Inverness Sunday School picnics recalled in donated slides
By Jennifer Johnstone, archivist, High Life Highland
The Highland Archive Centre have recently received a lovely collection of 35mm slides showing the annual Sunday School picnics of the Free North Church/ Madras Street Mission.
These images were taken in the 1960s and 70s by William McEwan who passed away in 2023 at the age of 100. The slides have been gifted to the Highland Archive Centre by William’s son.
The family had a long association with the Madras Street Sunday School; William’s father (also William) ran it for many years in its early days before William (our photographer) took over the responsibility in the 1960s.
Included with the slides, were these reminiscences of the Sunday School picnics:
The picnics were always a big early summer event invariably held on a Saturday afternoon in June. The church would hire two double deckers from Highland Omnibuses which would collect adults and children from the pickup points on Bank Street and Madras Street.
The picnic location would toggle each year between the shinty pitches at Drumnadrochit and Kiltarlity, also making use of the adjacent village halls in case of bad weather.
The afternoons always took the same format. There would be various entertainments like sprints, sack races, wheelbarrow races, egg and spoon races, tug of war etc for all the age groups with confectionary prizes for the winners. There would be ice cream served which came from Pagliari’s, an ice cream shop located at the end of Academy Street. The seats would be carried over from the hall to the field and the adults would chat and enjoy the company.
My memory of them was that they were incredibly happy events and enjoyed by everyone. At the end of the afternoon, we would all get a bag of buns, get back on the bus and head back to Inverness.
The collection of nearly 200 slides show Sunday School outings to Kiltarlity, Drumnadrochit and Rosemarkie between the years 1963 and 1971.
Whilst the physical slides are being looked after by the Highland Archive Centre, they have also all been digitised and can be viewed on Am Baile, https://www.ambaile.org.uk/
Born out of a 1999 New Opportunities Fund programme which provided £50 million for digitisation projects, Am Baile is High Life Highland’s history and culture website.
Highland Council, recognising that in its collections were many items of significant cultural interest, made a successful bid for part of that available funding and a mass digitisation project was commenced, resulting in the bilingual website.
Am Baile, named from the Gaelic for “the village”, is now run by High Life Highland, as part of Highland Council’s culture and leisure services.
Although the website has gone through several incarnations it continues to provide remote access to a wide range of documents, photographs and audio-visual material from a range of partners across the Highlands and Islands.
Each year, Am Baile receives numerous donations from individuals of their personal family photographs, images of local sports clubs, events and the changing landscape, all depicting life in the Highlands.
The annual Sunday School picnic was a highlight for many people in the summer months; the fun and social aspect of which can be seen in these lovely images, now preserved and available for all to enjoy.
