Keil School
Coordinates: 55°56′24″N 4°34′59″W / 55.940°N 4.583°W Keil School, in Dumbarton, Scotland, opened on 29 November 1915 as Kintyre Technical College, at Keil House, Southend, near Campbeltown in Argyll. After a fire destroyed the original building in Southend it was relocated and opened in Dumbarton as Keil School in 1925. The school took a lease on Helenslee House, a 50-acre (20 ha) site on the banks of the River Clyde. Helenslee House was originally the property of the shipbuilding family Dennys of Dumbarton.
In 1941, due to the school's high vulnerability during the Clydeside Blitz, including the destruction of nearby industrial centres such as Clydebank (only 16 buildings were left undamaged) and conflagrations at the Bowling Oil Refinery and the Tate & Lyle Sugar Refinery at Greenock, the school had to be evacuated and relocated in the safer surroundings of Balinakill House, Kintyre for the duration of the war.
Keil School was an independent secondary school with boarding and day pupils for around 200 pupils. It was an all-boys school up until 1978, when it became co-educational.
Keil School closed in July 2000. At its closure, when it had 54 boarders and 120 day pupils, it was described by The Scotsman as "One of Scotland's leading fee-paying schools".[1] The site is now being developed as housing.[2]
Notable former pupils
- Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, 16th Duke of Hamilton
- Ken W. MacDonald, Scottish businessman
- Joe Thomson, former Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow and Scottish Law Commissioner
Notes
- ↑ Stuart Nicolson, "Last bell as top public school set for closure", The Scotsman, Edinburgh, 5 April 2000., p.3.
- ↑ "New properties on the Keil School site".
- A History of Keil School published in 1993, Author Roddy MacAskill - Printed by the Edinburgh Press Ltd.