Catalogue description CREWE MECHANICS INSTITUTE

This record is held by Cheshire Archives and Local Studies

Details of D 4807
Reference: D 4807
Title: CREWE MECHANICS INSTITUTE
Held by: Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, not available at The National Archives
Language: English
Creator:

Crewe Mechanical Institute, Cheshire

Subjects:
  • Crewe, Cheshire
Administrative / biographical background:

In 1845 the Institution was founded by amalgamating an existing mechanics institute and a technical institute. It was formed to give technical training, in theory and practice to apprentices and workmen, and later had a more general educational role and included non-railway members. Its rooms in the assembly hall (later known as the town hall) originally contained just a library, news room and committee rooms. The committees of workmen reported to the directors, the library and news room had been brought together as one organisation at the end of 1844.

 

It was controlled by a committee of three members elected by the railway, nine elected by members from a list supplied by the railway and nine members from amongst themselves. From the 21 members there were three sub-committees; the first dealt with the running of the news room and library, the second with the classes and letting of the hall and the third with the public baths; horticultural exhibitions etc. The chairman or president was always the railway locomotive superintendent or in later years the divisional mechanical engineer or works superintendent.

 

In April 1936 the library and reading room were leased to Crewe Corporation for use as the public library but by the 1950s the buildings had deteriorated and they were demolished around 1970.

 

The Scientific Society was part of the Mechanics Institute. The Engineering Society, an independent body formed in 1879, closed in 1884 and deposited its minutes with the Crewe Mechanics Institute Library. Crewe and District Hospital Sunday Fund was responsible for forwarding church collections and other donations to selected hospitals, mainly those which treated local inhabitants. Its secretary was frequently the secretary of the Crewe Mechanics Institute.

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