PUPILS at the former Glasgow private girls’ school, Laurel Bank, take an art lesson in the school playground in April 1953.
Glasgow used to have three girls’ schools in the west end: Westbourne, Park, and Laurel Bank. Uniforms were obtained from Daly’s at Charing Cross, books from John Smith’s on St Vincent’s Street.
But by the 1970s and 80s rolls were falling and in 1991, Westbourne, the oldest and grandest cracked first. Wooed by Glasgow Academy, the governors of Westbourne agreed to a merger.
Five years later Laurel Bank and Park were obliged to merge. By that stage Laurel Bank, founded in 1903 to “offer girls educational opportunities hitherto only available to boys’’, had a roll of 370. Park, established in 1880 to “prepare girls for adulthood’’ and, daringly, “open the door to university’’ had just 254 pupils.
Park’s premises in Lynedoch Street were sold and the new entity was born at Laurel Bank’s headquarters on Lilybank Terrace. The disposal raised a substantial sum but not enough to guarantee the future and the school merged with Hutchesons’.
The pride in Laurel Bank was strong. As Gay Eggington, head of Laurel Bank until the merger with Park, put it at her school’s 90th anniversary dinner in 1993: “This room is filled with women who have broken through the glass ceiling.”
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