Special event planned to mark 200th anniversary of Alnwick Mechanics' Institute

If you have ever wondered what it’s there for and what went on behind it, now there is a chance to find out.

An open evening is being held to mark its 200th anniversary on Tuesday, November 19.

Peter Reed, chair of Alnwick Civic Society, said: “Two hundred years ago Alnwick was at the forefront of a movement that laid the foundations for further education in Britain.”

Town clerk, Peter Hately, added: “This anniversary is an opportunity for us to make the importance of the Mechanics’ Institute more widely known.”

Mechanics’ Institutes were the brainchild of Thomas Birkbeck, after whom the prestigious London College is named. At a time of growing social unrest, massive technological change but widespread illiteracy, Birkbeck saw the need to to promote practical science amongst ordinary working people. This would equip them with the knowledge and skills they would need to prosper in a rapidly changing technological environment.

In 1823 there were only two in England: London and Liverpool. In 1824 the first were established in Northumberland. One was in Newcastle, where George Stephenson was a prime mover. The second was in Alnwick. Though a small market town of only 6,000 inhabitants the people of Alnwick saw the need to look to the future.

Its first few years were somewhat rocky but by the end of the 1820s it was sufficiently established to need premises of its own, which were built on Percy Street. Its headquarters contained a library and rooms where members met for lectures and for mutual instruction in the scientific and technological issues of the day.

By the 1850s almost one in ten of the adult male population of the town were members. Its purposes changed as time wore on, especially as the State began to provide primary and then adult and further education, but it only ceased to function at the beginning of the Second World War.

Today, the building is the responsibility of Alnwick Town Council and remains one of the few original Institutes much as it was in its heyday.

The building will be open from 6.30pm. The town council has installed information boards which recount some of its most important and memorable facts and visitors will be able to see most of the rooms.

At 7.30pm, there will be a talk by Dr Martyn Walker, an international authority who has written extensively on Mechanics’ Institutes. He will describe the context in which the Alnwick Institute was founded and the subsequent development of adult and continuing education.

Alnwick Civic Society is planning to follow Dr Walker’s talk with a discussion on what can be learned today from the experience of those who founded and ran these Institutes.

"We think those lessons could be important,” said Mr Reed. “Our forebears in the 1820s were experiencing massive economic and technological change and preparing themselves to deal with them. Like them we need to be ready for whatever the future may throw at us.”