ON Thursday, December 23, 1954, Glasgow Academy broke up for the Christmas holidays. One day later, “attracted by the clanging of the fire engines”, many of them returned to the school to see firefighters tackle a blaze that had broken out on the premises.
One of the pupils, on the far right of the photograph, brought a camera – but, as the Evening Times remarked, “he seems to be leaving that part of the business to the press photographers”. The roof of the academy’s three-storey building was destroyed, and six classrooms and a gymnasium on the top floor suffered extensive damage.
“At the height of the blaze,” the paper reported, “a false ceiling under the glass roof collapsed, and debris hurtled into the rooms. Windows were shattered by the intense heat.”
Every available fire engine in the city was rushed to the academy after the fire was discovered at around 10am on Christmas Eve.
Firemen under the command of Firemaster Martin Chadwick took some 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control. British Movietone footage of the operation can be seen on YouTube.
Two escape ladders were run up so that the fire crews could play hoses on to the roof; and some of the firefighters wore oxygen masks because of the stifling smoke fumes.
Hoses were led across busy Great Western Road, where crowds were gathering, and up Colebrooke Street, bringing traffic to a halt.
From the moment the outbreak was discovered, the head janitor, Charles Jones, and the under-janitor, a Mr Farmer, ran back and forward to the main part of the school, retrieving school records and other important material and taking them to the preparatory school on the other side of Colebrooke Street.
The rector, F Roydon Richards, was called from his home in Milngavie as soon as the fire was discovered. When, later, he emerged from the school, carrying some correspondence, he told reporters that the school records were not in danger.
Read more: Herald Diary
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