The House System

Salford City Academy is organised into Houses, these are:

All students and staff are members of one of these houses.

Joule House

Joule house has been named after the famous Salford Scientist James Prescott Joule.

James Joule was born in 1818 to a rich family of brewers; the family had their own beer producing factory in Salford.  James did not attend school or university, but studied science in his spare time with his great friend John Dalton, another Salford scientist.

James Joule is most famous for his work in thermodynamics and the conversion of heat to energy.  It is due to his work that the health conscious among us can look at the calorie intake on food packaging and exercise accordingly!

Unfortunately even the most groundbreaking of scientific work did not bring James Joule financial success - he died poor and penniless in Sale in 1889.

Bridgewater House

Bridgewater House is named after Francis Edgerton, the 3rd and most famous Duke of Bridgewater.  He inherited the family estate in Worsley in the 1760's.  He pioneered the building of a canal, initially from Worsley into Manchester, to transport desperately needed coal from underground mines at Worsley Delph into the city.  He was responsible for the construction of the original Barton aqueduct - a revolutionary invention in its day - which has since been re-built as the Barton swing aqueduct over the Manchester Ship Canal.

Lowry House

J.S. Lowry lived and worked, as a rent collector, in some of the poorest areas of the North of England.  He was fascinated by the industrial landscape, the houses, the chimneys, the grime and the people who lived there.  His paintings form a diary which records his experiences during the first half of the twentieth century.  Lowry appeals to the nostalgia of the British working class who recall the poverty of their parents who struggled to bring them up and their own experiences during the depression.

Ridiculed at first for what was perceived as his inability to draw, Lowry's unique style appealed to those who had lived through the hard times.  They felt his work captured the appearance and mood of those times as they remembered them.

Lowry liked to tell a good story and his paintings do the same for those whose experiences are mirrored in his work.

In later life he declined an Order of Merit and a Knighthood, but proudly accepted Doctorates from the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool.

Williamson House

Williamson house is named after a founder member and long serving Governor of the predecessor school Canon Williamson.