Kelvinside Academy - The School

The School

Kelvinside Academy is located in the Kelvinside area of the north of Glasgow, near the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. It has a large main building, which is category A listed and was designed by James Sellars, with a number of more modern additions. The original building was opened on 2 September 1878 and cost £21,698 11s, this included the construction of both roads and sewers. The school crest shows Minerva with the motto ΑΙΕΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΥΕΙΝ (ever to be the best). Minerva appears prominently in carved stone above the main entrance, and in a bronze medallion set in the perimeter wall. Unlike many of the surrounding buildings, the school retains much of its original cast iron fences despite the metal shortages during the Second World War. There is a well established house system, which divides all the pupils into four different Houses, each represented by a colour; red for Stewart House, yellow for Buchanan House, green for Macgregor House and blue for Colquhoun. The school has a Combined Cadet Force, and runs a civilian rifle club, with a membership of around 40 pupils and a small number of adult FP's, held in the on-site shooting range.

Kelvinside Academy is a war-memorial school, and it is for this reason that it practices the CCF. Two walls in the original school building are dominated by bronze plaques that list pupils and academicals who gave their lives in The Great War and World War II. In the case of the 1st World War, proportionally, the school lost the highest number of Academicals - for further reading see the publication by Brodie.