Laying the foundation stone for Leith Academy

Category

Library Item

Item no

38000

Title

Page from Leith Miscellany, volume IX, Laying the foundation stone for Leith Academy secondary school

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1985

Type

Photograph; Press cutting

The foundation stone for Leith Academy was laid on the 18th of October 1928.

The stone carving is on the CWS (Cooperative Wholesale Society) building at Links Place.

These are the arms as matriculated at the Lyon Court, 27th February 1889. To this form of the Leith coat-of-arms the Marquess of Bute took the strongest exception:

'We know of no case whatsoever in which the sacred Mother and Son are represented as being 'under a cloud' - an idea which we must stigmatise as being in itself peculiarly offensive... The artist who executed the official drawing...has added the further offence of not representing the cloud by the conventional convolutions prescribed for this subject by the custom of ages... but as a peculiar rounded and knobbly object, something like a small bolster knocked out of shape...'

(cf. John, Marquess of Bute & Others, 'The Arms of the Royal & Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland, 1897.)

Kirkgate in Leith continues north from the northern end of Leith Walk. It was redeveloped in the mid 1960s to form a pedestrianised area including a shopping centre and housing. Vestiges of the old Kirkgate remain in the form of South Leith Parish Church and Trinity House, both dating from the first half of the 19th century.

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