Harris Manchester College

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Harris Manchester College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Formerly known as Manchester College, it is listed in the University Statutes (V.1) as Manchester Academy and Harris College, and at university ceremonies it is called Collegium de Harris et Manchester. Located in Mansfield Road in central Oxford, Harris Manchester is one of very few mixed-sex higher education colleges in the UK whose undergraduate places are exclusively for students aged 21 or over. It is the smallest of the constituent full colleges of the University of Oxford, and as of 2012 had an estimated financial endowment of £6 million.HistoryEarly dayThe college started as the Warrington Academy in 1757 where its teachers included Joseph Priestley, before being refounded as the Manchester Academy in Manchester in 1786. Originally run by English Presbyterians, it was one of several dissenting academies that provided religious nonconformists with higher education, as at the time the only universities in England - Oxford and Cambridge - were restricted to Anglicans. It taught radical theology as well as modern subjects, such as science, modern languages, language, and history; as well as the classics. Its most famous professor was John Dalton, developer of atomic theory.