page_title: Fettes College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fettes College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Fettes College from the south-east
context_page_description: Fettes College is a private co-educational independent boarding and day school in Edinburgh, Scotland, with over two-thirds of its pupils in residence on campus. The school was originally a boarding school for boys only and became co-ed in 1983. In 1978 the College had a nine-hole golf course, an ice-skating rink used in winter for ice hockey and in summer as an outdoor swimming pool, a cross-country running track and a rifle shooting range within the forested 300-acre grounds. Fettes is sometimes referred to as a public school, although the term is traditionally used in Scotland for state schools. The school was founded with a bequest of Sir William Fettes in 1870 and started admitting girls in 1970. It follows the English rather than Scottish education system and has nine houses. The main building was designed by David Bryce.
context_section_description: To perpetuate the memory of his only son William, who had predeceased him in 1815, Sir William Fettes (1750–1836), a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh and a wealthy city merchant, bequeathed the then very large sum of £166,000 to be set aside for the education of poor children and orphans.
  After his death the bequest was invested, and the accumulated sum was then used to acquire the 350 acres of land, to build the main building and to found the school in 1870. Fettes College opened with 53 pupils (40 were Foundation Scholars with 11 others boarding and two day pupils). Following serious fires, the swimming baths were rebuilt in 1890 and the chemistry laboratory was rebuilt in 1897. The cricket pavilion was completed in 1906.
  In summer 1914 the school's summer camp at Barry had to be abandoned when both the commanding officer and the adjutant were called up for service in the First World War. Of the 2,000 former pupils who had by then been educated at the school, 1,094 were called up and 246 died in the war. A war memorial designed by Birnie Rhind and bearing the inscription "carry on" was unveiled by Major-General Sir William Macpherson in the school grounds in 1921. A central heating system was first introduced in the main building in 1920 and electric light was first introduced in the school in 1924.
  In October 1939, early in the Second World War, the school had its first experience of hostilities when a German Junkers Ju 88 flew low over the school playing fields en route to bomb Rosyth Dockyard. Kimmerghame House was requisitioned for use as a section of the mine research unit HMS Vernon. A total of 118 former boys died in the Second World War. In the mid-1940s Sean Connery, a milkman with the St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society, delivered milk to the school in the mornings.
  The school chapel was enlarged by adding a chancel and a gallery in 1948. A new school running track was opened in 1954 giving a boost to athletics at the school and The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited the school in 1955.
  In the early 1960s the school was required to sell 18 acres of land to allow Telford College to be built and to sell 14 acres for a new headquarters for Lothian and Borders Police. Following a public inquiry in 1965 the school was also forced to sell 15 acres of land to allow Broughton High School to be re-built. A new dining hall was opened in 1966 and a new school library was opened in 1970. The Queen Mother also opened a new science school in 1970.
  An all-boys school until 1970, when female pupils were first admitted for the final year, Fettes became fully co-educational in 1983. In 1988 the school sold 13 acres of land to McCarthy & Stone for residential use for £3 million: the proceeds were used by the school to finance the refurbishment of the boys' houses.
  In the late 1990s the school performed particularly well academically: in 1998 Fettes was placed fourth in the Daily Telegraph league table of schools. In 1999 Fettes was placed fifth in the Sunday Times list of top mixed independent schools in the UK and in 2001 Fettes was declared "Scottish School of the year" by the Sunday Times.
  In March 2009 Fettes won the Scottish Schools U18 Rugby Cup, at Murrayfield Stadium, for the first time and in April 2009 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) published a report on Fettes that evaluated the school as "excellent" in four out of five Quality Indicators and "very good" in the other.
  It is said that Fettes "used to have a hearty, rugger-bugger, Caledonian image". Some journalists have described Fettes as "the Eton of the North".
caption: Fettes College from the south-east
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