User:Charles Matthews/New College at Hackney

The New College at Hackney (more ambiguously known as Hackney College) was a dissenting academy set up in Hackney, at that time a village on the outskirts of London, by Unitarians. It was in existence from 1786 to 1796. During that time the writer William Hazlitt was among its pupils, and some of the best-known Dissenting intellectuals spent time on its staff.

History

The year 1786 marked the dissolution of Warrington Academy, which had been inactive since 1782 as a teaching institution. Almost simultaneously the Hoxton Academy of the Coward Trust, under Samuel Morton Savage, closed its doors. 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.

Staff

Its staff included:

• Thomas Belsham who left Daventry College in 1789 on becoming a Unitarian, as professor of divinity and resident tutor,
• Andrew Kippis;
• George Cadogan Morgan from 1787 to 1891, who lectured there on electricity;
• Richard Price;
• Joseph Priestley as lecturer on history and philosophy;;
• Abraham Rees who was tutor in Hebrew and mathematics.;
• and from 1790 Gilbert Wakefield.

Students

Among the other students were John Jones and his brother David, and Charles Wellbeloved.

Institutions with related names

Another Hackney College, properly Hackney Itineracy, was that set up in 1802 by George Collison, and it is this one that became 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. Robert Aspland set up a successor Unitarian college at Hackney, in 1813.