This is a past event
Forgotten in Scotland's educational history, the Craibstone School of Rural Domestic Economy was the only institute in Scotland dedicated to the domestic education of women in rural areas from the opening of the School in 1923 to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The Craibstone School specialised in honing their female students’ skills in dairying, poultry-keeping and rural housekeeping.
The School prided itself on churning out the perfect ‘farmer’s wife’. However, in 1930 the appointment of a new Principal to the School, Katharine F. Boyd, saw the Craibstone curriculum, and the School’s equipment, overhauled and updated to accommodate electrical appliances, culminating in a student-led display of an ‘all-electric’ farm kitchen and dairy at the 1935 Royal Highland Show.
Despite very few rural householders in Scotland having access to electricity in the interwar years, Boyd was passionate that the School should set an example to modernise rural housekeeping practices.
This paper will explore why Boyd considered it necessary for the Craibstone School to assume this mediating role between the electrical industry and rural consumers.
Through my analysis of the activities of the Craibstone School, I hope to uncover the experience of early adopters of electrical appliances in rural Scotland and reveal women’s role in sharing their electrical appliance expertise in their local community.
- Speaker
- Eleanor Peters, University of Aberdeen
- Venue
- via Teams