Last September we decided to go to the Doors Open day over in the Alexandria/Dumbarton area of the west of Scotland. It’s a lovely drive there anyway from the east – on a good weather day – which it was.

One of the places we wanted to visit was the Masonic Hall in Alexandria, it had been recommended to us by a friend. It’s a lovely building which was originally built as a school for girls. It still has the original painted decorations on the walls. The photo below is a stitch of it, hence the ‘bend’.

Sadly the school didn’t last for long. Possibly there weren’t enough comfortably off parents who were willing to spend money on the education of their daughters! The photo of the hammerbeam roof below isn’t that good, in reality it’s much nicer, apparently they’re a rarity in Scotland, of course the building is art nouveau in design.

But as you can see the lovely murals in the corridors have survived, complete with poems.

The windows are very stylish as you can see, I managed to get the date of the building in the photo below, which I was quite pleased about as I just snapped these photos as we were walking along the corridor being given a wee tour of the building.

The poems in the murals are all from songs, some by Robert Burns, some traditional but collected by Burns for posterity.

As you can imagine this is a very expensive building to heat and maintain, I hope it doesn’t come to grief. Thanks for pointing us in its direction, Jeremy.