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Harris Manchester College
Harris Manchester College
Library, Harris Manchester College
Harris Manchester College was founded in Manchester as Manchester Academy in 1786 by English Presbyterians. It was one of the last of a long line of "dissenting academies" established after the Restoration to provide higher education for Nonconformists, who were denied degrees from the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge by religious tests. The principle of religious liberty was fundamental to the new foundation, which was to be 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.
Harris Manchester Dining Hall
Harris Manchester Quad
Manchester Academy was the direct heir of the famous Warrington Academy (commemorated in a handsome stained-glass window in the College Library) at which Joseph Priestley , discoverer of oxygen, radical theologian, and Unitarian minister had taught. Teaching staff at Manchester Academy included the Quaker chemist John Dalton , and "modern" subjects were taught: science, modern languages, history and literature, as well as classics and theology. Later teachers included William Gaskell , husband of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell; Francis Newman , a classical scholar and prolific writer (a brother of Cardinal Newman); and James Martineau, the Victorian theologian and philosopher, whom Gladstone called 'first among English thinkers'.
Always adaptable to changing circumstances, the College changed location five times: from Manchester (1786-1803) to York (1803-40), back to Manchester (1840-1853), then to London (1853-1889) and finally to Oxford (1889- ). The association with the University of London began in 1840, when a Royal Warrant gave the College the right to present candidates for London degrees. The College came to Oxford in 1889 and opened its new buildings designed by Thomas Worthington in 1893, housing its students, as now, in the seventeenth-century houses in Holywell Street.
The College was granted Permanent Private Hall status in 1990. In 1996 Her Majesty the Queen gave her approval to a new royal charter for the College, granting it full college status within the University. Today the College admits mature students to read for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and is the only college in UK Higher Education dedicated solely to the education men and women mature students. Harris Manchester College has always been proud of its liberal and pioneering ethos, and considers its mature student focus as a modern means of providing higher education for those traditionally excluded from it. In its early days, the College supported reforming causes, such as the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and the abolition of slavery. In 1901 the College was the first academic institution in Britain to accept a woman candidate for the Nonconformist ministry. In the 1920s and 30s the College provided courses for the Workers' Educational Association (W.E.A.).
Centrally situated in the University and city of Oxford, Harris Manchester College has its own fine buildings and grounds, including an excellent library and a chapel with notable stained-glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.