Campus Birdlife During the Second World War
Those who enjoy seeing the wildlife that call our beautiful campus grounds home might be surprised to know that our institution hosted birdlife of a very different type during the Second World War.
Hens were kept on all the flat roofs of our Atholl Crescent site to provide eggs for cookery classes.
Miss Wingfield, the Principal of the time, wrote that she 'caught the Vice-Principal one day about to slaughter one of our precious roof fowls. A demonstration on game and poultry had been advertised and nowhere in Edinburgh had she found a hare for soup, a pigeon for pie, nor any a bird – not even a chicken'.
(Source: Tom Begg's history of our institution, The Excellent Women, pp 116)
