Moray House School of Education and Sport

James Fulton

James Fulton was the first rector of Moray House when it became the home of the Free Church's Normal and Sessional School in Edinburgh.

James Fulton was born in 1809 at Glenton Farm near Dailly, which is south of Kirkoswald. He became headmaster of a school in Rothesay, which because of his success as a teacher was expanded by the Marquess of Bute. After the 1843 Disruption he organised the local Free Church School. In 1846 he was appointed to the Rectorship of the Free Church Normal School in Edinburgh. Following the formation of the Educational Institute of Scotland in the following year he was elected chairman of a meeting of Free Church teachers. However, he persuaded them to support the EIS as a non-sectarian organisation. The EIS later conferred its Fellowship on him.

In 1848 James Fulton moved with his staff and students to the Moray House building in the Canongate, when it became the Free Church’s Normal and Sessional School, Edinburgh.

Because of ill health he resigned in 1855 and died soon after in Madeira aged 45.