‘Before’ and ‘After’ images are from slightly different angles, but you get the idea of what changed with the opening of the new school in 1964.

In 1924 the Education Authority of Edinburgh purchased land on Duddingston Road from the 3rd Duke of Abercorn. St John’s RC Primary School was constructed (opened 1926) with adjoining land forming a playing field for that school and later Portobello Secondary School.

The playing field image is from the 1950s, most likely the earlier part of the decade.

Accommodation problems at the Portobello school continued in 1958: despite the loss of the Primary Department to the new Duddingston school, it was forecast that the school roll would rise to 950.

Six HORSA (Hutting Operation for the Raising of the School-Leaving Age) units had been constructed in the boys’ playground in 1947 at a time when the roll was only 530. In 1959 ‘temporary’ huts had been added to the girls’ playground (these would later be redeployed to Duddingston which was suffering its own lack of accommodation only 6 years after it was completed).

Of three proposals drawn up to improve the school, the only feasible option of obtaining adequate accommodation of a suitable standard was to provide another new block (the building on Park Avenue was itself a 1901 addition to the original school on Duddingston Park).

In the event, in March 1959 the Scottish Education Department stepped in to reject this proposal, and direct that a new school should be built. Edinburgh Town Council announced the site (which, of course, it already owned) in February 1961.

The intended design was published in the Evening News in April 1961. The main difference to the final construction was replacement of a sort of ‘penthouse’ structure on the top of the tower block with just another floor of classrooms.

Pupils moved in after the summer holidays in 1964, with the official opening by Princess Alexandra on Tuesday 1st December.

With credit to Ian Small