"Those that seek Me early shall find Me!"

These are the words inscribed on the open book at the top of the former St Stephen’s School, at the west end of St Stephen’s Street in Stockbridge. Completed in 1836, it was linked to the nearby St Stephen’s Church.

The school was one of a number of parish schools in Edinburgh, charging modest fees, which were founded in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, but which went into decline with the development of free state run education from the 1870s onwards. The school closed in 1890. 


The building retains its original name and currently consists of flats. Like the nod to Playfair around the middle windows (See extra photos)