The New College at Hackney (more ambiguously known as Hackney College) was a dissenting academy set up in Hackney in April 1786 by the social and political reformer Richard Price and others; Hackney at that time was a village on the outskirts of London, by Unitarians. [1] It was in existence from 1786 to 1796. The writer William Hazlitt was among its pupils, sent aged 15 to prepare for the Unitarian ministry, [2] and some of the best-known Dissenting intellectuals spent time on its staff. [3]
The year 1786 marked the dissolution of Warrington Academy, which had been inactive since 1756 as a teaching institution. Almost simultaneously the Hoxton Academy of the Coward Trust, under Samuel Morton Savage, closed its doors in the summer of 1785. [4] 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. The London building plans were ambitious, but proved the undoing of the New College, which was soon strained financially. [5]
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. [6]
Its staff included:
Among the students were:
Another Hackney College, properly Hackney Itineracy, also known as Hackney Academy and Hackney Theological College, was set up in 1802 by George Collison. It is this one that became part of New College London, and in the end part of the University of London. Homerton College 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. [25] Robert Aspland set up a successor Unitarian college at Hackney, in 1813. [26]
Thomas Belsham was an English Unitarian minister
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, a town about half-way between the rapidly industrialising Manchester and the burgeoning Atlantic port of Liverpool. Formally dissolved in 1786, the funds then remaining were applied to the founding of Manchester New College in Manchester, which was effectively the Warrington Academy's successor, and in time this led to the formation of Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
The Theological Repository was a periodical founded and edited from 1769 to 1771 by the eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley. Although ostensibly committed to the open and rational inquiry of theological questions, the journal became a mouthpiece for Dissenting, particularly Unitarian and Arian, doctrines.
John Conder D.D. was an Independent minister at Cambridge who later became President of the Independent College, Homerton in the parish of Hackney near London. John Conder was the theological tutor at Plaisterers' Hall Academy in 1754; and residential tutor and theological tutor at Mile End Academy, then the theological tutor at Homerton Academy.
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries run by English Dissenters, that is, those who did not conform to the Church of England. They formed a significant part of England's educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
John Aikin (1713–1780) was an English Unitarian scholar and theological tutor, closely associated with Warrington Academy, a prominent dissenting academy.
Robert Aspland was an English Unitarian minister, editor and activist. To be distinguished from his son Robert Brook Aspland (1805-1869).
William Coward (1648–1738) was a London merchant in the Jamaica trade, remembered for his support of Dissenters, particularly his educational philanthropy.
Charles Wellbeloved was an English Unitarian divine and archaeologist.
David Jones (1765–1816) was a Welsh barrister.
Caleb Rotheram D.D. (1694–1752) was an English dissenting minister and tutor.
John Palmer (1742–1786) was an English Unitarian minister.
John Wiche (1718–1794) was an English Baptist minister.
John Eyre was an English evangelical clergyman. He helped in establishing some of the major national evangelical institutions.
James Yates F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. was an English Unitarian minister and scholar, known as an antiquary.
William Shepherd was an English dissenting minister and politician, known also as a poet and writer.
The Gravel Pit Chapel was established in 1715–16 in Hackney, then just outside London, for a Nonconformist congregation, which by the early 19th century began to identify itself as Unitarian. In 1809 the congregation moved to the New Gravel Pit Chapel nearby, while its old premises were taken over by Congregationalists. The New Gravel Pit Chapel was closed and demolished in 1969.
Timothy Kenrick (1759–1804) was a Welsh Unitarian minister, biblical commentator, and dissenting academy tutor.