Twenty Horses in a Row - Everyone of Wordie & Co.
This modest number of beasts was the tiniest fraction which went on to serve the company, because it was reckoned that at one time Wordie had well over 2000 horses stabled at depots all over Scotland.  "Like many great concerns, Wordie & Co. had humble beginnings, and the earliest mention of the destined-to-be haulage empire came in the early 19th century when John Wordie, carrier of Stirling, omitting to inform the Government of the day, endeavoured to supplement his income by running an illegal mail service between Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh, charging 6½d to Glasgow, and 8d to the Capital."  John Wordie's heart suddenly failed him one day when out for his Sunday walk, (much like some of his horses) and he died leaving half a dozen horses and carts to his son William.

The Railway was now spreading its tentacles all over Scotland, and wherever the railway went, William Wordie was sure to go. In 1851 he became agent for the Caledonian Railway and then secured a contract for the Scottish Central Railway.  William Wordie had fixed his wagon to a star in orbit. But on 9th October, 1874, his industrious life came to an end at his Lenzie home. He died leaving a family of seven – five daughters and two sons, John and Peter, who took over the business and still found time to move the family into more spacious accommodation, at Millersneuk House, in Lenzie.  All things must end, however, and the proud slogan – "You'll find Wordie & Co. wherever you go" – was soon consigned to history. In 1945, the Government passed the Road Traffic Act, and Wordie & Co became part of the now nationalised British Road Services.

The Old Manse of St Nicholas, Schoolhill, Aberdeen. In 1620, the house became the residence of George Jamesone, the celebrated portrait painter. By the 1880s it had became a common Lodging House and it was demolished in the late 1880s and its site is now commemorated by a plaque. 

This building was erected as a Manse or a Residence for the Minister of St Nicholas' Church, but the date of erection cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. On the 2 inner wings is the date 1729 but the body of the house appears to have been erected before that date. It was no longer used as a manse but was let off into several tenements 1895.  On the site now occupied by Nos 16-26 School Hill, Aberdeen, was a Temple Tenement of St John, formerly George Jameson's House.

The Strewn Rubble - Old houses skirting St Nicholas Churchyard once formed part of the south side of Schoolhill.

They were demolished in 1884-85 as part of a street widening scheme and the present wall and railing now stands in their place. On the other side of Schoolhill could be seen the roof and turrets of George Jamesone's House, demolished in 1886. 

St Nicholas Churchyard had a row of houses which stood between it and Schoolhill. These houses were demolished around 1884 as part of an improvement scheme to widen Schoolhill - named after the Old Grammar School which stood nearby. A dwarf wall with ornamental railings was erected in place of these buildings and a Porter's Lodge was removed from Robert Gordon's College to form a lodge for the Sexton at the entrance to the churchyard.  Note the mortar and pestle indicating a Apothecary or Chemist Shop on the left corner.

Would that Jamesone's House still survived as a monument to the Aberdonian Artist at 22 School Hill.  It was built by Andrew Jamesone a Master Mason who lived in from 1588 till his death in 1625 and inherited by his son George Jamesone Portrait Painter. A young loon looks over wall of the graveyard of St Nicholas at the photographer (circa 1898) who seems to be recording the already crumbling and condemned 300 year old but magnificent building.  demolished in by the Council for the 'widening' of Schoolhill - some suitable excuse.  This appears to be a centre of attraction for pedestrians perhaps posing and anxious to get their 'photie took' for posterity to ponder over.  It is at least fitting that the Gray's School of Art and Art Gallery lies at the top of Schoolhill. Interesting that the corner recess was made into a shop much like Mar's Castle recess in the Gallowgate.

The house was located on the north side of Schoolhill until it was taken down in c.1885. Andrew Jamesone Mason, father of the Painter George Jamesone (1588-1644), built it in 1586. 

In illustrations and photos it appears as if it had a T or L shaped tower, but the form of the house is uncertain. It had a `projecting turret with a pair of corbelled, angle round, moulded window surrounds and strong courses. Corbelled stair turrets connected the main block and the west re-entrant angle wide-arched entrance gave access to a pend through the lower eastern range'. 

It had a projecting turret with distinctive pair of corbelled angle round, moulded window surrounds and strong courses. A corbelled stair turret adjoined the main block in the west re-entrant angle wide arched entrance gave access to a pend through the lower more elaborate eastern range'. 

An illustration by Billings shows the turrets with tapering roofs and some repairs to the building but the turrets were taken off and roof finished.  It has been claimed as a Manse of St. Nicholas, the Bishop's Palace, the residence of Mary Queen of Scots and the prison of Samuel Rutherford but there is no evidence to suggest that this house was used for these purposes. It was taken down at a time when slum clearance and redevelopment was taking place in the City centre in general. The removal of this venerable and much loved structure provoked much hostility and anger at the time. Demolished in c. 1885

Judging by the throngs of men stood here it makes one wonder what the purpose of the adjoining shop was - a convenient meeting place, Lodging House or a labour exchange?

School Hill Cotton Factory
Prime Nursery of Vice and Sorrow
William Thom was born in 1798 of parents steeped in poverty, in a tenement in Sinclair's Close, Justice Port, Aberdeen, and at the age of 10 began his apprenticeship to life in a Cotton Factory. At the age of 15 or 16 say 1814 he entered the "School Hill Factory," of Messrs Gordon, Barron, and Co a Hand-Weaving building since swept away, - as a weaver hand, and remained there for 17 years till 1833. The wages of the best operatives averaged through good and bad times from 6 to 9 shillings weekly, and of the 2nd-class from 3 to 5 shillings. The daily hours of labour were 14. What that meant, not in poverty, but in absolute want of food, warmth, and the means for the sustenance of life, the degradation of rags, the shutting out of all glimpses of heaven and earth, leaving the only alleviation to the hours of toil at the rattling machines, and the squalid suffering in the reeking tenements, in the cheap and fiery stimulants of the taprooms, can be only faintly imagined. An inheritance of bad habits had also descended to the weaving class. When the factories were 1st established in 1770, after the invention of the spinning jenny, the wages of skilful workmen were 40/- a week, and the operatives usually remained drunk from Saturday night until Wednesday morning, wore frilled shirts and powdered hair, sported canes, and quoted Volney in their discussions on the rights of man in the taprooms. The surplus of labour gradually reduced the wages to the starvation point, while the habits of dissipation and recklessness remained as characteristic of the craft.

Thorn gives a most affecting picture of the lives and thoughts of these men, many of them, strong with native intellect and passion, condemned to a life of unending servitude and degradation, too ragged to dare to enter a church, even if they wished, and getting their only glimpse of nature in the garden of Gordon's Hospital, which was open on the Sunday holiday, while the whiskey shop gave them their only taste of joy and exhilaration; and yet who had a native feeling for poetry, repeating the verses of Burns and particularly of Tannahill, their brother weaver, as they tended their looms, and applauding the poets and singers in their own ranks, whose rude verses expressed their feelings or appealed to their sympathies in the gatherings in the taprooms. The moral influences of such a life, where 300/400 men and women were herded together in common workrooms was also very bad, and many a young girl dated her ruin in life, bringing additional desolateness to the miserable home, from the promiscuous association, and being barred out into the streets with a heavy fine for failing to be at the factory door at its opening in the early morning. How virtue, morality, or any of the decency and self-respect of humanity  could exist at all in such a life may be considered a marvel, and it is a proof of the inherent strength of the Scottish character and its inherited virtues that these factories were not greater plague spots than they actually were, and that honest lives and human affections flourished at all. In a poem, entitled Whisperings to the Unwashed, in the fiercely declamatory style of the Corn Law Rhymer, Thorn draws a grim picture of the awakening of the weavers at the call of the Town Drum, used for that purpose in the smaller Burghs, at 6 o'clock in the bleak and dark Northern mornings.

Rubadub, rubadub, row-dow-dow !
Hark how he waukens the Weavers now;
Who lie belaired in a dreamy steep -
A mental swither, 'tween death and sleep,

Gordon, Barron, & Co. cotton spinners and manufacturers, Woodside - Office, 20, Belmont Street

Well o' Spa
The Woolman Hill, which all the rest outvies
In pleasantness, this city beautifies;
There is the Well of Spa, that healthful font,
Whose yrne-hewed water coloureth the mount;
Not far from thence a garden’s to be seen
Which unto Jamesone did appertain:
Wherein a little pleasant house doth stand,
Painted as I guess with its master’s hand."

Water was taken into the Medieval Town by a lead pipe following the Denburn to the Well of Spa. There it left the course of the burn and went up by Black's Buildings and along Schoolhill. At the east end of Schoolhill, on the south side of the street, it supplied a stone cistern well. Here the main pipe divided into 2 branches. One going south supplied a cistern well in Netherkirkgate at the head of Carnegie's Brae, opposite the end of Flourmill Lane. This well is shown in "Scotia Depicta"  Descending Carnegie's Brae, the pipe supplied a Well in the Green, shown on Taylor's Map, 1773, and another at the Shore. The other branch ascended Upperkirkgate, and supplied a Well in the Gallowgate near Mars's Castle and another in Broad Street in front of Greyfriars Church, where a reservoir or Water House was afterwards erected. There was another Well near the south end of Broad Street, east side, and a large cistern well in Castlegate. (The Mannie)

Blackfriar's
The Dominicans were brought to Aberdeen by Alexander II. (1214-49), who gave them a large piece of ground with a house on it, lying between Schoolhill and the Loch. The west boundary of their ground extended to the back of the houses in Blackfriars Street, and the East approached Harriet Street. Within this area they built a "very splendid" Monastery and Church. They had got a supply of water from a deep well. In the course of excavations made in 1833 some remains of the Monastery were found, from which it appeared that the front was 60 ft long and faced the south. The Monastery and the Church were dedicated to John the Baptist, and the small knoll at the east side of Schoolhill Station is called St John's Hill on Gordon's chart. 

The place of the Blackfriars then consisted of 3 portions, namely, the Monastery and Church [with its Cemetery] and other subsidiary buildings - Barn, Kiln, and Pigeon-house, (Dovecote) with garden and orchard; an incroft lying to the west of the Monastery and included within the same walls; and the yard croft, lying between the wall on the south and the Loch on the north.

These parts are shown on Gordon's chart, 1661. When the Monks were expelled in January, 1560,  The University had to get decrees in Court against the numerous occupants of the properties before it could establish its rights and get payment of rents. In 1732 the University feued the Blackfriars property between the Schoolhill and the Loch to the Town Council, to be the site of Gordon's Hospital, and in 1883 a part of the Hospital ground was parted with to the Town Council, for the site of an Art Gallery which was opened in 1884.

The Duke of Cumberland, while on his march to Culloden, stayed, from 25th February to 8th March, at a large house called Sillerton, said to be at the end of Aberdeen at that time. This house Cumberland fortified strongly for the purpose of a magazine and hospital for his sick  and wounded soldiers. At the same time he left a suffioient force to- defend it against enemies, of whom Glenbucket's followers are specially mentioned.  Sillerton House was the Gordons Hospital and is a corruption of Silvertown

Shirras Laing, 40-50 Schoolhill/Harriet Street 1978
Shirras Laing's retail shop within a stone's throw of James Dun's house is remembered by a great many Aberdonians.  Shirras Laing were also electrical contractors installing, amongst other commissions, the wiring in the very modern electrification of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary that was carried out in 1892

Schoolhill and Harriet Street, Buildings for Mitchell & Muil Ltd., Bakers..
Architect: Matthews and Mackenzie 1887.

Mitchell & Muil Ltd - This company was a well-known Aberdeen-based bakery that had been in operation since 1833, and had headquarters on ‘The Granite Mile’, 25 Union Street in the middle of Aberdeen. The company also seems to have had various shops in Aberdeen, including one on Elmbank Terrace dating from the 1930s. In 1906 they listed themselves as bread and biscuit manufacturers.  In 1933 the biscuit division was sold to Canadian biscuit manufacturer Garfield Weston,  and moved to Edinburgh. However the bakery continued to operate, with delivery boys still being employed in the 1960s. It appears that the company became absorbed by a wider conglomerate of other Companies in the 1980s, and ceased operating as an independent brand at about that time.

The Denburn ran as an open burn throughout this area area of town with bleaching greens next to it, until the railway was constructed in 1865-7, when the burn was covered over and the sun bleaching method surpassed. In the late 1870's, Union Terrace Gardens was laid out next to the railway, and it was sometimes referred to as the 'Trainie Park'. The old bandstand has long since been removed. The iron footbridge on granite supports which allowed access across the gardens from Schoolhill to Union Terrace was replaced by Schoolhill Viaduct in 1886/7 but sections still survive in the Duthie Park.

 Corner of Blackfriars Street and Schoolhill, adjacent to the Art Gallery

Duncan Fraser, drapers, Schoolhill. had a cash Pneumatic tube system. Closed around 1960s.  Duncan Fraser was 152nd Lord Provost of Aberdeen c. 1949.

In 1889, Schoolhill Viaduct was built along with Schoolhill Station. At that time the station was part of the Great North of Scotland Railway Company. These street level offices and station stood in splendid isolation a few 100 yards along from His Majesty's Theatre. The station, besides acting as a left luggage office also acted as a waiting room for the GNSR Bus Services to the outlying villages of Aberdeenshire. To the left of the entrance can be noted a clock which indicated the time of the next train to Dyce. The station was closed in 1937 and for several years was a tea room. The building was finally demolished in 1977.

Suburban Railway Station
In 1893 after several years negotiation with the Town Council, Schoolhill Station was opened. It was located within sight of the Joint Station, but was more convenient for George St, Rosemount and Woolmanhill areas.  Schoolhill Station was a granite building with entrances from both Schoolhill and the Denburn levels.

The station was also used as a bus terminus for the Great North of Scotland Railway bus service.  The station restaurant survived until the 1970's, and the station was demolished in 1973.  Current Status: The railway is now single track at this point. Traces of building remains in the car park beside the theatre.

The was indeed a Tearoom in my time and looked like a a complete folly as a freestanding structure with a footbridge to the Viaduct as its original use had long since faded from memory.