TODAY'S successful Canon Slade school has a history which goes back to December, 1846.

Canon James Slade, who was Vicar of Bolton between 1817 and 1856, chaired a meeting which led to the foundation of the Bolton Church Institute School which stood for many years near Bolton Parish Church.

In 1945, it became Canon Slade - a direct grant grammar school - and in 1956 it moved to its present site in Bradshaw.

One of our readers, Ray Bevin of Cecil Street, Walkden, has a booklet which the Church Institute School produced in 1930 as part of its promotion for a money-raising bazaar in the Albert Hall, Bolton.

The bazaar was needed to provide the money necessary to wipe out an overdraft which was a "very serious drain on the school finances".

The booklet, which once belonged to one of Mr Bevin's friends, contains pictures reflecting school life and advertisements for products such as Warburton's "Eatmore" bread - "preferred by particular people".

Modern concerns about alcohol were far in the future for Magee Marshall & Co Ltd, the famous Bolton brewery, who urged readers to: "Drink Magee's nourishing oatmeal stout and feel better."

This is an edited version of the 1930 article on the school's history:

"THE work of the Institution has certainly justified the wise foresight of Canon Slade and his contemporaries.

"For 25 years, the great bulk of the work now undertaken by continuation and technical schools was maintained and developed by the Institute Committee.

"Classes were held in such subjects as applied mechanics, steam, machine drawing, building construction, theoretical and practical chemistry, dyeing and bleaching, principles of mining, cotton manufacture, etc.

"The Church Institute was, in fact, the pioneer of technical education in the town.

"There were, during those years, very few educational bodies throughout the country who attempted this work; there were, indeed, few encouragements to do so; and it should not be forgotten that the work of the Church Institute Committee required the most strenuous efforts, and was often maintained at considerable sacrifice.

"The work of the Technical Education was in 1894 handed over to the Technical Instruction Committee of the town, and the buildings are now used solely for the work of the day school. From small beginnings the school has steadily grown, till the Board of Education has found it necessary to limit the numbers, in order to prevent the buildings being overcrowded.

"The growth in numbers has been attended by a corresponding increase in the success of the pupils, both at the school and university, and in after life.

"The list of honours and distinctions won from the time the school was founded to the present date is a very long one indeed.

"Many of Bolton's most distinguished citizens have received their education at the Church Institute.

"Among them the school is proud to number such men as the late Lord Leverhulme and Colonel Hesketh.

"Organised on co-educational lines, the Church Institute provides education of a high character for children of all classes.

"It is, primarily, the possession of all church people, founded by church people, and largely supported by them; but none the less it has done, under its various principals, good sound work for the general community, and it has won by its freedom from narrow sectarianism the confidences of all religious denominations, so much so that, although definite religious instruction in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England is given, out of the 250 pupils in the school there are not half-a-dozen whose parents exercise the right of requiring their children to be absent from the scripture lessons.

"It was hoped that after the bazaar of 1922 the school would be able to pay its way, but, at the end of the last financial year in 1929, the governors found themselves faced with a bank overdraft of £2,052.

"If the present overdraft can be wiped out the position is full of hope.

"Three important contributory causes of this improved financial position have been (1) the payment by a number of churches for the education of free place pupils from their parishes, (2) the generous help given by friends of the school on the occasion of the annual sermons inaugurated in 1928, and (3) the increased fees paid by parents."