The site of the college – and now the school – was on the old Jordanhill Estate grounds. The old Jordanhill House was demolished around 1915, with the Glasgow Provincial Committee buying the land to build their new college, though the plot had been for sale since 1911. The school buildings were completed in 1921, although the school was founded a year earlier, in 1920. Headmasters include Andrew Walker (1891–1974), who led Jordanhill College School from 1936 to 1956, having earlier served from 1921 to 1932 as a mathematics and science master and - initially - the only teacher in the new secondary department, formed in 1921 with twenty pupils. His successor, William T Branston (1915–1984), at the time of his 1956 appointment was the youngest headteacher in Scotland and whose tenure - Branston retired in December 1980 - saw successive challenges, from sustained upheaval in Scottish school curricula to a serious bid to shut Jordanhill College School in 1969. (It survived, the controversy concluding in December 1970, with the school adjusting readily to non-selective and non fee-paying status)