Glenbuchat Heritage

31 Balloch School

old b&w photograph of the school teacher with her class, outside the school house.

Photograph supplied by Mrs Campbell of Dingwall, grand-daughter of Miss
Singer.Balloch Public School, 1907, Upper Strathdon.

All 19 pupils of this remote Aberdeenshire School are present for the photographer, along
with their one teacher, Miss H. Singer. Depopulation led to its closure after the war; the
building has long since become overgrown by foliage.

"I reckon that the education I got at my little school was as good as any
in Britain ". The speaker is Billy Duncan, aged 82 and looking back on
the nine sessions – his only ones of formal education – he spent at the
now derelict Balloch School , high up in the Glen Nochty hills. The
establishment he recalls was a tiny one-roomed, one-teacher school on
the road which rises up from Bellabeg to the Glenbuchat Lodge. Billy
was the son of the head-keeper on the estate there, a position which he
grew up to fill himself. Now living in retirement at Corgarff, he
reflects with satisfaction on the long years which have, almost all of
them, been passed in his remote upland spot: To this day I'm not very
fond of crowds, I couldn't abide to live in a town.