Warrington's great seat of learning
Joseph Priestley was one of many illustrious students

One of the nation's great seats of learning in the 18th century was Warrington Academy, which boasted distinguished lecturers and celebrated pupils.

The most famous of these was the 'discoverer' of oxygen, Joseph Priestley who was a Yorkshireman by birth. A non-conformist minister he ran a school in Nantwich for some years before being appointed as a tutor at the 'Dissenters' Academy.

Dr.Priestley never considered science to be much more than his hobby and was deeply involved in religion and theology. His beliefs and doctrines were abhorred in many quarters and in later in life he was beset by the mob and forced into exile in Pennsylvania.

His name is remembered in Warrington through Priestley College and is commemorated there as one of the ten immortals of Philosophy and Science.

Another from the Academy was John Rheinhold Forster, a teacher of modern languages and natural history, who left to join Captain Cook's second world voyage.

Priestley himself had also been considered for the assignment but his religious principles led to his rejection by the clergymen in the Board of Longtitude who had direction of the voyage.

A French tutor at Warrington Academy was supposedly Jean Paul Marat of French Revolution fame who was destined to die in his bath at the hands of Charlotte Corday.

The fine Georgian building which housed Warrington Academy was extensively renovated and refurbished during the 1980s and was actually "moved" several yards to accommodate a new road layout. It became the head office for a while of Eddy Shah's then newly-published national newspaper 'Today', and still serves as a major regional newspaper headquarters.

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