Charity, Piety and Commerce: Liverpool's Bluecoat School and pragmatic politeness in the first half of the 18th Century

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This studentship builds upon connections between Bluecoat and the Department of History at the University of Liverpool that date back more than a century. Bluecoat - dedicated in 1717 as the Blue Coat Charity School and, transformed in the early 20C as the UK's first arts centre - is one of the few surviving buildings dating to Liverpool's early 18C commercial expansion and reflects the town's growing self-confidence and the civicmindedness of its mercantile elite. The studentship will use the records of the Blue Coat School, the papers of influential donors, and church and Corporation sources to revisit the history of the building in the first half of the 18C and situate it in emergent urban networks of charity, piety and commerce that put politeness to pragmatic ends. This application generally refers to the building as a single word - 'Bluecoat' - usage adopted when the Blue Coat School moved to larger suburban premises in 1906.