Liverpool Institute High School for Boys

Liverpool Institute High School for Boys
Established 1825
Closed 1985
Type Grammar school
Founder George Holt
Location Liverpool
Merseyside
England
Local authority Liverpool
Gender Boys
Ages 11–18
Website Liverpool Institute
Liverpool Institute High School for Boys

LIPA
General information
Town or city Liverpool
Country England
Construction started 1825

Coordinates: 53°23′58.4″N 2°58′20.3″W / 53.399556°N 2.972306°W / 53.399556; -2.972306 The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was an all-boys grammar school in the English port city of Liverpool.

The school had its origins in 1825 but occupied different premises while the money was found to build a dedicated building on Mount Street. The Institute was first known as the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts. In 1832 the name was shortened to the Liverpool Mechanics' Institution. The facade of the listed building, the entrance hall and modified school hall remain after substantial internal reconstruction was completed in the early 1990s.

School history in brief

Its initial primary purpose as a Mechanics' Institute (one of many established about this time throughout the country) was to provide educational opportunities, mainly through evening classes, for working men. Lectures for the general public were also provided of wide interest covering topics ranging from Arctic exploration to Shakespeare and philosophy. Luminaries like Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered talks and readings in the main lecture hall (now the architecturally restructured Sir Paul McCartney Auditorium of LIPA).

By 1840 the Institution offered evening classes, lectures, a library and a boys' lower and upper school. By the 1850s a formal art school was evolving from the evening classes and in 1856 this diversity was recognised by another name change – The Liverpool Institute and School of Arts.

A girls' school was founded and opened in 1844 under the name Liverpool Institute High School for Girls. It was housed in a merchant's mansion across the street from the boys' school in Blackburne House provided by the generosity of Mr. George Holt and which was later (1872) donated to the school by his family in his memory. The school was one of the first which was open to the public in the country established exclusively for the education of girls.

In 1905 the Liverpool City Council took over the management of the secondary schools when the LI Board of Governors presented the school and assets to the City. From then until its closure in 1985, the school was formally known as The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys or more familiarly as The Institute or The Inny to its pupils.

It was an English grammar school for boys ages 11 to 18 with an excellent academic reputation built up over more than a century. Its list of scholarships and places at Oxford University and Cambridge University runs to some 300 names – in addition to distinctions gained at the University of Liverpool and at many other prominent British universities. The school was a true measure of Liverpool's intellectual capital and its old boys could and can be found in later life in many fields of professional distinction including the law, the Church, armed forces, politics, academia, government and colonial administration as well as in trade and commerce.[1]

Closure of the school

The school went into decline in the mid-sixties with the introduction of comprehensive education in Liverpool and was closed by the city council in 1985 after two decades of contention, political dispute and very little upkeep of the building fabric. The Labour Party nationally – see Anthony Crosland's Circular of Sept. 1965 required that Local Authorities bring forward schemes for comprehensive secondary education. As grammar school pupils were selected by examination at age 11, there was a long-standing push towards 'comprehensive schools' (as non-selective schools were known) from that party when it took majority control of the City Council in 1983. Demand for secondary school places in the City had also dropped precipitously and there was a huge oversupply of school space as Liverpool's population contracted during the severe economic recession of the early 1980s.

Ironically perhaps, the Deputy Leader of the Labour (Militant) Group on Council at the time was a former LI schoolboy Derek Hatton who had left without academic distinction in 1964 and with strong feelings of dislike towards the school.[2] However the man who was Chair of the Educational Committee at the time of the decision to close the school was Dominic Brady.

After closure of the Liverpool Institute for Boys, the building stood empty and neglected, the roof leaking and the walls crumbling. In 1987 it was announced that the LI Trust (under control of Liverpool Council's Education Department) would grant use of the building and site to a new educational establishment. Paul McCartney had returned to his old school when with Wings he had played a concert at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool in 1979. After the school's closure in 1985, McCartney returned one night to reminisce about his school days, while he was writing his 'Liverpool Oratorio'. This visit is tellingly captured in 'Echoes'; a DVD which accompanies the 'Liverpool Oratoria' box set. McCartney was determined to save the building somehow. What was needed was an idea that could secure the building's future. During a conversation with Sir George Martin, the idea of a 'fame school' emerged since Martin was helping Mark Featherstone-Witty start a London secondary school with an innovative curriculum. McCartney and Featherstone-Witty joined forces to create The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). The new company took over the Liverpool Institute Trust established in 1905.

The building was rebuilt (entirely in parts) behind its old facade and re-opened in 1996 under the name of its new occupants, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). This all-new institute is currently affiliated with LJMU and is no longer a Liverpool secondary school.

Art school

Art School

The city's Art College had its origins as part of the Liverpool Institute. In 1883 a new building housing the School of Art was opened around the corner on Hope Street, adjacent to the principal building housing the High School on Mount Street. The Art College by which it was later known, took in talented students often without formal academic credentials (e.g. John Lennon) and the College eventually became one of the four constituent parts of the Liverpool Polytechnic in 1970 and later in 1992 Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) with the School of Art and Design being housed in the Art and Design Academy.

Liverpool Institute and music

Music and musical performances were a constant theme throughout the life of the school and the Mount St. building. Annual school Speech Day concerts (held in the fine acoustics of Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool), choirs, the organ, piano, music classes and the singing of daily devotional hymns have echoed around its walls for 170 years and continue to do so at LIPA:

Notable former pupils

Name Joined/left Born/died Known for
Francis Neilson-Butters 1867–1961 MP for the Hyde Division of Cheshire 1910–1916. Writer and historian.
Sir Walter de Frece 1870–1935 Theatre impresario and MP
Sir Richard Burn 1871–1947 Civil servant, historian and numismatist
Prof Alfred James Ewart 1872–1937 Professor of Botany and Plant Physiology in the University of Melbourne from 1906–21
Prof John Hay 1873–1959 former President of the Royal Microscopical Society, and former Professor of Medicine at the University of Liverpool
Franklin Dyall 1874–1950 Actor
Prof Charles Glover Barkla 1877–1944 Nobel Prize in Physics 1917 "for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements",[4] Wheatstone Professor of Physics from 1909–13 at King's College London, and discovered most properties of X-ray scattering, fluorescence, polarisation, and transmission through matter.
Sydney Silverman c. 1911–1915 1895–1968 Labour MP from 1935–68 for Nelson and Colne. He brought in a private Member's Bill in 1965 to suspend the death penalty[5]
James Laver 1899–1975 Art historian
Arthur Askey 1911–1916 1900–1982 Comedian and broadcaster.
Sir Malcolm Knox 1900–80 Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1936–53 at the University of St Andrews, and Principal of the University from 1953–66
Sir Frank Francis 1901–1988 Director of the British Museum, 1959–1968
Lindley M. Fraser 1904–63 Jaffrey Professor of Political Economy from 1935–40 at the University of Aberdeen, Head of German and Austrian Services at the BBC from 1946–63
Frank Redington 1906–84 Head Boy 1925; Cambridge University (Wrangler); Chief Actuary of Prudential Insurance 1951–1968; Winner of the Gold Medal of the Institute of Actuaries in honour of "actuarial work of pre-eminent importance".
Prof William Kneale 1906–90 White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, 1960–6. Author of Probability and Induction
Alan Robertson 1920–89 Chemist. Animal breeding and genetics
Alan Durband 1938–1944 1927–93 Pupil who returned as a teacher, one of the founders of the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and the New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool
Ronald Oxburgh, Baron Oxburgh 1942–1952 1932– Chair of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, 2003 to 2005.[6]
Peter Sissons 1953–1961 1942– News broadcaster
Steve Norris 1956–1963 1945– MP for Oxford East,1983–1987; Epping Forest, 1988–1997. Conservative candidate for London Mayoralty, 2000 and 2004.
Bill Kenwright 1957–1964 1945– Theatre impresario

Headmasters

19th century

20th century

See also

References

  1. ↑ A History of the Liverpool Institute Schools, Herbert J Tiffen, 1825–1935.
  2. ↑ Derek Hatton, Inside Left, 1988
  3. ↑ "Stan Kelly-Bootle: About Me". Stan Kelly-Bootle. Retrieved 13 October 2006.
  4. ↑ "Charles Glover Barkla. Nobel Prize in Physics 1917". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 13 October 2006.
  5. ↑ "Sydney Silverman". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 13 October 2006.
  6. ↑ "Lord Oxburgh". LJMU.ac.uk. Retrieved 14 October 2006.
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