‘Gaun Up Tae The Big Schule’

Isabelle Gow is a history teacher, who was educated at Lochmaben Primary School and Lockerbie Academy; her family have many connections with both schools too.

After the success of her book on the history of Lochmaben Primary School, (‘A guid wee schule’) she has written a similar book on the history of Lockerbie Academy.

After two years of painstaking work and research, we are nearing the publication of ‘Gaun up tae the Big Schule’, thanks to Isabelle’s efforts.

She has captured our history with an easy to read, entertaining, informal style; it is her ‘take’ on events, and you must appreciate it has to be selective. A few short extracts will give you the flavour:

“On the 20th November 1931 the Headmaster : “Received from Mr W Donaldson, Dar-Es-Salaam, section of the tree under which Stanley met Livingstone.” No one knows what happened to this historical relic or why Lockerbie was singled out as the recipient.

William Sanders of Rosebank, who was a member of the school board, donated a medal for achievement. In 1922 the recipient was William Maxwell who studied medicine in Edinburgh and served in the RAMC during World War Two. (Photo) Another recipient of that medal was Ted Hills in 1963. (Photo). A copy of the medal is now presented to the Dux and Proxime Accessit at the current Celebration of Achievement Ceremony.”

“I remember the first time I had been abroad – the school trip to Belgium accompanied by Mr Hill and Mr and Mrs Wilson. We stayed in the beautiful town of Bruges and I remember visiting the WW2 cemeteries at Dunkirk. In my journal “My Trip” I see that I had written about visiting the Nunnery and several museums and a river boat trip, but I had not recorded the two things which were really memorable. The first was the awfully bad Channel crossing with loads of folk being sick and Mr Hill checking up on people asking how they were whilst munching a greasy hamburger roll. Some people have claimed that the ferry sank on its return to England! We were quite oblivious to the panic at home when parents heard the weather reports of rough and stormy seas. Mobile phones had not yet been invented. The other great memory of that trip was coming home just in time to watch the TV broadcast of the Moon Landing on July 1969.

Nowadays the school regularly takes pupils to Belgium to visit the battlefields around Ypres and Paschendaele and the Commonwealth Grave Commission’s cemeteries of World War One. Many come back from that trip moved by the experience. Several students take the opportunity to search for the graves of relatives of their names on the Menin Gate making the connection with that era even more poignant and relevant. Boys often linger over the graves of 15 year olds perhaps thinking that they could easily have been part of that “lost” generation of young men”.

There are also many photographs interspersed with the text and, staff and pupils past and present are bound to find something of interest in this quality product. The aim is not to make a profit, but basically to cover printing costs – the dilemma is how many to print, because a second print run would prove too expensive.

To gauge interest, we have decided to accept pre-paid orders; the book will make an ideal Christmas gift, so if you wish to ensure you have a copy, please complete the online pro forma and forward together with a cheque for £10 made payable to ‘Lockerbie Academy’. If you wish the book to be posted to you, rather than collect, please add £3 to cover postage and packing (and indicate this on the pro forma).

We give you our assurance that you should not be disappointed if you decide to purchase this unique insight into the history of our school.