Edward Woodford, was Classics Master virtually from the foundation of the school until 1850, when he left to become the first Inspector of Schools for Scotland.

He was believed to be of aristocratic birth. His father was a baronet, his mother the daughter of a duke, but for whatever reason he was not acknowledged by his family and he had to struggle to gain a place at Aberdeen University.

He began as a medical student and is said to have been involved in the business of acquiring bodies for the dissecting rooms, perhaps as a way of earning the necessary funds to enable him to carry on his studies. There is a story that on one occasion he had to sleep in a coffin as the only dry place in a mortuary in which he had been locked for the night. Whether this horrific experience caused him to turn to the more sedate study of Latin and Greek is not clear, but it certainly did nothing to diminish his propensity for working at night. He was a man of restless energy who required very little sleep. He was up at 3 or 4 in the morning, living off cups of tea or coffee, working at the school printing press to produce a whole series of classical texts and a Latin grammar which became a standard work. Certainly, his present day successors make great use of the photo-copier, but none is so assiduous as to be out of bed so early in the morning. A common fault of classics teachers is that they are often more interested in the structure of the language than in any feeling for the literature. Unfortunately, Woodford was one of these and it was said of his teaching, 'Livy's pictured page, the wit and wisdom of Horace, Virgil's stately poetry never wore the aspect of literature that delighted mankind, but of a jungle of genitives, gerunds, infinitives and supines without a flower among them, but all bristling with spikes and thorns for the torture of boys.' He did, however, on at least one occasion adopt the surprisingly modern technique of bringing history to life by taking his class out into the playground where he taught them a war game that Roman boys would have played. Needless to say, the game failed to catch the popular imagination and the boys quickly returned to more mundane activities such as football.

One of Dr. Woodford's other accomplishments, if that is the word, was , keeping a pig. He lived in the house at the East Gate and kept the animal in the courtyard until the Trustees instructed him to get rid of it. In addition to Latin and Greek he was also appointed to teach Hindustani - not because of any direct connection with the real Madras, but because in many cases the boys were boarders whose fathers were serving overseas in the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Army and the boys themselves were more than likely to follow them into these professions.

He set up a printing press in Madras House East and there he is said to have printed, inter alia, his own expurgated edition of Horace and certainly began to print a Gaelic grammar before he left to become an inspector of schools. His working hours shame most of us. "It was almost a rule with him to be up by 3 or 4 in the morning, drinking tea or coffee and working with his pen or printing press ".