Phyllida Law

GCU has a diverse ancestry and can trace its family tree back to the Glasgow School of Cookery in 1876. Fast forward to 1908 when two schools merged to become The Glasgow and West of Scotland College of Domestic Science, a mouthful that soon became simply the ‘Dough School’, a moniker it carried for almost ninety years.

A day in the life of a Dough School student completely differed from that of a GCU student today. A Dough School student's timetable would include cookery, laundry, housewifery, needlework, and teaching.

One of its students was the well-versed Scottish actress and author, Phyllida Law who is also the mother to actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson.

Following a brief (and as she puts it “miserable”) spell as a student studying Medicine then French and History, she was sent by her mother to do a Housewifery course at the Dough School.

She recalls those three months at the Dough School as being “enormous fun.”

“There were three of us who were great friends. We spent most days weak with laughter and did such silly things. One day we were put in a cami knicker-making class where I was absolutely hopeless and a disaster with the graph paper used for patterns,” she laughs.

In the cookery classes, she recalls making drop scones and being asked to wash up afterwards, turning the tray upside-down and sending the freshly baked scones flying all over the classroom.

“We really did try very hard and did learn some valuable skills, but despite our best efforts we were just hopeless.”

The knowledge that you learn never leaves you

Phyllida still uses her original cookery book from her days as a student, proclaiming proudly that the “old recipes are still the best.”

She keeps a copy at home in London and another “down the glen” at her home in Ardentinny, Scotland, owned by the family for the last 53 years.

Her daughter Emma also has her grandmother’s original Dough School cookery book with notes still in the margins, a treasured family heirloom.

“Mother was very good at cooking venison,” Phyllida remembers. “It’s very good if you bury it in the garden for a week and put a wee bit redcurrant jelly to it” she says, adopting a broad Glaswegian accent to emulate her mother.