Heriot-Watt University: The School of Arts of Edinburgh

Who Was Actually First

Heriot-Watt’s own marketing says “the world’s first mechanics’ institute”. The claim is defensible but it glides over an awkward fact: the School of Arts never called itself a mechanics’ institution. That name belongs to Glasgow.

The scholarly position divides along that seam. The historian Thomas Kelly — whose 1952 article on the origin of mechanics’ institutes and 1962 History of Adult Education in Great Britain remain the foundational works — is the authority usually cited for Edinburgh’s priority. A.H. Sexton, writing in 1894, described Glasgow 1823 as “the first Mechanics’ Institution possessing that name and the first in the world” of that name. Encyclopaedia Britannica and peer-reviewed historians of technical education such as Martyn Walker treat Glasgow 1823 as the first proper example or the model.

The wording this site uses is therefore first institution of its kind, though not the first to carry the name. It concedes nothing that matters. Edinburgh 1821 was copied: within about three decades some seven hundred institutes had appeared across Britain and Ireland, and the model travelled to Australia, Canada, India and the United States. That is a genuine Scottish first, and it survives being stated carefully.

Two Men, One Hyphen

Almost everyone assumes Heriot and Watt were partners, relatives, or one person with a long name. They were neither related nor contemporaries. George Heriot (1563–1624), known as Jinglin’ Geordie, was goldsmith and moneylender to James VI, and his bequest founded George Heriot’s Hospital, now George Heriot’s School. James Watt (1736–1819) was the engineer of the separate condenser. A century and a half separates them.

Watt’s association is honorific and posthumous. In 1824, five years after his death, a subscription raised in his memory helped the school buy permanent premises at Adam Square; on that purchase in 1851 it renamed itself the Watt Institution and School of Arts, formally from 1852, and added a Watt statue in 1854. Lord Cockburn’s justification was that “the memory of Watt may forever be connected with the promotion, among a class of men to which he himself originally belonged, of those mechanical arts from which his own usefulness and glory arose”. It is a good sentiment and a fundraising device. Watt himself had no institutional involvement whatsoever. The university’s own history also records, honestly, that Watt’s family benefited from slavery-derived trade, and that his own position was ambiguous: he called slavery disgraceful to humanity in 1791, while his business later filled orders involving enslaved people.

Heriot’s link is different in kind: it is money and governance. By the 1870s the institution, having moved to Chambers Street by way of Roxburgh Place after Adam Square was demolished, was in financial difficulty. In 1873 the directors approached the George Heriot’s Trust. Parliament approved merging the Trust’s endowment with the school’s, on condition that the school was restructured as a technical college with Trust representatives in its management. The result was Heriot-Watt College in 1885. The two bodies became formally independent again under the Heriot-Watt College and George Heriot’s Trust Order Confirmation Act 1927, after which the Trust simply paid a fixed annual sum.

College to University

The line runs School of Arts of Edinburgh (1821), Watt Institution and School of Arts (1852), Heriot-Watt College (1885) — and then, unusually, a long climb through the machinery of British higher education rather than a single dramatic charter. The college was one of only three non-university institutions in the United Kingdom with the power to appoint professors, the first of them in 1887. It became a central institution in 1902, introduced degree-equivalent awards from 1904, and added a postgraduate award in 1951.

The Robbins Report of 1963 broke the logjam by recommending university status for institutions of exactly this kind. On 1 February 1966 the government approved the charter, the Secretary of State William Ross telling the Commons that “Her Majesty was yesterday pleased to approve that a Charter should be granted to the new Heriot-Watt University”. The Royal Charter was granted on 4 March 1966, and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the former Prime Minister, was installed as first Chancellor that April.

That places Heriot-Watt in the middle of a remarkable Scottish decade: Strathclyde chartered in 1964 out of the Anderson’s lineage, Heriot-Watt in 1966, Dundee demerging from St Andrews in 1967, Stirling founded from scratch. Heriot-Watt is usually described as the eighth-oldest higher education institution in the UK, and is sometimes filed with the plate-glass universities such as Lancaster and York — a classification that fits its buildings far better than its history.

Mary Burton and 1869

The institution admitted women to all its classes from 1869, following a campaign led by Mary Burton, who became its first female director in 1874. This one deserves emphasis because, unlike so many claims of early access, it does not need hedging into meaninglessness. The Scottish universities could not graduate women until the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889 took effect, so the Watt Institution was roughly two decades ahead of the ancient foundations on ordinary class admission.

It fits the logic of the place. An institution built to teach whoever turned up in the evening, without reference to their social standing, had less to defend than a university built around matriculation, gowns and degrees.

Riccarton and the Overseas Campuses

In 1966 Midlothian County Council gifted the Riccarton estate — 380 acres of parkland about six miles south-west of central Edinburgh, near Currie — to the new university. Building began in 1969 and the move out of the city centre took until 1992 to complete. In 1971 Heriot-Watt opened the first university research park in Europe on the site. There is a pleasing circularity in the address: the Gibson-Craig family of Riccarton had been among the School of Arts’s original backers.

The more unusual decision was to go abroad and own the buildings. Heriot-Watt was the first UK university to open a campus in Dubai International Academic City, in 2005, with a purpose-built campus following in November 2011 and a move to Dubai Knowledge Park in 2021 — the new campus opened by King Charles III in November 2023. The Malaysia campus at Putrajaya, a £35 million green-build site about 25km from Kuala Lumpur, opened in September 2014. Add the Scottish Borders campus at Galashiels, shared with Borders College, and the Orkney campus at Stromness, home to the International Centre for Island Technology since 1989, and you have five campuses across three countries. Counting distance learners alongside the overseas campuses, a large share of Heriot-Watt’s students never set foot in Edinburgh.

Brewing, Barley and Actuaries

Four specialisms hold up to scrutiny. Actuarial science: Heriot-Watt was the first UK university to offer the degree, is a Centre of Actuarial Excellence recognised by the North American Society of Actuaries — the first in Europe and one of only two — and hosts the Scottish Financial Risk Academy. Brewing and distilling: taught since 1903, formalised in the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling in 1989 when Sir Geoff Palmer added distilling to the older brewing course, and still the only undergraduate programme of its kind in the UK; its graduates include BrewDog’s Martin Dickie, Arbikie’s Kirsty Black and Edinburgh Gin’s David Wilkinson, and a £35 million Centre for Sustainable Brewing and Distilling was announced in 2025. Petroleum engineering, through the Institute of Petroleum Engineering and its North Sea ties. And textiles, inherited from the Scottish College of Textiles, whose own lineage runs back to Galashiels Manufacturers’ Corporation classes in 1883; Heriot-Watt began awarding its degrees in 1989 and completed the merger in 1998.

Sir Geoff Palmer (1940–2025) is the figure who most repays attention. Born in Jamaica, he became Scotland’s first black professor in 1989, developed the industrial barley abrasion process that changed malting, pioneered the use of the scanning electron microscope on cereal grains, founded the ICBD, and campaigned for decades on human rights and Scotland’s reckoning with slavery. He was the university’s Chancellor from 2021 until his death in June 2025. There is no Nobel laureate closely associated with Heriot-Watt, and the honest substitute is Palmer’s 1998 Award of Distinction from the American Society of Brewing Chemists, which the industry calls the Nobel Prize of brewing.

Elsewhere: David Milne, a 1966 graduate, founded Wolfson Microelectronics, the first successful spin-out from a Scottish university. Sir John Ball held the chair of applied analysis from 1974 to 1996 before presiding over the International Mathematical Union, and the university co-runs the Maxwell Institute for mathematical sciences with Edinburgh. Irvine Welsh took an MBA there; Muriel Spark took a commercial-correspondence course at the college. Edinburgh Business School, which runs one of the world’s largest MBA programmes, has since 2019 also cared for the restored Panmure House, Adam Smith’s last home.

On the numbers, Heriot-Watt states a community of over 27,000 students and more than 173,000 alumni. It was placed =287th in the QS World University Rankings 2026, having been 235th in 2024, in the 401–500 band by Times Higher Education for 2025, and 31st in the UK by the Complete University Guide 2027. In REF 2021, 86.8 per cent of its research was rated world-leading or internationally excellent. It was named International University of the Year in the 2018 Times and Sunday Times guide and scores strongly on graduate employment and graduate earnings in Scotland.

Timeline

1. 1800

   Birkbeck lectures to Glasgow mechanics

   The movement's forerunner, at Anderson's Institution in Glasgow

2. 16 Oct 1821

   The School of Arts of Edinburgh opens

   Over 300 crowd St Cecilia's Hall; several hundred more are turned away

3. 1821

   452 students enrol within a month

   Backers include Walter Scott, Lord Cockburn and Robert Stevenson

4. 1823

   Glasgow Mechanics' Institution founded

   The first body actually to bear the name

5. 1823–1824

   London Mechanics' Institution

   Founded December 1823, opened February 1824; later Birkbeck College

6. 1824

   The Watt name is adopted

   A subscription fund raised in James Watt's memory, five years after his death

7. 1851–1852

   Adam Square premises bought; renamed

   It becomes the Watt Institution and School of Arts

8. 1854

   A Watt statue is installed

   The Watt Club is founded on 12 May, now the UK's oldest alumni association

9. 1869

   Women admitted to all classes

   After a campaign led by Mary Burton, twenty years ahead of the Scottish universities

10. 1873–1885

    Merger with the George Heriot's Trust

    Parliament approves; the result is Heriot-Watt College in 1885

11. 1887

    First professors appointed

    One of only three non-university UK institutions with that power

12. 1902–1904

    Central institution status; degree-equivalent awards

    The college's teaching moves decisively upward

13. 1927

    Formal separation from the Heriot Trust

    By Order Confirmation Act; the Trust then pays a fixed annual sum

14. 1963

    The Robbins Report

    Recommends university status for the technical colleges

15. 4 Mar 1966

    Royal Charter granted

    Heriot-Watt University; Sir Alec Douglas-Home installed as first Chancellor in April

16. 1966–1992

    Riccarton

    The 380-acre estate is gifted; building starts 1969, relocation completes 1992

17. 1971

    Europe's first university research park

    Opened at Riccarton

18. 1989

    ICBD and the Orkney centre founded

    Brewing and distilling in Edinburgh; island technology at Stromness

19. 1998

    Full merger with the Scottish College of Textiles

    Creating the Scottish Borders campus at Galashiels

20. 2005 / 2014

    Dubai, then Malaysia

    The first UK university campus in Dubai International Academic City; Putrajaya opens September 2014

Did You Know?

• The first lecture was held in St Cecilia's Hall, Scotland's oldest purpose-built concert hall — several hundred would-be students were turned away at the door.
• The Watt Club, founded on 12 May 1854, is understood to be the oldest higher-education alumni association in the UK.
• Riccarton was gifted to the university in 1966 by Midlothian County Council — and the Craig family of Riccarton had helped fund the School of Arts in 1821.
• Europe's first university research park opened at Riccarton in 1971.
• Heriot-Watt taught brewing from 1903, and its brewing and distilling degree is still the only undergraduate programme of its kind in the UK.
• Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland's first black professor, won the award the brewing industry calls its Nobel Prize — and later became the university's Chancellor.
• Since 2019 the Edinburgh Business School has looked after Panmure House, the last home of Adam Smith.
• The Orkney campus at Stromness works on marine renewables — about as far from a city-centre evening class as an institution can travel.

Honest Caveats

The “first mechanics’ institute” claim is contested, not settled. It is defensible as first institution of its kind. It is not the unanimous scholarly verdict, and readers should know that Britannica and several specialist historians hand the title to Glasgow 1823.

The Kelly attribution rests on secondary transmission. A verbatim quotation from Thomas Kelly awarding Edinburgh the unqualified first could not be confirmed for this article; the underlying scholarly position is well attested through specialist sources, but the citation chain is worth naming.

Watt’s name is decoration, not descent. Any account implying that James Watt founded, taught at, endowed or advised the institution is wrong.

Several dates circulate wrongly. 20 October 1821 for the founding and 1855 for the Heriot-Watt College renaming both appear in print; the reliable dates are 16 October 1821, 1852 and 1885. The Malaysia campus is sometimes given as 2012 rather than September 2014, and the textiles merger as 1997 rather than 1998.

Alumni lists need individual checking. Aggregators mix degree holders with short-course attendees, honorary graduates and loosely associated nineteenth-century figures; James Nasmyth and Robert Stirling appear on such lists with far looser ties than the word “alumnus” implies.

Scale and rankings move. Student totals vary with counting method between about 27,000 and 30,000 depending on whether distance learning is included, and every ranking cited here is tied to a specific year for that reason.