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Summary

Description

Bruce & Hay, circa 1905. Predominantly 3-storey and attic Free Style school and linked (by high arch to NE) former training college to N set around triangular courtyard. Squared and snecked bull-faced red sandstone with ashlar dressings. Base course, string courses, some canted bay windows, some bipartite windows with stone mullions. 3 angled blind bell towers to school corbelled from 1st floor with arrow slit windows and trefoil and quatrefoil blind openings breaking eaves. Training college linked at N to former Training Wing to Dowanside House at 74 Victoria Crescent Road (see separate listing).

S (STREET) ELEVATION: to left, 4-bay gabled section flanked by pair of advanced blind bell towers, to right, 10-bay section with broken pedimented entrance to 1st bay ground with 2-leaf timber door.

Predominantly timber sash and case windows with horns, some plate glass, 2-pane and 4-pane. Grey slates.

INTERIOR: simple. School: pair of staircases at W and E of building with cast-iron balusters. Dado height timber boarding. Part-glazed corriders give light and view to classrooms. Top floor assembly hall to W with open timber roof and gallery echoing Pugin & Pugin timberwork at former Chapel (see separate listing). Training college: dado height timber boarding to large classrooms.

GATEPIERS, BOUNDARY WALLS AND RAILINGS: to S, low sandstone coped wall with railings with to far right plain stone square pier with pyramidal cap. To left, pair of predominantly red sandstone square piers with decorative gabled caps.

Statement of Special Interest

A good example of a school by Bruce & Hay with an unusual top floor assembly room. The woodwork in particular at the school and training college echoes that by Pugin & Pugin at the nearby chapel.

The school and training college has further interest in its contribution to Glasgow's social history. It formed part of the first Catholic Teacher Training College in Scotland and became the first Montessori school in Scotland.

In 1894 four Sisters from the Liverpool Notre Dame College were sent to Glasgow to found the first (female) teacher training college. They bought for their convent East Dowanside and purchased the remaining half a year later. They took boarders, day boarders and evening pupils. A practising school was a necessity for the teacher training college and The Dowanhill Higher Grade Practising School opened on 23rd August 1897. An additional wing had been rapidly added to the convent to the E for teaching and is dated 1896. 7 Bowmont Gardens was bought c1897 for housing students and boarders and was called St Joseph's. The other houses in the terrace gradually came into the nuns possession.

There was some local opposition to the Sister's work and expansion, however, they were not persuaded to relocate and continued to grow.

The expansion of the practising school and the need for an appropriate place of worship resulted in the construction of the chapel to the W by Pugin & Pugin. It was opened in 1900 and contained the practising school in the ground floor with the chapel above. A red brick addition behind the chapel provided further student classrooms and dormitories.

Around 1905 a new Higher Grade School was constructed by Bruce & Hay to the SE which contained an extension to the college which in turn was linked to the 1896 wing. This building taught the older pupils and infants continued to be taught in the school under the chapel. In 1924 the school was officially recognised as a Montessori school, the first in Scotland.

A larger High School was opened to the N in 1953 (Notre Dame High School, see separate listing).

The Sisters had largely moved out of the Dowanhill site by the late 1960s. The college relocated to Duntochter Road in Bearsden (St Andrew's College, see separate listing). The chapel, Dowanside House and 1896 wing and 1-7 Bowmont Gardens are currently (2004) mostly occupied by Learning and Teaching Scotland although they plan to vacate in the near future. The Higher Grade School is now Notre Dame Primary School.

This complicated and interrelated site is an important part of Glasgow's history of education and in particular the education of women.

Part of a B-group with 1-7 Bowmont Gardens, 74 Victoria Crescent Road Former Dowanside House and Former Notre Dame College Training Wing to East, and 74 Victoria Crescent Road former Notre Dame Training College Chapel and Practising School.

References

Bibliography

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