Councillors have decided that the largest school in the Western Isles should be replaced with a new building on a new site rather than refurbishing the current premises.

The Scottish Government had approved plans to refurbish the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway as part of a £52m programme to upgrade five island schools. But at the last education committee meeting Western Isles' councillors agreed the preferred option should become a new-build on a new site.

Councillors agreed that the new site for The Nicolson Institute would be within easy access of the existing school's sports and leisure facilities, but not too close to the town's gasworks.

The famous secondary school owes its existence and unusual name to Alexander Morrison Nicolson who was born in 1832, the fifth child of a fish curer in Stornoway.

He made his fortune in the Far East with a foundry and shipbuilding business in Shanghai, but, in 1865, he was killed in a boiler explosion on board one of his own vessels.

His papers contained a request that his father and brothers dispose of his estate of £5672, with one-third being used "to the most approved charitable institution in my native town for the education and rearing of destitute children in the hope that I may be the indirect means of rendering some assistance to the children of some of my oldest acquaintances".