The Hulme Trust Deeds

Documents concerning Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire, and relating to John Huntingdon, Warden of the College of Manchester between 1422-1458.

The Hulme Trust dates back to the will of William Hulme, a member of a prosperous Manchester family who died 26 October 1691. By his will he left certain fields and meadows in trust to maintain a number of students from Manchester as bachelors of arts at Brasenose College, Oxford. As the prosperity of Manchester increased the land held by the Trust increased in value, and from the early 19th century the trustees secured parliamentary permission to spend their money on other purposes. They were allowed to apply surpluss income to the purchase of advowsons of livings, and as a result became the patrons of nearly 30 livings, mainly in Lancashire, as well as the owners of numerous parsonages and other ecclesiastical properties. Towards the end of the 19th century the trustees established the Hulme Grammar School in Manchester and similar institutions at Bury and Oldham, established scholarships at Owens College, and assisted Manchester Grammar School and the Girls Grammar School.

The Trust owned valuable building land in several of the business centres of Manchester, Shudehill, Withy Grove and Fennel Street, as well as Albert Square, John Dalton Street and Brazenose Street. In addition they held land in Ashton Under Lyne, Denton, Heaton Norris, Reddish and Harwood near Bolton.

See Henry D. Rack, ‘Hulme, William (bap. 1631, d. 1691)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004).

The collection is arranged into 5 series: Documents concerning land in Manchester, Documents concerning John Huntingdon, Warden of the College of Manchester, 1422-1458, Miscellaneous deeds relating to Manchester, Miscellaneous deeds relating to Lancashire and Miscellaneous deeds relating chiefly to Cheshire.

This arrangement is based upon J. P. Earwaker's work undertaken in 1886 and described in the manuscript "Schedule of Early Charters and Deeds chiefly relating to the lands of William Hulme Esq[ui]re now in the possession of the Hulmeian Trustees", April 1886. Earwaker describes his system of arrangement as follows: "When the deeds ... were placed in my hands by courtesy of the Hulmeian Trustees, they were in a state of great confusion. Most of them bore little or no endorsement, and they were tied up in packets without any order or arrangement, such packets being endorsed "old deeds", "deeds not bearing on the title", &c &c. They have now all been carefully examined, and have been classified into five groups, the deeds in each of these groups being arranged in chronological order. Each deed has been read through and now has an endorsement of its contents on its back; and bears a distinctive number." (pp 2-2v).

There are no restrictions on access to this collection. Viewing is by prior appointment. Please contact archivist@chethams.org.uk.

No further accruals are expected.

The collection was lent to Canon F. R. Raines in the 1840s, and short abstracts of them are located in Raines Lancashire Manuscripts volume XXIV, pp 397-424. In his report on the collection dated April 1886, J. P. Earwaker noted that a number of deeds mentioned by Raines as being in this collection were no longer present: "the most important missing documents being one in English, dated 1454, being a deed of feoffment of the nature of a will, made by Warden Huntingdon, and printed by Raines in his account of the Wardens (Chet. Soc. New Series, vol. 5, p. 20) and the important deed of arbitration dated 1507, settling the disputes about the Warden's lands. This latter document, or a counterpart of it, is now however amongst the deeds in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Manchester". (See MS Schedule of the Hulme Deeds by J. P. Earwaker, Apr 1886, pp 4-4v).