It had been here since 1843 and even before it was finished it was causing a stir amongst “the Public and more especially by strangers, respecting this beautiful specimen of gothic architecture which is seen to great advantage from the roads leading westward out of Manchester.”
It origins lay in the fact that Dissenters along with the Catholics were still barred from entering the Universities, and lay professions. They could not marry in their own places of worship and had to rely on Anglican Churches for registering births and deaths.
By 1838 the academy was no longer adequate for this purpose and a new “collegiate building affording more extensive domiciliary accommodation,”” was agreed upon which would be sited in Manchester.
A public subscription was launched to meet the cost of what was estimated would be £10,000. It says much for the strength of dissent in the North West that within two years the sum of £14, 736 was raised which eventually exceeded £25, 000.
And with all such subscriptions the contributions ranged from the modest to the very substantial, so while Mr Joseph Taylor of Ashton handed over £2, George Hadfield from Manchester gave £2,100, Samuel Fletcher £1,300 and our own Samuel Brooks of Whalley House £1, 550.
Brooks however also benefited from selling the seven acre site for its construction for £3,650.
The foundation stone was laid In September 1840 and the college opened in 1843.
Pictures; of the college circa 1910 from the Lloyd Collection and the Blackburn Independent Academy from The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93
*Manchester Guardian 1842
** Resolution of the committee held in the vestry of the Mosley Street Chapel, Manchester February 1816, and quoted by Thompson, Joseph, in The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93, Manchester 1893 Memorial Volume, p18
Amazing, then it went to the trade unionist now the Muslims !
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