Feature: The Harris Institute Grand Bazaar
There would be plenty of reasons to remember 5th November 1896, when a ‘Grand Bazaar’ was opened in Preston’s Public Hall. The aim of the Bazaar was to raise funds for the new Victoria Jubilee Technical School; a magnificent addition to the Harris Institute being erected on Corporation Street.
Technical education in the late Victorian period was expanding quickly. When the Institution for the Diffusion of Knowledge transformed into the Harris Institute in 1881 (following a munificent bequest from the Harris Trustees of £40,000) there were some 318 students in attendance. Some 15 years later, the number had risen to over 4,000, and the new building was planned on an impressive scale. The weaving shed was designed to accommodate over 100 looms, and a lecture theatre could seat 200 students. Expansion on this scale did not come cheaply, and the institute had lurched through a series of financial crises in the early 1890s. The Harris Trustees made further significant donations, Preston Borough Council provided the land, while student fees, and grants from central and local government provided other sources of income. Altogether, there was enough to build the technical school, but a significant shortfall to equip and fit it out appropriately.
With prospects for the institution uncertain, the Bazaar gathered prominent support from a distinguished list of eminent patrons and patronesses. Starting with the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, a roll call of MPs, JPs, councillors, medics, gentlemen and ladies from across Preston and district gave their support. The Bazaar itself featured stalls relating to the main branches of the curriculum, including Art and Science, Technology, Agriculture, Commerce, and Pupil Teaching, plus more decorative ones for flowers and books. Refreshments were laid on courtesy of the School of Domestic Science, and entertainment provided by the Harris Dramatic and Musical Society. The invitation brochure itself was a work of art, festooned with quotations from English literature and lavishly illustrated with drawings and cartoons. There were also the inevitable adverts from commercial supporters of the enterprise.
The bazaar was a tremendous success, raising a serious sum of over £3,000, and the technical school formally opened in 1897, in time for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Today our students recognise it as Harris Building.
With the support and commitment of the people of Preston, the Harris Institute had been saved from a precarious situation and launched into the twentieth century.
Keith Vernon, Historian in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences
