Hackney College
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Hackney College, in 2005, is a remarkably muddled term. It is generally used, not wholly incorrectly, to refer to Hackney Community College, an institute of adult and further education in the London Borough of Hackney. This was, indeed, originally named Hackney College when it was formed in 1974 by the amalgamation of Hackney and Stoke Newington College of Further Education with those sites of Poplar Technical College that had been established in Hackney. Initially run by ILEA and, following that, by Hackney Council, when it was renamed, it is now an independent institution.
As noted, the Community College is not a single building but occupies a number of sites. Its main campus is in Falkirk Street, Hoxton. However, 'Hackney College' has also been widely used (by Pevsner and others) to refer specifically to Brooke House, until September 2002 one of the Community College's sites. This has now become Brooke House Sixth Form College, at least removing one source of ambiguity.
Quite apart from this confusion, the modern version of the term should also be distinguished from two previous Hackney Colleges:
- One name for the college set up by Calvinist Dissenters in Homerton in 1786, also known in various accounts as the New College, Homerton Academy, or Homerton College (it is under the last name that it survives today as a college of the University of Cambridge). In its Homerton years it attracted some notable students including William Hazlitt. This college moved to Cambridge in 1894.
- Hackney Academy or Hackney Theological Seminary, a non-conformist institution co-founded by George Collison, confusingly named itself 'Hackney College' after 1871, and it thereafter became known by this name even though it moved to Finchley Road, Hampstead in 1887. However it later dropped the name and was retitled 'Hackney and New College'.
