The Royal High School digital history is an electronic product first created by Alastair Allanach and Tom Bacciarelli over a period of around three years between 2016 and 2019. It initially took the form of a USB ‘credit card’ stick containing around 15 Gigabytes of data, including many video files, and an extensive contents page. It neither claims to be nor is like any of the previous histories. Since 2021, it has been resident in this website. Those wanting a detailed commentary on the school from 1128 through 1990 should read one or more of the existing histories, all of which have been digitised. As of now (2025) the digital history authors have not sought to create a commentary for the past 35 years, concentrating instead on gathering as much information as possible for this first digital edition. The What’s Missing page will tell you exactly that, and when we hope to remedy our many history faults. In the meantime, Tom Bacciarelli has continued to be Consultant Editor, and is frequently consulted (not insulted) by the website team.
If you want to know more about the Why, What and How the product came about, click here, else carry on to investigate the many options.
Digital History components
The digital History contains around twenty components, a dozen or so of which are substantial, the rest composed of a page or documents amounting to a few pages. All twenty are listed below, with links to other pages in this website or to PDF documents.
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Click any of the photo icons below to access the individual components of the Digital History. If you’re having trouble deciphering the Icons, the topics are listed in the rows below the them. These are the sixteen most populated topics. You’ll find the others after the descriptions of these ones.
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| R E M E M B R A N C E **A N N U A L-R E P O R T S**C L O T H I N G**P R I Z E S | |||
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| S C H O L A-R E G I A**B U I L D I N GS**H I S T O R I E S**P E R F O R M I N G-A R T S | |||
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| T A L K I N G-H E A D S**A N N I V E R S A R I E S**F A M O U S F P’S*M I S S I N G–S T U F F | |||
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| M A N Y–T H A N K S ***S P O R T S***O T H E R-S O U R C E S***G A L L E R I E S |
Other topics (not included in the icon boxes above)
Click any of these to enable a link to an expanded topic
- Timeline – Rectors, captains, Duxes, RHS Club Presidents and notable events all in one table. This is currently (May 2024) being updated to the current day.
- Chronological Tables – Duxes, Captains, Club Presidents and others
- Teachers – Now an individual page
- RHS Clubs – Edinburgh and London, but also formerly elsewhere in UK and the World. Click here to see the extraordinary scale of World Clubs in 1928.
- School Song (in words), or click here for a synthesised audio version
- The School Organ (for an article), or click here for the organ concert
- History projects conducted from time to time, e.g. the 1934 Melrose Sevens winners, and FP Authors which reside as single entities within the History Projects page on the site.
- Curriculum – included in all the written histories – will also be here in due course
- Royal Visits – article coming soon – but in the meantime try this or this (a Royal visit timeline)
- Reunions – held regularly, e.g. the recent ‘1973 Girls’….Article coming soon…
- Documents held – Annual Reports, Schola Regia editions, pamphlets, programmes etc. A list will be provided here in due course
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Why, What and How?
It came about as a response to the Royal High School (RHS) Club running out of copies of the 1997 hardback history created by John Murray, the last edition of a book which traditionally was given to all leaving pupils who joined the RHS Club. Teachers signed the inside front cover, classmates and other friends the inside back cover.
The Committee realised that there was real decline in the number of pupils joining the Club, at least partly due to the creation of annual yearbooks which, at least in the leavers minds, was taking the place of the hardback history. This was incorrect, as the yearbooks contain no history of the school. The first steps included the digitisation of the five existing histories, followed by further digitisation of many booklets, pamphlets, Annual Reports and Schola Regia editions. The first year when books were not distributed saw all leavers receive a DVD containing digitised versions of the 1997 and 1974 histories (i.e. more than they used to receive), then for two years all leavers receiving the USB which took the form of credit card sized product (see image above).
Following the decision in 2019 to abandon the practice of leavers joining the Club for a modest fee, all leavers were to be considered as members of the Royal High School Club at no charge. Around this time, the School historian decided to upgrade the RHS Club website, making many of the components history-related, and this page will seek to gather all history components. This webpage will describe at high level all twenty or so topics, linking to PDF’s and providing galleries on a regular basis.
No doubt some of you may ask why a formal hardback book has not been created. The Editor’s response is to suggest that budding biographers can digest the hundred thousand and more words of mixed history in this digital edition, and consider that the various strands, including the video and photographic content, while never intended to replace the evergreen paper versions, are an entirely different (and more modern?) product than the hardback versions.
If any reader would like to receive any of the unpublished components, e.g. one of the full sized digitised history, or any of the many videos which are currently not published elsewhere on this site, please contact us.
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Other History sources
This history does not claim to be the sole repository of Royal High School History. Other sources include:
- Royal High School London Club website – Including ‘Rose-Tinted specs’/’Happy Days’/Photo Albums
- The WW1 and WW2 Memorials.
- The WW1 and WW2 Rolls of Honour, both of which have ben digitised
- The Royal High School, Barnton Campus – The WW1 and WW2 Memorials, Paintings, Trophies, Honours Boards, Plaques, Memorabilia (in cabinets), Teacher-based knowledge
- The RHS Club archive website – photos (over 600), articles (over 100)
- The City of Edinburgh Archive – much of the School archive has been given to the City. Access certainly was difficult, but recent reports (2020 onwards) have been more optimistic.
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Remembrance
Remembrance has been one of the principal menu items in this website since its creation, and there is also a substantial PDF which formed the Remembrance components of the USB-based Digital History. The PDF is complete until around 2019, but since then updates (including for example Annual Remembrance Services) are recorded on the website remembrance page.
Click here to view the PDF, and click here to access the website Remembrance page.
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Annual Reports
School Annual Reports (AR’s) have been produced since at least 1849, which is the earliest in our collection This topic is currently populated with AR summaries from 2012 to 2019. More summaries will be available in due course. Complete digitised AR’s can be supplied for a donation.
Annual Report summaries – click any of the years shown below to produce a PDF per year.
- 2012 – Departmental reorganisation, visits to Ground Zero and Romania, U18 Football success
- 2013 – Best ever exam results, success in creative writing competitions, Rwandan genocide survivor addresses S2
- 2014 – First year for National exams, extra-curricular visits to France and Italy, reintroduction of sports colours
- 2015 – 93% of positive destinations for leavers, many international sports representations, all S4 to S6 have iPads
- 2016 – School disruption due to structural building defects – portacabins installed, Belgian battlefields, Germany and Romania visited
- 2017 – The majority (78%) of students obtain at least one higher by S5, Outdoor classroom created, close contacts maintained with FP’s
- 2018 – Wider Achievement options strengthened, Parent Council highly supportive, action-packed Activities week in May
- 2019 – Global ‘Out of Classroom’ day, Winners – ‘Young writer of the Year 2019’ and Sheriffdom public speaking competition
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Clothing
Like most Schools which have endured for a few centuries, the Royal High has sported a great many fashions and fashion statements in its time. The 1974 History described the changes in between the 18th and 20th Centuries.
Up to the early 1950’s boys did not regularly wear blazers as school uniform. Lord Cockburn says that in the eighteenth century, boys wore a round black hat, a shirt fastened by a black ribbon, a cloth waistcoat “with two rows of buttons so that it could be buttoned on either side,” a single breasted jacket, brown corduroy breeches tied at the knee, stockings and “clumsy shoes made to be used on either foot and each requiring to be used on alternate feet daily.” The jacket and waistcoat were “of bright colours, blue, green or scarlet.”
By the twentieth century the essential wear was a black cap with the intertwined monogram RHS in silver thread, a black and white tie and stockings with black and white tops. In 1921 the School badge with the castle was substituted for the monogram and towards the end of the decade the blazer became regular daytime wear. The School cap tended to disappear about the time of the Second World War when supplies were difficult to obtain and boys tended to go about bareheaded. (The School dress regulations for the girls and boys in the 1970s were supplied in an appendix in the 1974 History). Among the categories in this history are the following:
- Pupils school clothes
- Prefects and Celebrities school clothes
- Military, including Combined Cadet Forces and Pipe Band
- Sports, including Rugby, Cricket, Athletics, Football
- Recent events, including Stage, Concerts, special events
- New School Blazers and Colours
You might also wonder what about the origin of our black and white school colours. Click here for an explanation, which includes the current (2023) school clothing policy.
Click here to access the PDF containing the school Clothing article
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Prizes, Bursaries and Trophies
The Royal High School has had a long and proud history of provision for Prizes and Bursaries. Individuals, including Old Boys and other School supporters have provided funds for many years, some dating back to the 18th Century.
Indeed the source for many of today’s Bursaries is money ceded to the ‘High School of Edinburgh’ by Mary Queen of Scots in the mid 1560’s. It is notable that most of the Prizes listed in the 1974 History are still awarded. The list of Awards instituted since 1974 is also impressive, demonstrating that there is an enduring wish to reward Pupils for Academic endeavours, along with those for courage and determination, and citizenship in many forms.
Examples of the Awards included in this history are the following:
- Academic Prizes, some over two centuries in existence
- Awards for reasons including Pupil Valour, Determination,
Leadership, and Public Speaking - Many sporting awards, now greatly increased with those awarded at the Wider Achievement Ceremony (WAC)
- Bursaries, some maturing within the Pupil stay at School, and some
intended for tertiary education - Many others including a variety sponsored by Parent Associations
Click here to access the PDF containing the Prize, Bursary and Trophy article
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Sports
Sports have, for the last century and a half at least been a mainstay of Royal High School life. Recognition is shown in the images of ‘School Celebrities’ over the years, which, around the 1930’s started to include sporting personalities along with the more traditional group of Captain, Dux, Senior CCF officer, Pipe major and the like. Captain of Football (how rugby was described), Cricket, Golf and Games champion began to intrude in the traditional group.
In the 1950’s, athletics was pre-eminent, with Schola Regia providing details of placings of every sport in the Annual games event. In the 1960’s, as can be seen on the left, the group expanded to include many other sports. After the move to Barnton, and possibly as a result of teacher strikes in the 1980’s, Sport lost some of its headway, but re-emerged in a major way in the early 2010’s when the number of prizes awarded for Sports and other non-academic activities required the creation of a new Prize Giving in 2010. The 2022 Wider Achievement Ceremony (WAC) saw prizes awarded for fifteen Sports, twenty expressive Arts (e.g. Drama, Musical instruments and Photography), and twenty five ‘Wider Clubs and Societies’ awards.
Click here for the 2015-2016 WAC report, click here for the Digital History Sports article and click here for the Royal High Cricket International players list. In the Sports gallery below, you’ll note that Rugby and Cricket (and some Athletics) dominate until the 1960’s, when Badminton, Swimming and a couple of other Sports begin, but the move to Barnton saw an explosion in the variety of Sports, as can be seen in the 1978 images.
Click on any of the images in the gallery below to enable a full screen slideshow
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Schola Regia
Schola Regia has been the mouthpiece of the Royal High School for around 125 years, recording, until the late 1960’s, every extra-mural activity happening in the School. It also recorded the passage of two World Wars, faithfully and sadly recording the many casualties, but also saw happier times with special editions for a variety of occasions including the Royal Visit in 1958. Many budding poets and authors got the chance to exhibit their work, and that is one feature which has survived to this day.
The advent of the internet and social media has overtaken many printed publications, but Schola Regia continues despite the electronic onslaught, with an edition printed in 2017 reviewed in this edition. The last edition – (which has not been made available to us) is the 2019 version.
The editors have access to a large number of editions (around 180), over thirty of which have been digitised but sadly are not available in this website as they are simply too large. They are however summarised in the PDF accessible below. If any reader wishes to access a particular edition or era of editions, please contact us Our earliest edition is December 1897, and is Vol III No 2, indicating a start date for this edition of 1895. Earlier school magazines are quoted as being as early as the 1860’s (q.v.)
Topics in the PDF include:
- History of the term Scola Regia, and of the magazine
- Highlights from featured magazines
- Front page of many editions, with a very high level overview of the contents
- Digitised magazines. 33 have been processed, comprising a selection of significant issues from 1897 to 2017 and a high level description of each of those issues is provided.
Click here to access the Schola Regia article.
Schola Regia advertising
From the 1890’s to the late 1970’s, an exotic bunch of Edinburgh businesses (no doubt with Former Pupil background) advertised their wares in the magazine, presumably offsetting the publishing costs. The following gallery shows a few from 1897 through 1954.
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Talking Heads
This topic comprises some written reminiscences from Rectors and others, and some videos from a variety of individuals. The real ‘Talking Heads’ are those who undertook the video process.
- Matt MacIver – Rectorial challenges and Extra-Curricular activities (other clips available)
- David Simpson/Jane Frith – ‘interviewed’ each other
- Pauline Walker – Covid Schola Regia and Covid Scola Regia 2
The following Rectors revealed their views on their ‘Rectorships‘ in the form of articles.(David Simpson, Acting Rector 2007-2009 has only submitted a video)
- Matt MacIver (1989-1998)
- John Murray (Acting Rector 1998)
- George Smuga (1998-2009)
- Jane Frith (2009-2014)
- Pauline Walker (2014-2022)
While we were there, we asked another half dozen teachers (some heads of department) for their thoughts.
- Tom Bacciarelli 1978-1990 and 1992-2016 (as Head of Department) –
- Jock Dewar 1957 – 1987 (actually Tom Bacciarelli’s eulogy on 22nd January, 2020. See also ‘Setting the Record Straight’, and a video clip ‘The arrival of Girls’, one of eight available on request
- Meg Garvie 1976-1989 (as Assistant Rector)
- Peter Simmons 1972 – 1985 (1977-1985 as Depute Rector)
- Archie Davidson 1968 – 1996
- Pete Clark (article coming soon…)
…and some former pupils (and one teacher) with their leaving years:
- James Allan Ford MC (1938) – WW2 Japanese prisoner of War survivor, eminent Civil Servant, poet and author
- Ken Macintosh (1979) – video recorded at Scottish Parliament, 2018, one of eight available on request
- Ken Thomson (1980) – video recorded at Dynamic Earth gala Dinner 2018
- Anne Richards (1981) – video recorded at Dynamic Earth gala Dinner 2018
- John Murray (teacher) – Video recorded at Dynamic Earth gala Dinner 2018
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Other history topics not in the original Digital History include the following, some of which are pages within this website
- Teachers
- Janitors
- History Projects, e.g. the 1934 Melrose sevens winners, The School Song, The school organ and others
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Anniversaries
The School has, aside various Walter Scott versions, to the best of our best knowledge, celebrated just three anniversaries in the past century or so. The 850th anniversary of the School’s founding was held in 1978, the 25th Barnton anniversary in 1993, and by far the most complex, the Barnton 50th in 2018. Click here for a comprehensive PDF of these events, and click here for a comprehensive video of all the Barnton 50th events prior to the Dynamic earth dinner, first shown at the dinner. Click here for a two minute video of the Sponsored walk from Regent Road to Barnton. There are also a few videos and documents not available on the PDF.
Videos recorded at the Dynamic Earth gala dinner. These were designed and produced by Ian R C Cowie and Alastair Allanach, Interviewer Tom Bacciarelli. Click any of the names to start.
- John Murray – former acting Rector, and founder of the European Music Trips
- Ken Thomson – founder of the KT Singers, now senior Scottish Civil Servant
- Anne Richards – Leading European business woman, created a Dame in 2021
- The KT Singers present – a fabulous rendition by the famous choir, led by the eponymous KT himself
Documents created for the Dynamic Earth gala dinner
1973 – Girls arrive: 2023 – The girls celebrate 50 years…
A very important Anniversary took place on the 20th August 2023 – fifty years to the day when girls were first admitted to the School. The Evening News ran an article featuring a photograph of around 40 of the 81 girls who started in 1a1 to 1a6. Click here to see the annotated photograph.. Click here to see the page constructed to remember the event.
Not to be outdone, the Royal High School Club has celebrated at least one anniversary, namely its 150th in 1999. We don’t have any photos at the moment, but the invitation to the September 21st reception in the Signet library can be seen here
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Famous FP’s
This topic was well addressed in all existing school histories, indeed in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, nearly all famous Edinburgh personalities were educated at the Tounis Scule.
In recent years, the school continues to produce its fair share of celebrities, and the recent request by the rector to create some modern versions can be seen here. There is also a substantial article accompanying that feature in a summary document (around 10,000 words) which has a mix of detailed and high level biographies for thirty plus names. The next set of full biographies will almost certainly emanate from the names in that document, so if you are wondering when we intend to address your favourite FP, please take a look at the document. There are also six ‘modern’ biographies created in 2020 at the request of the Rector – see them on the RHS London Club site
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Buildings history
The school has occupied basically only six buildings during its near-900 years existence. The end of its residence at Holyrood Abbey some time between 1555 and 1569 resonates with the advent of the Scottish Reformation, which resulted in many Catholic Churches being sacked.
Read about the various sites here, and the evolution of the Barnton campus here.
Former Pupil Alan Buchan recently sent in some snaps taken during the construction of the Barnton Campus in 1966 and 1967. Interesting stuff, and worth a gallery, as seen below.
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Galleries
Galleries are available from a variety of sources, including the following:
- This website – many occurrences, including the Galleries page
- The Archive RHS Club website – over 600 images, including events, sports, personalities, committee members
- The RHS London Club – many galleries including ‘Where are they now?’, Drama, Biographies, Dinners, ‘Through Rose-tinted spectacles’ and others
- The Royal High Rugby Club has a good rugby team timeline gallery
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The slightly zany photomontage of this topic is intended to explain the whimsical nature of the unknown. The Editors (would) like to think that their work is never complete. Hopefully the PDF explaining the status of each topic will help.
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Acknowledgements
It has been suggested that this section should be excluded, firstly, given that so many individuals have been involved, but also in case anyone has been missed. As some sort of apology, the list is headed by the following; – Many sources have been referenced in the compilation of this digital history. Five Histories, around 100 Annual Reports and numerous photographic and brochure inputs have been used, along with the great God Wikipedia and other Press sources. The following however is as comprehensive a list as we know at present, but can only apologise if we have missed anybody out. Tell us and we’ll include you in the next version. Click here for a PDF version.
We should also thank the twenty or so FP’s who put their hands in their pockets to buy a copy of the USB stick. Their cumulative £500 will pay for five years licence costs for this site.
The Royal High School Club 
