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The History of Broughty Ferry
Seafield House Preparatory School
By Professor Hugh Begg
In the grounds of Grove Academy there is a monument to 23 young men who gave their lives for their country 1914-1919. All were former pupils of Seafield House Preparatory School which stood on the site of the present building. This note goes on to remember three other distinguished persons who were pupils at Seafield House at the turn of the nineteenth century and who had remarkably similar careers.
Seafield House was a 19th-century Victorian villa built for the flax merchant George Jameson (1816-1886). Situated on the west side of what is now Grove Academy it stood in approximately 5 acres of grounds which accommodated green houses and conservatories and extended from what is now Seafield Road to Claypotts Road. Following Jameson’s death, the property was converted for use as one of the preparatory schools set up to meet the needs of the affluent residents of Broughty Ferry and their children. When the school closed in 1938; and the site was acquired to accommodate an extension to the (then) Grove Academy. Plans were made to lay the foundation stone in September 1939, but the Second World War intervened, and the extension was finally opened in 1956.
Seafield House School accepted day pupils and boarders, and the grounds were laid out as cricket and football pitches. The first Headmaster was Robert Lockhart the father of the future Sir Rob Lockhart. The War Memorial in the grounds of the present Grove Academy remembers Private Norman Burritt Lockhart who was the son of Reginald R. and Louise B. Lockhart, of 36 Dale Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.
It is remarkable that three men who were to go on to be at the heart of Government in India and Pakistan before, and after, independence all attended Seafield House School within years of one another: General Sir Rob McGregor MacDonald Lockhart, KCB CIE MC (1893–1981); Sir George Cunningham, GCIE, KCSI, OBE (1888–1963); and Sir Robert Francis Mudie KCSI, KCIE, OBE (1890–1976)
On 15 August 1947, the day India became independent, Rob Lockhart was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India. In the newly formed Pakistan George Cunningham became first Governor of the Northwest Frontier Province astonishingly, succeeding Rob Lockhart in that post; and Francis Mudie became the first Governor of the West Punjab Province.