Royal Charter

A Royal Charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. In our case, the Charter incorporated us as an awarding body. It was issued by George the V, 22 April 1930. It essentially re-set the Institution, the first President is referred to as Loughnan St. Lawrence Pendred who was President at the time (rather than George Stephenson who was our inaugural President). From this date we were allowed to award Chartership, which helped to professionalise mechanical engineering (p5).

We were registered as a limited company in August 1878 (but given permission not to use ‘limited’ in our name) and remained a company until 1963 when we were granted charitable status.