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Fettes College () is a co-educational private boarding and day school in Craigleith, Edinburgh, Scotland, with over two-thirds of its pupils in residence on campus. The school was originally a boarding school for boys only and became co-ed in 1983. In 1978 the College had a nine-hole golf course, an ice-skating rink used in winter for ice hockey and in summer as an outdoor swimming pool, a cross-country running track and a rifle shooting range within the forested 300-acre grounds. Fettes is sometimes referred to as a public school, although that term was traditionally used in Scotland for state schools. The school was founded with a bequest of Sir William Fettes in 1870 and started admitting girls in 1970. It follows the English rather than the Scottish education system and has nine houses. The main building, called the Bryce Building, was designed by David Bryce. The school is included in The Schools Index as one of the 150 best private schools in the world and among top 30 senior schools in the UK. History To perpetuate the memory of his only son William, who had predeceased him in 1815, Sir William Fettes (1750–1836), a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh and a wealthy city merchant, bequeathed the then very large sum of £166,000 to be set aside for the education of poor children and orphans. After his death the bequest was invested, and the accumulated sum was then used to acquire the 350 acres of land, to build the main building and to found the school in 1870. Fettes College opened with 53 pupils (40 were Foundation Scholars with 11 others boarding and two day pupils). Following serious fires, the swimming baths were rebuilt in 1890 and the chemistry laboratory was rebuilt in 1897. The cricket pavilion was completed in 1906. In summer 1914 the school's summer camp at Barry had to be abandoned when both the commanding officer and the adjutant were called up for service in the First World War. Of the 2,000 former pupils who had by then been educated at the school, 1,094 served in the armed forces, and 246 died during their war service. In 1921 a war memorial designed by Birnie Rhind, bearing the inscription "carry on", was unveiled by Major-General Sir William Macpherson in the school grounds. A central heating system was first introduced in the main building in 1920, and electric light was first introduced in the school in 1924. In October 1939, early in the Second World War, the school had its first experience of hostilities when a German Junkers Ju 88 flew low over the school playing fields en route to bomb Rosyth Dockyard. Kimmerghame House was requisitioned for use as a section of the mine research unit HMS Vernon. A total of 118 former boys died in the Second World War. In the mid-1940s Sean Connery, a milkman with the St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society, delivered milk to the school in the mornings. The school chapel was enlarged by adding a chancel and a gallery in 1948. A new school running track was opened in 1954 giving a boost to athletics at the school, and Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the school in 1955. In the early 1960s the school was required to sell 18 acres of land to allow Telford College to be built and to sell 14 acres for a new headquarters for Lothian and Borders Police. Following a public inquiry in 1965 the school was also forced to sell 15 acres of land to allow Broughton High School to be re-built. A new dining hall was opened in 1966 and a new school library was opened in 1970. The Queen Mother also opened a new science school in 1970. An all-boys school until 1970, when female pupils were first admitted for the final year, Fettes became fully co-educational in 1983. In 1988 the school sold 13 acres of land to McCarthy & Stone for residential use for £3 million: the proceeds were used by the school to finance the refurbishment of the boys' houses. In the late 1990s the school performed particularly well academically: in 1998 Fettes was placed fourth in the Daily Telegraph league table of schools. In 1999 Fettes was placed fifth in the Sunday Times list of top mixed independent schools in the UK and in 2001 Fettes was declared "Scottish School of the year" by the Sunday Times. In March 2009 Fettes won the Scottish Schools U18 Rugby Cup, at Murrayfield Stadium, for the first time and in April 2009 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) published a report on Fettes that evaluated the school as "excellent" in four out of five Quality Indicators and "very good" in the other. It is said that Fettes "used to have a hearty, rugger-bugger, Caledonian image". Some journalists have described Fettes as "the Eton of the North". Former headmaster Michael Spens jokingly countered on a BBC documentary that "Eton College was the Fettes of the South!" In 2020 and 2021 six men accused Iain Wares, who had taught at Fettes and Edinburgh Academy, of physical and sexual abuse at the schools when they were pupils in the 1970s. The Scottish Crown Prosecution Service was initially reluctant to prosecute the alleged abuser because of difficulties in seeking his extradition from South Africa—he had moved there—and his advanced age, but South Africa approved the UK's extradition request, on six charges of lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour and one of indecent assault, in 2020. The lawyer representing Fettes made "a full and unreserved apology" to former pupils who had suffered abuse. The perpetrator admitted the abuse, and was fighting extradition from South Africa to Scotland in 2022, and remained, free, in South Africa as of November 2023. One former pupil was awarded £450,000 in damages in 2022 for abuse suffered at the School. In 2022 a former pupil, who attended Fettes Junior School and Fettes College as a day student in the 1970s and 1980s, claimed he was abused while at the junior school. Speaking to Scotland Tonight the man said he was beaten and sexually abused by a teacher. He claimed he was targeted when he was aged 12 because he was "more developed, and reached puberty before lots of the other boys". The matter was discussed in the BBC Radio 4 series In Dark Corners with Alex Renton, which spoke to dozens of former pupils who alleged they were abused by teachers at Fettes College and at Edinburgh Academy. In 2023, the school was featured on the BBC Panorama documentary "My Teacher the Abuser: Fighting for Justice". In the documentary boys spoke of sexual and physical abuse committed by Wares, which the former students claimed was covered up. One former student stated in the documentary that he had contacted the school and they were not interested in helping to locate the teacher. It was also claimed that the school provided an excellent reference for the abusive teacher. Curriculum Fettes College follows the English rather than the Scottish education system. Pupils take English GCSEs rather than Scottish National Qualifications and students now have the choice between A Levels and the new I.... Discover the Merlyn Sloane popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Merlyn Sloane books.