KEIL NO MORE

The name Keil derives from Kilcolmkill - the cell of Columba - and the church that was built by his followers at
Southend, near The Mull of Kintyre. A larger church, surrounded by a graveyard on three of its sides, was built in the
12th or 13th century and, early in the 14th century, the Priory at Whithorn granted possession to one Patrick
Macshillinger and his wife Finlach, the charter too confirmed by King Robert The Bruce. This building continued as a
place of worship until about 1670.

In 1611, Duncan Omey, the name Omey derived from the Gaelic “miadh” meaning respect or esteem, became
minister of Kilcolmkill and then, in 1617, when a Commission of The Scottish Parliament united the parishes of
Kilcolmkill and Kilblaan, became the first minister of the new parish later to be renamed Southend. There being no
manse, the Rev. Duncan Omey resided in Keil House which his family had already tenanted for many years and, on
May 15, 1622, The Bishop of Argyll granted a charter of ‘the twenty shilling land of Kilcolmkill’, particularly
reserving four acres of glebe, to the minister, Duncan Omey who, retiring from the ministry in 1641, remained
proprietor of Keil.

When, between 1647 and 1666, Kintyre was ravaged by plague, it was said that Keil was only one of three houses in
Southend from which smoke continued to rise.

The last of the Omey family to reside in Keil, Samuel, moved to Edinburgh in 1819 and the Keil Estate was sold to a
Dr Colin McLarty, of Chesterfield on the Caribbean island of Jamaica, who had at the time being staying in Sanda
House, now Macharioch, the estate, drained, enclosed and then planted with trees and shrubs, being passed on to
his son, John Freeman McLarty, in 1835. The McLarty family sold the estate to James Nicol Fleming, a Glasgow
merchant, in 1865 and by 1872 Fleming added the tenancy of South Moil to complement his interests which too
included Gartivaigh farm.

Fleming was an instinctive speculator who had started his career in Bombay. Most likely too, Fleming would have
known, or known of, the Campbeltown-born entrepreneur William Mackinnon whose personal dream, unrealised till
more than twenty years after his death, had always been to found an educational facility for boys with backgrounds
similar to his own.

During The American Civil War, Fleming amassed a fortune by buying up Indian cotton cheaply and then selling it on
in Britain at inflated prices and by 1865, when he bought Keil, Fleming had become a director of The City of Glasgow
Bank.

Fleming, discontented with Keil House, instructed one Campbell Douglas, a Glasgow architect, to plan a fine new
mansion, one in keeping with Fleming’s new found status and this then was built, at the foot of a steep bank, slightly
nearer the shore than the old house. Sandstone was quarried from the cliffs near Keil Point and finishing stone
brought in by sea from elsewhere and unloaded by a small crane perched on the rocks in front of the building site. The
interior was richly panelled with the finest of timbers and the rooms considerably adorned with ornate plasterwork. It
is said that the new Keil House had more windows than Buckingham Palace so two of them were blocked up to give
the monarch’s residence precedence.

The surrounding gardens were greatly enlarged and enclosed by a high wall with a number of access gates, one of which
was formed from the front doorway of the original old house. Now a new main access road was built, it was lined
with substantial iron railings and a small gate lodge built at the estate’s new entrance. New cottages, also part of the
development, were built at Keil Point and High Keil and the whole scheme finally finished about 1870.

Given the huge financial demands of the project, Fleming had to borrow heavily from his bank and this he did on the
strength of some very doubtful securities ! Somewhat unfortunately for Fleming and indeed the shareholders of The
City of Glasgow Bank, fellow directors were equally unscrupulous in their affairs and one morning in October 1878
the bank’s shareholders woke up to find themselves responsible for some five million pounds of debts !

Fleming took off from Keil in a yacht and set sail for Spain but, later returning back to Scotland, was sentenced in
Edinburgh, in January 1879, to a prison term.

Above the main entrance of Fleming’s new mansion, a plain slab was fitted in the archway to take his coat of arms
which he had confidently expected to be awarded in the fulness of time - the slab would ever remain empty !

Keil would now lie empty till 1883 when it was bought by another Glasgow merchant, Ninian Bannatyne Stewart.
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Although there doesn’t appear to be any published recording of a family connection, it is of peculiar local interest that another Ninian
Bannatyne Stewart, at the time a young schoolboy, was responsible for rescuing Captain John McKechnie of the Campbeltown steamer
company’s “Kintyre” when she was run down by The Union Steamship Company steamer “Maori”, off Wemyss Bay, on the morning of
September 18, 1907. Both Stewart families had Glasgow interests and the family names are seemingly peculiar to descendants of the
founders of Port Bannatyne and Kames, beside Rothesay.

Following the death of Mr Stewart and his wife, their survivors would sell the estate in February 1915 to The Trustees
of The Mackinnon Macneill Trust and here begins ‘The Story of Keil School’ - but there is a lot more to the story and
about William Mackinnon, the man who made it all possible.

Born, as the saying goes, "through a close and up a stair" in a tenement in Argyll Street, Campbeltown, in 1823,
Mackinnon epitomises the story of the poor boy who made good. He was to become a merchant adventurer on the
grand scale. He was apprenticed as a grocer and while still in his teens opened his own shop in Main Street,
Campbeltown, then just when he had laid the foundations of a good-going business, the young man, to the town's
amazement, sold up and went to Glasgow to seek his fortune.

That fortune was not to be found in Glasgow, for on his 24th birthday with a single ticket in his wallet Mackinnon
sailed for Bengal, where, after only eight years he had become a highly successful trader. In 1854 he founded The
Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Company, later to become the British India Steam Navigation Company and
thus, while still in his forties, placed himself in the forefront of international ship-owners. Lord Palmerston offered
him a knighthood which he declined.

In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened and, unlike the majority who saw the new waterway as a fast route to the Far East,
Mackinnon exploited the canal as a means of easy access to the then almost completely unexplored and, certainly then,
quite undeveloped coast of East Africa. In 1888, Mackinnon formed the Imperial British East Africa Trading
Company. Its published aims were typical of the man and included the abolition of slavery, equal treatment for people
of all nations, complete religious liberty and the administration of justice regardless of class or creed. Vast surveys and
explorations were undertaken, roads and railways were built, trading and missionary posts were set up and Mombassa ,
a collection of huts, transformed into a great, thriving seaport.

In 1889 Queen Victoria created Mackinnon a Baronet. Despite his fame and fortune Sir William of Loup and
Balinakill, as he became, never lost his love of Scotland, and at his own wish was buried in 1893 at the Kintyre village of
Clachan.

For many years Mackinnon had dreamed of establishing an educational facility for boys with backgrounds similar to his
own. Perhaps he saw such an establishment as a training place and reservoir for future ship and shore officers in his
own vast trading empire. It was not until 1915, however, that his dream was realised, through a bequest set up before
his death by Sir William and his nephew, Duncan Macneill. With the money, Keil House was purchased to
accommodate a school.

The trustees of the founders were influenced to some extent, when planning Keil, by the success of Sutherland
Technical School set up in 1904 at Golspie by the Duchess of Sutherland.

If Keil was lucky in its founder, it was equally lucky in having James Mason as headmaster from its opening day until
he retired in 1950. Born in 1884 at Bunkle, near Chirnside in Berwickshire, where his father was schoolmaster for 40
years, Mason first attended his father's school, moving when 12 to Berwickshire High School at Duns and then to
Edinburgh University where he graduated Master of Arts and Bachelor of Science. Mason's mother was a
schoolteacher and she married a teacher so his roots were well entrenched in education, he belonged to the old-
fashioned dominie breed. Early in his career he taught mathematics and science at Earlston, moving to Sutherland
Technical School and finally to Keil to which he took Mr E. F. Alexander, a native of Gardenstown, as his second-in-
command.

With Sir William in mind, Headmaster Mason never forgot the great talents often possessed by boys born through
closes and up stairs. Originally, the school was open only to boys from the counties of Argyll, Inverness, Bute and the
Western Highlands and Islands. In the early days, Roman Catholics were not admitted. Throughout his recruiting
area Mason established talent scouts, local men of calibre who kept eyes and ears open for possible candidates. When
likely boys came to their notice, these men got to work on both parents and boys, making sure the advantages of a Keil
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education were fully realised and convincing even the humblest parents that if talent and ability were there, money to
pay fees should be no problem. One of the talent scouts was David Somerville of Oatfield Farm who ran the
Campbeltown to Carradale bus, driven by his son Jack, till taken over by West Coast Motors in 1937.

The climax to this missionary work came when Mr Mason arrived in the aspirant's locality to conduct entrance exams.
His annual ‘bursary tour’ invariably opened in Campbeltown and continued northwards. For many years the tour was a
major event on the West Coast calendar.

Rather a comical, but true story, is told of Mr Mason's final visit to Campbeltown before retiring. Until then he'd
conducted examinations and interviews in Campbeltown Grammar School but, on that last occasion he had to make
do with examining and interviewing in the local Registrar's office which had previously been a private house. Written
examinations were held in a large room but when it came to interviews, which had to be held in private the only
available accommodation was the bathroom. Nothing daunted, Mr Mason carried out the interviews as each boy sat on
the WC and he perched on the edge of the bath.

From the start, Mr Mason implemented the type of organisation which still prevails and which gives boys
responsibility, as far as possible, for control and general discipline. All orderly duties were undertaken by the pupils
and to put this into practice boys were divided into squads, each headed by a chief and his deputy. All domestic duties,
except cooking, were carried out by the boys - sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, making their own beds,
mending and ironing their clothes, setting dining-room tables, washing up, cleaning and polishing cutlery.

There was daily recording of barometric pressure, maximum and minimum temperature, rainfall, wind direction and
wind speed. Chores also included outside work, sawing logs, cultivating the fruit and vegetable garden, helping the
‘orraman’ in the school fields where potatoes and oats were grown, planting and lifting potatoes and harvesting oats. In
addition to this mandatory work, from which there was no escape except through illness, misdemeanours were
punished with an appropriate number of hours of what was known euphemistically as "Natural History" carried out on
Saturday afternoons. "Natural History" was performed with shovel, rake or paint brush and was strictly supervised. All
this was over and above an extensive academic and technical curriculum with PT, sports, homework and sea bathing.
The latter included life-saving and involved swimming on your back for 50 yards using only legs and then diving to pick
up three weights of 7 lbs. each spread at a depth of not less than six feet on the seabed and bringing them ashore.

Because of the school's isolation from the rest of the country, visits by parents were unknown and expeditions by
pupils to Campbeltown were made only to see the dentist. A doctor called twice each week and, there were no half-
term holidays.

For the first nine years, the school worked diligently at its ascetic routine, then on December 7, 1924 disaster struck -
fire destroyed almost the entire building. Staff and pupils escaped with nothing but personal belongings before the roof
fell in. “The Campbeltown Courier”, describing the blaze, commented on "a sight of savage and awe-inspiring splendour"
and how "one of the most imposing houses in the West of Scotland in the space of a few hours was brought to utter
destruction and ruin." The four masters and 55 boys were found temporary accommodation locally.

The late Alex Colville of Campbeltown, a distillery worker and later burgh waterman, vividly remembered that Sunday
night. When news of the fire reached Campbeltown, he and three friends leapt into a car and arrived at the burning
building just as the roof collapsed in a blaze so great it lit up the sky for miles around. He also recalled that a brilliantly
illuminated ocean liner coming out of the Irish Sea into the North Channel to round Rathlin Island on her way to
America changed course and steered towards the blaze. "From where the crew first saw the fire they obviously thought
a ship was alight, but on coming closer it would have become apparent that the fire was on land upon which she
turned about, made westward and disappeared into the night."

It is ironic to recall that the school trained, equipped and maintained a team of teachers and pupils with a Board of
Trade rocket launcher and breeches buoy apparatus for the rescue of shipwrecked mariners around the Mull of Kintyre,
yet, when the need arose, nothing was available to save their school except a few hand-held fire extinguishers and a
water tank on the hill lacking the pressure required for fire fighting. When the fire brigade arrived from Campbeltown,
an hour after the alarm was raised, their hoses were too short to reach the sea. Soon, after the disastrous fire, on 24th
January 1925, the school re-opened at Helenslee, formerly the home of the Denny shipbuilding family, on the
outskirts of Dumbarton, an appropriate choice, the school created by a shipowner in the home of a shipbuilder.

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Standing on the lawn beside the main building, a flagpole, one of the few items salvaged from Southend. The pole
was so tall that it had to be transported to its new home by being towed behind the then new “Dalriada“, one of the
steamers of the old Campbeltown steamer company on her daily run from Campbeltown to the Broomielaw. It was
cast off as the ship passed Helenslee where a group of boys were waiting on the mudflats to manhandle the mast to the
school when it drifted ashore. For long no one at the school knew how tall the mast was, for no record could be found
in the archives. This problem was eventually turned over to the maths master and with several boys a trigonometry
exercise was carried out - the answer - 67 feet.

During World War II, Dumbarton, at the heart of the Clyde shipbuilding industry, was a most unsafe place and the
school was evacuated back to Kintyre where it took up residence in Balinakill House, Clachan, the mansion built by Sir
William Mackinnon in the heyday of his power and riches.

The evolution of the school’s uniform is interesting. It was at first a plain green tie and a green cap bearing a yellow
badge copied from Sir William Mackinnon's personal badge, a pine tree with cones and his motto "Persevere in Hope".
Mr Mason chose green because "unlike brown or any other colour it goes with any colour- of hair, even red and gives a
semblance of cleanliness to the individual", he was an old-style dominie ! After a few years, an Inverness boy returned
from holiday wearing stockings knitted by his mother., they were green with yellow horizontal stripes on the turnover.
They took Mr Mason's fancy, the hint was passed to other mothers and soon this design of stocking became part of
the uniform.

Several boys then suggested they would like yellow incorporated in the school tie so that instead of being plain green,
the tie would have yellow stripes on a green ground. Mason searched unsuccessfully for a long time to find such a tie
until one day, on holiday in Edinburgh, he saw a lady accompanied by a small boy wearing exactly the tie he had in
mind. Approaching the lady, he inquired where the item had been purchased and was told the boy attended an English
preparatory school whose tie suppliers were in London. For many years this company supplied Keil with ties until the
same design became available in Glasgow.

The green blazer was the suggestion of a schools' inspector. On moving to Helenslee, it was noticed that the colours
of St Patrick's R.C. School in Dumbarton were also green and that from a distance the Keil cap was indistinguishable
from the St Patrick's ones. To provide the necessary distinction, Keil put a yellow Maltese Cross on top of theirs.
Returning to Helenslee after war-time evacuation, a further mixup with St Patrick's became evident. A new headmaster
there had introduced green blazers practically similar to the Keil variety. As St Patrick's had been in Dumbarton longer,
it fell to Keil to make the change and it was then the Keil blazer was first bound round the edges with a green and
yellow rib to provide necessary distinction.

Several old traditions remained to the end, including the system of "chiefs". From the start of the day until lights-out,
chiefs and their deputies were responsible for the smooth running of the school. Each of these senior boys led a squad
of 13 others of all ages. At morning assembly the school lined up in squads and sat down to meals in squads. This
meant that chiefs and their deputies were in regular attendance with their members and could monitor and influence
conduct and oversee welfare.

A list of chiefs going back down the years was given pride of place on a wall in the school entrance hall. This
acceptance of responsibility is of great value in later life and encouraged juniors to take advantage of help and guidance
of older pupils. Because the school was relatively small, most pupils were likely to achieve a position of responsibility
during their stay.

Despite all the changes in education since Keil had opened in 1915 and, despite the government financed Assisted
Places Scheme, the original Mackinnon-Macneill Trust continued to provide bursaries to help with fees for a quarter of
the pupils right up to its closure after some 75 years of distinction. In its final years, Keil had 170 boys and, in the
1990’s, a new innovation, girls, 45 senior girls who lived locally - the school teaching staff would laterally number
19.

The school now closed, in June 2000, it is appropriate that Sir William Mackinnon’s statue, which had first been
erected in Mombassa, then moved to the grounds of Helenslee, where the school was re-established, be moved again,
to Mackinnon’s own home town of Campbeltown, in Kintyre.