How about this for a brilliant photo! Pictured in 1975 by Drew Semple is High Blantyre Primary School. Drew had the foresight to take several photos around Blantyre and kindly dropped them into my home just after the covid lockdown eased. Scanned in good resolution for sharing with Blantyre Project, a few of them will be seen over the coming days.

That particular year was very apt, for I was at that school, a new pupil in Primary one, though my class was out the photo to the left. The whole school and the level playground looks new, for it was! It was opened just over a year earlier. The school had a much larger imprint than the one today, mainly due to the larger playground. It also had an entrance on Hunthill Road, as well as Broompark Road. This modular school was typical of school buildings of the era. Functional, but not built to any long lasting standard like the old stone schools were.

It may surprise people to know this building only existed just over 30 years, a far cry from the High Blantyre School (the Annex on Hunthill Road, which even in 1975, had stood for 100 years!)