December 5th – It’s snow joke
Here’s a wee verse from a book of children’s rhymes by Hamish Hendry, from 1897, with illustrations by Alice. B. Woodward. “We made a man all by ourselves; we made him jolly fat; We stuck a pipe into his face and on…
Category: University Collections
December 4th – A Christmas Carol (but not that one)
Exploring the rare books brought to light through a simple search for “carols” brought up a few oddballs, and this is one of them. This earnest – and lengthy – battle-cry of a hymn is tucked into the Hay Flemming…
December 3rd – Nautical or nice…
Today’s choice is taken from the charmingly titled “The poets’ Christmas: a collection of carols, poems, and plays for Christmastide. With a plea for a village drama”, by W. T. Stead (1890). Seemingly on a mission to…
December 2nd – Carolling at St Andrews
The St Andrews student newspaper “College Echoes” from December 1925 provides what is simply described as a “traditional carol”: “Carol, carol, merrily, Christ is born for us today Christ is come on earth to stay.…
Advent Calendar 2025
When dark mornings bring the first glimmer of frost, bare branches shudder in the cold wind, and dusk settles in after lunch, it can mean but one thing – time for this year’s University Collections advent calendar! So…
‘Unhappy St Andrew’s Day’?
St Andrew’s day (30th November), historically a feast day for Andrew the apostle, officially became a bank holiday in Scotland in 2007. Previous blogs have celebrated Scotland’s patron saint by looking at some of the…
Eduardo Paolozzi and the University of St Andrews
In this blog, Assistant Curator Struan Watson shares some insights into the journey of the Eduardo Paolozzi Archive, from ‘The Krazy Kat’ to our most recent acquisition in 2024. Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was a…
Early Medical Alumni at St Andrews
Dr Manon C Williams is a historian of medicine and alumni of the University of St Andrews, School of History (2024). Working in collaboration with the School of Medicine, she researched and designed an installation to…
Listening to the echoes from outside our vault: Visualising Scotland’s Future at the Wardlaw Museum
In this blog, Pamela Dobson, People and Diversity Executive Officer at the University of St Andrews, reflects on her experience of working on the ‘Visualising Scotland’s Future’ project, on display at the Wardlaw…
Women’s activities in seventeenth-century St Andrews: the evidence of the Kirk Sessions
In this blog, masters student Elizabeth Beattie shares some of her research into the women of St Andrews, supported by funding from the St Andrews Local History Foundation, administered by the Burnwynd Trust. It is…