Back Row – Anabelle McMillan, Arlene MacDonald, Derek Baker, Sheena Warnock, Colin MacCallum, Lesley Mather.
Front Row – Andrew MacPherson, Angela MacDonald, Stewart MacCallum, Aileen Baker, Fergus McMillan
Kilmorich School (the parish of Cairndow is called Kilmorich)
1998 was the year that ideas about Here We Are began to be formulated. Annabel McMillan, who had been one of the last teachers at Kilmorich School, had a collection of photographs and documents that she had gathered together on the history of the school; it had been a project with her pupils which she exhibited in 1983. She showed this remarkable collection to us.
After Annabel’s untimely death. Her family generously lent Here We Are her project’s work and in 2003 Alice Beattie took on the task of extending the research. She found there had been a school here since 1753 when a petition had been sent to the Presbytery of Dunoon to ask for their assistance for a school at Kilmorich (Cairndow).
The school had closed in 1988, as by then the attendance had dwindled to three children. The last three pupils were Leanne Fraser, Peter White and Stewart MacCallum.
Alice herself, and her daughter Dot and many of those on the Here We Are committee had been pupils at the school. They added to Annabel’s collection, poems about snowdrops written by 7 year old in beautiful copperplate handwriting, and also anecdotes of how Wee Annie (Teacher) had to stand on a box to give them the strap as she was so small.
The photographs and letters and anecdotes collected from pupils and teachers was the first exhibition we put on, it was in 2004.
In addition to what is on our website we have two further files with documents in our archives.
We thought the historical information collected was of such interest that we commissioned a designer and a printer: so we published a booklet – Kilmorich School. It is for sale in our website shop.
School Book was partially funded by –
