Capturing a moment in time

Today’s main picture arrives courtesy of Dundee University’s archive services team and shows an academic procession on their patch from October 17 1954.

It was a moment in time that captures staff and others associated with the thennewly constituted Queen’s College, Dundee, making their way along a long-disappeared city centre thoroughfare.

Archive specialist Kenneth Baxter tells Craigie: “The procession was heading up Tally Street for the service of inauguration held at St Mary’s Church.

“Queen’s College had been formed as replacement for University College, Dundee, following the reorganisation of university education in Dundee and St Andrews following the Tedder Report of 1952.

“It would eventually separate from the University of St Andrews to become the University of Dundee in 1967.”

The vintage photo shows Prof GH Bell (physiology), Prof AC Lendrum (pathology) and Prof Margaret Fairlie (midwifery) – who in 1940 had become the first woman to hold a professorial chair in Scotland – in the front row.

Following on are University College, Dundee, former president Sir Garnet Wilson and James Prain, a lay member of Queen’s College’s council, with the bedellus Douglas Gauld and Queen’s College master Prof DR Dow behind.

Tally Street ran north to south from the Overgate to Nethergate and acted as an important connection from Couttie’s Wynd to Burial Wynd, now Barrack Street.

The route was demolished in the early 1960s to make way for the creation of the

Overgate Centre. Besides numerous shops, other landmarks at the site included the City Hotel, formerly the Albion, as well as the New Imperial Hotel on Tally Street’s corner with the Overgate.