Moray House School of Education Information

The Moray House School of Education and Sport (‘Moray House’) is a school within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. It is based in historic buildings on the Holyrood Campus, located between the Canongate and Holyrood Road.

The school offers programmes at all levels of higher education, including teacher training, Community Education, Digital Education, Physical Education and Sports science. It is also a centre for educational research. The school has existed in one form or another since the mid-19th century, joining the University of Edinburgh in 1998.

The institution currently known as Moray House was originally opened as a normal school following the Disruption of 1843. Known as The Free Church of Scotland’s Normal and Sessional School, it was originally located in Whitefield Chapel, and then in rooms below the Music Room in Rose Street. In 1848, the school moved to its current location in Moray House, in the Canongate.

In 1907, this institution merged with its Church of Scotland equivalent (the Church of Scotland Training College), and the Edinburgh Provincial Training Centre was formed; with the church training colleges subsumed within this organisation. The new teaching building opened at Moray House in 1931.

Moray House College of Education was officially formed in 1959.

In the early 1980s, Callendar Park College of Education, in Falkirk, was merged with Moray House.

In 1987, Moray House merged with the Dunfermline College of Physical Education based at Cramond, and continued to exist on two separate campuses (Holyrood and Cramond) until 2001.In 1991, the institute was linked with Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh; and was retitled Moray House Institute of Education. On 1 August 1998, Moray House Institute of Education merged with the University of Edinburgh becoming its Faculty of Education.

Following internal restructuring of the University of Edinburgh in 2002, Moray House became known as the Moray House School of Education.

As of August 2019, Moray House School of Education has been renamed as Moray House School of Education and Sport.

It is currently subdivided into three Institutes:

The buildings of Moray House are located on the Holyrood campus adjacent to the Canongate in Edinburgh.

During the nineteenth century, part of the original open area to the west of St Johns Street and north of the South Back was occupied by breweries. These made use of the high quality water from the springs and wells in this part of the Canongate.

In response to the shortage of teachers in Scotland in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Moray House looked to the possibility of building additional teaching facilities close to the existing estate at Holyrood. In 1961 Moray House purchased the property of the Aitchison Brewery. This included buildings at the ends of Playhouse and Old Playhouse Closes as well offices (no. 18 and 19 St Johns Street), a tenement (no. 20) and Maltings. The price paid was £50,000.

In the 1970s, three specialist teaching buildings were built from designs by architects Gordon and Dey. They were St Leonards Land (Physical Education), Chessels Land (Visual Arts) and St Marys Land (Science and Technical). The design of these buildings was representative of 1960s modernist architecture and somewhat out of sympathy with the surrounding areas of the Old Town. The bulk of the buildings were on land formerly occupied by the Edinburgh and Leith Brewery and before that by the Old Edinburgh Playhouse.

Chessels Land was one of three buildings designed by architects Graham and Dey and constructed in the early 1970s; it opened in January 1974. It was unused for a number of years and demolished in 2013 to make way for student accommodation. Chessels Land was designed as a specialist centre for the training of teachers in the Visual Arts, including painting, ceramics, textiles, sculpture, photography and jewellery. Inside the building were sixteen large studios and a large Exhibition Hall, which was available for both student and external use.

In the original plan for the site the raised patio in front of Chessels Land was planned to connect with a proposed Library and a Theatre fronting onto Holyrood Road. These buildings in turn were to be connected with the St Leonards Land building on the opposite side Holyrood Road. In the event these plans were ruled out by the SED in 1978. The Theatre was never built and a new Library was eventually developed in Dalhousie Land.

Chessels Land takes its name from Archibald Chessel, a successful wright to trade and stalwart member of the Tron Kirk who lived in the eighteenth century. He built the nearby Chessels Court between 1745 and 1748. These were much admired mansion flats built to accommodate persons of standing. They are still standing today and remain as private flats.

In 1993 Chessels Land became the base for the Aesthetic Studies Department, when Drama studios were added. In 1996 Music was transferred from Old Moray House. With St Marys Land, Chessels Land was demolished in 2013 in preparation for construction of new student accommodation.

Charteris Land is home to Moray Houses departments of Educational Studies and part of the department of Curriculum Research and Development.

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