Fordyce Academy

“The position of this School is now well established as the most important feeder of the University outside the City of Aberdeen.” – HM Inspector of Schools, Report 1906

Thomas Menzies, Laird of Durn and founder of Fordyce Castle, endowed and built the first school in Fordyce in the last quarter of the 16th century. This school was probably situated very close to the kirk. Menzies stipulated that the scholars should sit in the Dunn Aisle for worship.

Menzies ensured endowments were paid to the schoolmaster from the revenues of his farms: the lands of Little Goveyn, the mill and mill lands of Baldaivie, and also Petchdaillie (afterwards known as the school croft of Fordyce).

In 1678, Walter Ogilvie of Reidhyth bequeathed the lands of Reidhyth and Meikle and Little Bogton to establish bursaries at the parochial school and King’s College, Aberdeen. These were known as the Ogilvie or Reidhythe Bursaries. Around the same time, a gift from Ogilvie also enabled George Brown, then schoolmaster, to build a new school. His annual salary increased by £40 Scots.

Fordyce Academy gained an impressive academic reputation over the years. Among its many distinguished former pupils were Sir John Forbes MD (1787–1861), Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria; Sir James Clark, Bart, MD, who also held the same post till his death in 1870; Sir Murdoch MacKenzie Wood, Barrister, Journalist and MP for Central Aberdeenshire and Banffshire; Dr William Grant (1863–1946), lexicographer and editor of the Scottish National Dictionary; Nellie Badenoch, the first woman graduate with First Class Honours from Aberdeen University; Alexander Bremner, medical adviser to the Sultan of Johore; also numerous other surgeons, tea planters, headmasters, foreign missionaries.

In 1716, the school moved to Glassaugh’s House, that is, the later wing of Fordyce Castle, where it remained till 1789. The school was afterwards on the site formerly used as the public hall, in a building next to the present-day kirk.

In addition to the parish school on that site, the institution which became Fordyce Academy was housed in what is now known as Academy House (private), built around 1846.

Prior to 1882, there were four schools in the village: one a girls’ school and another associated with the Free Kirk. A new school was built in 1882, known from 1900 as Fordyce Academy. It survives today as a local authority store (next to the swing park). The adjacent New Academy dates from 1924 and is now the local primary school.

So great was its reputation that it was sometimes known as the Eton of the North. Local residents would doff their caps when meeting a Fordyce pupil. However, in an age of increasing centralisation of secondary schooling, Fordyce Academy closed in 1964.