Our History

Gatehouse Tavern in 1870s

On 16 January 1839 Harry Chester, a young civil servant and Highgate resident, called a public meeting in the Gatehouse tavern. Chester wanted to form ‘a society for the improvement of the mind…in subservience to the interests of morality and the glory of God’.

He had been caught up in the movement sweeping the country in the wake of the Reform Bill of 1832. Groups all over Britain were starting societies – Literary & Scientific Institutions and Mechanics Institutes – where people would be helped to better understand new developments in industry and discoveries in science.

Highgate Hill 1870

Chester wanted to form ‘a society for the improvement of the mind … in subservience to the interests of morality and the glory of God’. A provisional committee was elected and some seventy people joined on the spot – gentlemen, professional men, schoolmasters and local shopkeepers, a representative cross section of the life of the village at that time.

Chester, 1806-68, founding President

Harry Chester was chosen to be the first President. His portrait, and those of all the forty-six presidents who succeeded him, hangs in the downstairs corridor of the Institution. Until 2002 the presidents were men but this is not longer the case. All deserve our gratitude and admiration: they have steered the HLSI through good times and bad, and it is one of very few such institutions remaining in the country.