WARRINGTON ACADEMY - INTRODUCTION

Jim's WARRINGTON ACADEMY

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INTRODUCTION

The roots of the Warrington Academy go back to the 1670s - about 90 years before the Academy was founded. The Academy was one in a long line of dissenting academies, e.g. Rathmel Academy established after the Restoration to provide higher education for Nonconformists who were debarred from the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge by religious tests. The principal of religious liberty was fundamental to the new foundation which was open to young men of every religious denomination, from whom no test, or confession of faith would be required. Both lay and divinity students would be enrolled.

Many people who would become influencial in Britain and throughout the world passed through the academy as either pupils or tutors. Some of these were famous e.g. the discoverer of Oxygen, Joseph Priestly. Others became infamous, e.g. the French revolutionary Marat

The death of an ex-Mayor of Warrington, prompted a Times Leader which said:

The Academy is a famous episode in the history of Warrington. It bore no mean witness to the principle that men not money make an academy. As an experiment in all-round education Warrington remains more than a curiosity. If its influence could be fully traced the ramifications would be extraordinary for so small an institution.

This web site is intended to give you an insight into the life and times of the Warrington Academy and some of its tutors and students.

It tells of some of the problems experienced by the Dissenters who set up academies before Warrington.

It records some general details of the history of the Academy at Warrington and some of the famous and influential people associated with it. I have included a list of some of these people and their professions to indicate the broad spread of the influence of the Academy. Many of the streets in old Warrington were named after Academy notables. These may be of interest to old Warringtonians.

The information was researched as a private study and presented to the Local History Group of the Warrington University of the Third Age in June 2000.