The Robert Nicol Trust
Robert Nicol was a native of the City of Aberdeen who developed a textile business in Manchester during the second half of the nineteenth century. The factory was known as the Ashenhurst Works and was located in Blackely, then a suburb to the north of the City. The business was described as being a partnership in manufacturing, embroidery, merchanting and warehousing. Robert Nicol had a different partner for another business which operated in the USA. His house and estate was near Blackley at Cheetham Hill and called Highfield. It seems, however, that Nicol spent the latter part of his life in retirement in the south of France at Nice. He appears not to have had any children and he directed that on the death of his wife, the major part of his fortune, estimated in 1878 to be the then very considerable sum of £40,000, should be entrusted to a group of trustees representing the University of Aberdeen, legal figures and the civil authorities of the City of Aberdeen and the County of Aberdeenshire whose task would be to use the income of the trust 'for the advancement and promotion of education in the City and County of Aberdeen'.
Mrs Nicol lived well into the next century and it did not become possible to set up the Trust until 1949. Its resources in recent years have been supplemented by grants from the Violet M Lessel and Mrs ES Wilson trusts.