The Charities

‘I am writing to you to thank you for accepting my application to the Founders Scholarship.

I am currently researching a suitable laptop and plan to use part of these funds for this purchase to help me produce CAD designs for my Engineering projects. I will also be using the bursary to visit Observatories to help pursue my ambitions of becoming an Astrophysicist. I am most grateful for receiving this assistance and please pass my sincere thanks to the Founders and the Education Committee.

Yours sincerely, (Student) Y12, The John Warner School’


Causes and bursaries we support

The Worshipful Company of Founders is one of the oldest livery companies in the City of London. Our earliest records are for 1365 although there is evidence of a fraternity even older. Like other livery companies the main purpose of the company was to control trade in the City of London by setting standards and training apprentices who would subsequently become freeman of the Company indicating they were entitled to practice their art.

Subsequently they could become liverymen who were deemed worthy to train apprentices. In addition, there was an element of mutual support including looking after spouses of deceased members. In some ways these still feature in the life of the Company today. Members join a fellowship where we share common meals and other events including sports and touring activities. Although members come from a wide variety of backgrounds, we still maintain excellent links with our core industry and have a very active programme of support for education. 

The Warner charity specifically supports our university bursaries (currently held at Imperial College, Birmingham and Manchester Universities) and our annual Warner lecture. In the past these have included well known academics such as Sir Colin Humphreys, Bill Bonfield and Mary Ryan for example. Via our other charity we support work in both primary and secondary schools focused on science and engineering and more recently on apprentices based at the Brunel Centre in Bedford.

We have widened our support to include all areas of materials science especially in the areas of near net shape processing which now includes Additive manufacture. Also, we support prizes at Cranfield University in manufacturing and a prize for the best apprentice selected by the Cast Metals Federation. Our industrial members are involved in many areas of casting from street furniture to turbine blades and from MRI to public sculptures.

You can see some examples of the sculptures in the hall which have been created by winners of our biennial sculpture prize. We are anxious to maintain links with our students as they branch out in their careers.