The New College at Hackney (more ambiguously known as Hackney College) was a
dissenting academy
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries (often institutions with aspects of all three) run by English Dissenters, that is, those who did not conform to the Church of England. They formed a significant part of England's edu ...
set up in
Hackney in April 1786 by the social and political reformer
Richard Price
Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer, pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French ...
and others; Hackney at that time was a village on the outskirts of London, by
Unitarians.
It was in existence from 1786 to 1796. The writer
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English lan ...
was among its pupils, sent aged 15 to prepare for the
Unitarian ministry, and some of the best-known Dissenting intellectuals spent time on its staff.
History
The year 1786 marked the dissolution of
Warrington Academy
Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the established Church of England. It was located in Warrington (then ...
, which had been inactive since 1756 as a teaching institution. Almost simultaneously the
Hoxton Academy of the
Coward Trust
William Coward (1648–1738) was a London merchant in the Jamaica trade, remembered for his support of Dissenters, particularly his educational philanthropy.
Life
After a period in Jamaica, where he built up an estate (see Sugar plantations in ...
, under
Samuel Morton Savage
Samuel Morton Savage (1721–1791) was an English nonconformist minister and dissenting tutor.
Life
He was born in London on 19 July 1721. His grandfather, John Savage, was pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist church, Mill Yard, Goodman's Fields. S ...
, closed its doors in the summer of 1785. Some of the funding that had backed Warrington was available for a new dissenting academy for the London area, as well as for a northern successor in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
. The London building plans were ambitious, but proved the undoing of the New College, which was soon strained financially.
The successors in the movement as a whole were Manchester New College, and a new Exeter College under
Joseph Bretland, which existed from 1799 to 1805.
Staff
Its staff included:
*
Thomas Belsham
Thomas Belsham (26 April 175011 November 1829) was an English Unitarian minister
Life
Belsham was born in Bedford, England, and was the elder brother of William Belsham, the English political writer and historian. He was educated at the disse ...
who left
Daventry Academy
Daventry Academy was a dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It moved to many locations, but was most associated with Daventry, where its most famous pupil was Joseph Priestley. It had a high reputation, a ...
in 1789 on becoming a Unitarian, as professor of divinity and resident tutor;
*
Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis (28 March 17258 October 1795) was an English nonconformist clergyman and biographer.
Life
The son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, he was born at Nottingham. Having gone to Carre's Grammar School in Sleaford, Lincolnshire he pass ...
;
*
George Cadogan Morgan
George Cadogan Morgan (1754 - 17 November 1798) was a Welsh dissenting minister and scientist.
Life
He was born in 1754 at Bridgend, Glamorganshire, the second son of William Morgan, a surgeon practising in that town, by his wife Sarah, sister of ...
from 1787 to 1891, who lectured there on
electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...
;
*
Richard Price
Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer, pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French ...
;
*
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...
, resident in Hackney from 1791 to 1794, as lecturer on history and natural philosophy, principally chemistry;
*
Abraham Rees
Abraham Rees (1743 – 9 June 1825) was a Welsh nonconformist minister, and compiler of ''Rees's Cyclopædia'' (in 45 volumes).
Life
He was the second son of Esther, daughter of Abraham Penry, and her husband Lewis Rees, and was born in ...
who was tutor in Hebrew and mathematics;
*and from 1790
Gilbert Wakefield
Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801) was an English scholar and controversialist. He moved from being a cleric and academic, into tutoring at dissenting academies, and finally became a professional writer and publicist. In a celebrated state trial ...
.
Students
Among the students were:
*
Arthur Aikin
Arthur Aikin (19 May 177315 April 1854) was an English chemist, mineralogy, mineralogist and scientific writer, and was a founding member of the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry). He first became its treasurer in 1841, and la ...
;
*
Francis Baily
Francis Baily (28 April 177430 August 1844) was an English astronomer. He is most famous for his observations of "Baily's beads" during a total eclipse of the Sun. Baily was also a major figure in the early history of the Royal Astronomical S ...
*
John Bostock attended Priestley's lectures;
*
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English lan ...
;
*
Mary Hays
Mary Hays (1759–1843) was an autodidact intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels and several works on famous (and infamous) women. She is remembered for her early feminism, and her close relations to dissenting and radical thinkers ...
*
Thomas Dix Hincks;
*
David Jones, previously at
Homerton College
Homerton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its first premises were acquired in Homerton, London in 1768, by an informal gathering of Protestant dissenters with origins in the seventeenth century. In 1894, the co ...
, moved to Hackney on becoming a Unitarian, then a tutor in experimental philosophy, moving away in 1792 to fill Priestley's ministry in Birmingham;
*
John Jones, related to David Jones;
*
Jeremiah Joyce
Jeremiah Joyce (1763–1816) was an English Unitarian minister and writer. He achieved notoriety as one of the group of political activists arrested in May 1794.
Early life
He was born 24 February 1763, the son of Jeremiah Joyce (1718–1788), ...
;
*
John Kentish, who left
Daventry Academy
Daventry Academy was a dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It moved to many locations, but was most associated with Daventry, where its most famous pupil was Joseph Priestley. It had a high reputation, a ...
with other students, including William Shepherd, in 1788, for religious reasons;
*Harry Priestley, Dr Priestley's youngest son.
*
Thomas Starling Norgate;
*
William Shepherd
William McMichael "Bill" Shepherd (born July 26, 1949), ( Capt, USN, Ret.), is an American former Navy SEAL, aerospace, ocean, and mechanical engineer, and NASA astronaut, who served as Commander of Expedition 1, the first crew on the Interna ...
;
*
James Smith (1775–1839);
*Joseph Lomas Towers;
*
Charles Wellbeloved
Charles Wellbeloved (6 April 1769 – 29 August 1858) was an English Unitarian divine and archaeologist.
Biography
Charles Wellbeloved, only child of John Wellbeloved (1742–1787), by his wife Elizabeth Plaw, was born in Denmark Street, St ...
.
Institutions with related names
Another Hackney College, properly Hackney Itineracy, also known as
Hackney Academy
Newcome's School was a fashionable boys' school in Hackney, then to the east of London, founded in the early 18th century. A number of prominent Whig families sent their sons there. The school closed in 1815, and the buildings were gutted in 182 ...
and Hackney Theological College, was set up in 1802 by
George Collison
George Collison (1772–1847) was an English Congregationalist and educator associated with Hackney Academy or Hackney College, which became part of New College London—itself part of the University of London.
Early life
Collison was born i ...
. It is this one that became part of
New College London
New College London (1850–1980) (sometimes known as New College, St John's Wood, or New College, Hampstead) was founded as a Congregationalist college in 1850.
Predecessor institutions
New College London came into being in 1850 by the amalgama ...
, and in the end part of the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
.
Homerton College
Homerton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its first premises were acquired in Homerton, London in 1768, by an informal gathering of Protestant dissenters with origins in the seventeenth century. In 1894, the co ...
was at this time in the
parish of Hackney, and had been in some form from 1730, as a less ambitious academy; when the New College folded, its future became part of Homerton College's, which since 1894 has been in Cambridge.
Robert Aspland
Robert Aspland (13 January 1782 – 30 December 1845) was an English Unitarian minister, editor and activist. To be distinguished from his son Robert Brook Aspland (1805-1869).
Life
Aspland was the son of Robert Aspland and his second wife, Ha ...
set up a successor Unitarian college at Hackney, in 1813.
See also
Previous institutions known as Hackney College.
Notes
{{authority control
Dissenting academies
Defunct universities and colleges in London
1780s in London
1790s in London
1786 establishments in England
Educational institutions established in 1786
1796 disestablishments in England