Scotland”, Journal of Adult Education, VI 2 (April 1933), 130.

4 Author of Self Help (1859)

5 Professor of Engineering and a leading figure in University Extension at Cambridge after 1873.

6 Leading Liberal politician 1885 to 1928, Hegelian philosopher and educational reformer.

7 R.D. Anderson, Education And The Scottish People 1750-1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995, p.159.

8 A. Mansbridge, “Organisation” in R. St. John Parry (ed.) Cambridge Essays on Adult Education, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1920, pp.66-7.

9 W.H. Marwick, “Appendix B: Adult Education in Scotland” in Robert Peers (ed.), Adult Education in Practice, Macmillan, London 1934, p.222

10 R.M. Wenley, University Extension in Scotland, Robert Maclehose, Glasgow 1895, pp.43-46. Just after writing this Wenley left to take up a Philosophy chair at the University of Michigan.

11 Marwick, “Early Adult Education…”, 191; “Adult Education in Scotland”, p.222. Cf. Alexander Morgan, Scottish University Studies, Oxford University Press, London, 1933, pp.212-3.

12 Jones, A Diary with Letters 1931-1950, Oxford University Press, London 1954, pp. 15, 38-42, 133, 138, 177-8.

13 Lothian cit. J.R.M. Butler, Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) 1882-1940, Macmillan, London 1960, pp.147-9

14 Agnieszka Bron, “Residential Adult Education: History, Concept and Evaluation”, in John Field and Gerald Normie (eds.), Residential Adult Education Trends And Prospects, University of Warwick Discussion Paper in Continuing Education no.3, 1992, p. 9. Walter Drews, “The Role Of British Short-Term Residential Colleges For Adult Education 1945-1995”, D.Phil. thesis, University of Ulster, 1995, p.246, argues that only Fircroft “sought to model itself on the Danish system”.

15 Fraser was formerly head of Trinity College, Kandy (1904-24) and of the Prince of Wales College, Achimota on the Gold Coast (1924-35). Cf. Jones, Diary with Letters, p.135.

16 Lothian to Fraser, 4 October 1939, cit. Butler, pp.149-50. On Lothian’s “antipathy” to socialism, see John Turner, “Introduction: Lord Lothian and His World” in Turner (ed.) The Larger Idea: Lord Lothian and the Problem of National Sovereignty, Historians Press, London 1988, p.9.

17 Reginald Hawkins memo 18 January 1939 (Scottish Record Office (SRO) ED.26/508).

18 Secretary of State 1938-40, Governor of Bombay 1943-8, 1^st Baron Clydesmuir 1948.

19 John Mackay Thomson memo 12 July 1939; R.E.C. Johnson memo 12 July 1939 (SRO ED.26/508).

20 Lothian to Fraser, 4 October 1939 cit. Butler, p.149.

21 Margaret (Peggy) Herbison , Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Scottish Office 1950-1, Minister of Pensions and National Insurance 1964-66 and Social Security 1966-7.

22 Secretary of State for Scotland, February-October 1951.

23 Herbison minute to McNeill, 29 January 1951 (SRO ED.26/508).

24 John Mackay Thomson memo 31 January 1951 (SRO ED.26/508). In 1938 the SED had agreed on a £28 capitation grant for each student completing the College course.

25 Muir (1887-1959) worked for the British Council in Prague 1945-8 and Rome 1948-50 before coming to Newbattle.

26 McNeill to Herbison 24 July 1951 (SRO ED.26/509)

27 R.T. Hawkins memo 22 August 1951 (SRO ED.26/509)

28


^ J.D. Collins “Notes on Newbattle Abbey” with his letter to McNeill, 7 August 1951 (SRO ED.26/509).

29 J.D. Collins, “Notes on Newbattle”, 7 August 1951 (SRO ED.26/509).

30 Marginal comment on T. Grainger Stewart memo to McNeill and Herbison, 14 September 1951 (SRO ED.26/509).

31 T. Grainger Stewart memo to McNeill and Herbison, 14 September 1951 (SRO ED.26/509).

32 W.D. Ritchie (former Director of Education for Selkirkshire) as reported in “Notes of a Meeting...16 January 1952 between representative of the Governors of Newbattle...and the Scottish Education department regarding the future of the College” (SRO ED.26/509). Local authority bursaries ranged from £84 (clearly insufficient for students) to £152.

33 Ernest Greenhill, Glasgow Town Councillor and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Newbattle Board of Governors.

34 Sir James Henderson Stewart minute, n.d. and H.H. Donnelly memo, 17 March 1952 (SRO ED.26/509). Stewart suggested Sir Hector Hethrington as a possible successor to Greenhill.

35 Correspondence between H.H. Donnelly and D.A. Routh, 19 August - 25 August 1954 (SRO ED.26/509). Previously, Donnelly in a memo of 20 November 1951 had argued that if England and Wales could only support 5 colleges, then Newbattle was hardly viable under Scottish funding.

36 Sir William Murie memo, 11 August 1954 (SRO ED.26/509).

37 Henderson Stewart memo, 14 August 1954 (SRO ED.26/509) emphasis in original.

38 James Stuart memo, 30 September 1954 (SRO ED.25/510) emphasis in original. Stuart was Secretary of State for Scotland 1952-7, Viscount Stuart of Findhorn 1959.

39 Lord Home in Dictionary of National Biography 1971-80, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986, p.820. Cf. George Pottinger, The Secretaries of State for Scotland 1926-76, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh 1979, chapter XIII “The Patrician”.

40 Glasgow Herald, 7 October 1955.

41 Scotsman, 5 October 1956. Nicol, formerly Glasgow University extra-mural tutor for Dumfriesshire, was appointed Warden in October 1955.

42 Muir letter to Newbattle Board of Governors, 7 September 1954 enclosed with his letter to H.H. Donnelly of the same date (SRO ED.26/510). Muir makes only brief reference to Newbattle in his Autobiography (Hogarth Press, London 1954), pp.279-80. There is a tribute to his teaching by the Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown in his Edwin Muir Selected Prose, John Murray, London 1987, pp.203-11.

43 “Newbattle Abbey College A Report By The Inspector of Schools” (May 1983) p.18 (author’s copy).