The Conway Hall Ethical Society, formerly the South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving

freethought Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods ...

organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kingdom. It now advocates

secular humanism Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality an ...

and is a member of

Humanists International Humanists International (known as the International Humanist and Ethical Union, or IHEU, from 1952–2019) is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Found ...

History

The Society's origins trace back to 1787, as a

nonconformist Nonconformity or nonconformism may refer to: Culture and society * Insubordination, the act of willfully disobeying an order of one's superior *Dissent, a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or entity ** ...

congregation, led by Elhanan Winchester, rebelling against the doctrine of

eternal damnation Damnation (from Latin '' damnatio'') is the concept of divine punishment and torment in an afterlife for actions that were committed, or in some cases, not committed on Earth. In Ancient Egyptian religious tradition, citizens would recite t ...

. The congregation, known as the Philadelphians or Universalists, secured their first home at Parliament Court Chapel on the eastern edge of London on 14 February 1793. William Johnson Fox became minister of the congregation in 1817. By 1821 Fox's congregation had decided to build a new place of worship, and issued a call for "subscriptions for a new Unitarian chapel, South Place, Finsbury". Subscribers (donors) included businessman and patron of the arts Elhanan Bicknell. In 1824 the congregation built a chapel at South Place, in the

Finsbury Finsbury is a district of Central London, forming the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Islington. It borders the City of London. The Manor of Finsbury is first recorded as ''Vinisbir'' (1231) and means "manor of a man called Finn ...

district of

central London Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...

. The chapel was repaired by John Wallen, of a family of London architects and builders. This chapel later became the home of South Place Ethical Society. In 1929 they built new premises, Conway Hall, at 37 (now numbered 25) Red Lion Square, in nearby

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

, on the site of a tenement, previously a factory belonging to James Perry, a pen and ink maker. Conway Hall is named after an American,

Moncure D. Conway Moncure Daniel Conway (March 17, 1832 – November 15, 1907) was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia ...

, who led the Society from 1864 to 1885 and from 1892 to 1897, during which time it moved further away from Unitarianism. Conway spent the break in his tenure in the United States, writing a biography of Thomas Paine. In 1888 the name of the Society was changed from South Place Religious Society to South Place Ethical Society (SPES) under Stanton Coit's leadership. In 1950 the SPES joined the Ethical Union. In 1969 another name change was mooted, to The South Place Humanist Society, a discussion that sociologist Colin Campbell suggests symbolized the death of the ethical movement in England.Colin Campbell. 1971. ''Towards a Sociology of Irreligion''. London: MacMillan Press. The original name, South Place Ethical Society, was retained until 2012, when it changed to Conway Hall Ethical Society. In November 2013 Elizabeth Lutgendorff was elected Chair of the Conway Hall General Committee, becoming the youngest Chair in the society's history. On 1 August 2014 the society became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation with a new charitable object: "The advancement of study, research and education in humanist ethical principles". This replaced the previous object: "The study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment."

Conway Hall

Conway Hall was designed by Frederick Mansford, being built on an L-shaped strip of land which the Society had acquired between Theobald's Road and Lamb's Conduit Passage. It is a Grade II listed building built in 1929 and was Mansford's largest project. The main entrance is located on an angle with a narrow arch rising to the top of the upper floor. The arch is flanked by two columns in silver-grey brick while the rest of the building is varied with red-brick detailing. There is a lot of glass in the façade, with wide windows to the Library on the upper level and in and above the entrance doors. The glazing bars form a distinctive tiny criss-cross pattern reflected in Conway Hall's logo. The general feel is that of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at

Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon (), commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, north-we ...

, the old Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Mansford was aware that his design could appear incoherent and tried to make the elevation hang together by placing six stone urns, bought from a City bank, along roof level, two of them on top of the entrance columns. The main auditorium can hold 300 plus 180 in a gallery, and in recent years has been used as a corporate events space for conferences and product launches. The use of wooden panelling nailed directly to the brickwork and of

acoustic plaster Acoustic plaster is plaster which contains fibres or aggregate so that it absorbs sound. Early plasters contained asbestos, but newer ones consist of a base layer of absorptive substrate panels, which are typically mineral wool, or a non-combustib ...

gives the hall excellent acoustic qualities; this makes it very suitable for the performance of music, and there have been regular recordings and concerts there. The ceiling of the auditorium was glazed, and this made it very light and airy for the time. It opened in 1929 and has continued in use since. Above the proscenium arch the words "To Thine Own Self Be True" (quoting Polonius in Shakespeare's '' Hamlet'') can be seen. These words were originally inscribed on the back wall of the red mahogany panel at the original South Place Chapel.

Film location

The hall has been used as a location for various film and television productions. The building has appeared in ''

Mr Holmes ''Mr. Holmes'' is a 2015 British-American mystery film directed by Bill Condon, based on Mitch Cullin's 2005 novel ''A Slight Trick of the Mind'', and featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. The film stars Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes, Laur ...

'', ''

Bodyguard A bodyguard (or close protection officer/operative) is a type of security guard, government law enforcement officer, or servicemember who protects a person or a group of people — usually witnesses, high-ranking public officials or officers, w ...

'' and '' Hereafter''.

Humanist ceremonies

In 1935 twenty members of the Society signed a document stating that Conway Hall was their regular

place of worship A place of worship is a specially designed structure or space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is somet ...

. It was therefore certified for marriages by the Registrar-General until 1977 when the Deputy Registrar-General ruled that the Hall could not be used for weddings under the terms of the Places of Worship Registration Act. This followed the report in the winter of 1975 of a marriage solemnised at Conway Hall. He was probably influenced by the 1970 ruling of Lord Denning, that marriages could only be solemnised in places whose principal use is for the "worship of God or

o do O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...

reverence to a deity. Until the ruling the Society had an established tradition of performing secular

funeral A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...

s, memorial ceremonies and namings of children at Conway Hall.

Sunday Concerts

The Sunday Concerts at Conway Hall can be traced back to 1878 when the Peoples Concert Society was formed for the purpose of "increasing the popularity of good music by means of cheap concerts". Many of these concerts were held at the South Place Institute, but in 1887 the Peoples Concert Society had to cut short its season through lack of funds. At that point the South Place Ethical Society undertook the task of organising concerts under the first Honorary Secretary

Alfred J. Clements Alfred Joseph Clements (1858 – 6 January 1938) was the Organiser and secretary of the South Place Sunday Concerts in London for over 50 years, from 1887–1938. During that period Clements arranged over 1,300 concerts featuring 1,500 artists. ...

and Assistant Secretary George Hutchinson who continued to run them under the name 'South Place Sunday Concerts'. The thousandth concert was played on 20 February 1927, and the two-thousandth concert was held at the

Queen Elizabeth Hall The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. The ...

on 9 March 1969. Clements was the Honorary Secretary for over 50 years, from 1887 to 1938. Composer Richard Henry Walthew also had a long association with the Sunday Concerts, from the early 1900s until his death in 1951. The concert series provided a rare platform for the work of women composers during its first few decades. The programming included a still small, but significant number of compositions by women compared to other concerts in London. Women composers featured in the first 1,000 concerts included

Alice Verne-Bredt Alice Barbara Verne-Bredt (née Würm; 1864–1958) was an English piano teacher, violinist and composer. Three of her sisters were also noted pianists: Adela Verne, Mathilde Verne and Mary Wurm, Mary Würm (who returned to Germany and retain ...

, sisters Amy, Annie and Jessie Grimson,

Liza Lehmann Liza Lehmann (11 July 1862 – 19 September 1918) was an English soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.Banfield, Stephen. Grove Music Online' After vocal studies with Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind, and composition studies ...

, Ethel Smyth,

Edith Swepstone Edith Mary Swepstone (4 January 1862 – 5 February 1942) was an English composer and music teacher. She was born in Stepney, London, the daughter of a London solicitor. She studied music at the Guildhall School and later worked as a lecturer at ...

Josephine Troup Emily Josephine Troup (7 July 1853, Woodberry Down, London – 11 April 1913, Saltwood, Kent) was an English composer of songs and works for piano and violin. A scholarship for female students studying orchestral composition was established in ...

and Maude Valérie White. In 1929 the South Place Ethical Society had the Conway Hall purpose built for it, and with the exception of the war years the concert seasons have continued. The concerts have now been organised by the Artistic Director, Simon Callaghan.

Hawkins Catalogue

Frank A. Hawkins served as Treasurer of the Sunday Concerts for 24 years from 1905 until his death in June 1929. He collected nearly 2,000 pieces of sheet music of principally classical and romantic chamber music, which were bequeathed to the Society. The collection has been catalogued by composer and instrument combination and is held on the Conway Hall premises.

Conway Memorial Lecture

The Conway Memorial Lecture was inaugurated by the Society in 1910 to honour Moncure Conway who died in 1907. The decision to create the Lecture was made in 1908 and the first Lecture, ''The Task of Rationalism'', was given by John Russell and is presumed to have been chaired by Edward Clodd. Prominent lecturers have included Bertrand Russell, Lancelot Hogben, Stanton Coit,

Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, in ...

, Edward John Thompson (1942), Jacob Bronowski, Fred Hoyle, Edmund Leach, Margaret Knight, Christopher Hill (1989), Gilbert Murray (1915), Hermann Bondi (1992), Harold Blackham, Laurens van der Post, Alex Comfort (1990), Fenner Brockway, Jonathan Miller, David Starkey, Bernard Crick,

AC Grayling Anthony Clifford Grayling (; born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and spent most of his childhood there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi). In 2011 he founded and became the first Mast ...

and

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

. No Lectures took place in 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, or 1966. The 2014 Conway Memorial Lecture was given by Professor Lisa Jardine on 26 June 2014. It was titled "Things I Never Knew About My Father" and detailed the MI5 files kept on her father, Jacob Bronowski, who sixty years earlier had delivered that year's Conway Memorial Lecture.

Library

The Humanist Library and Archives based at Conway Hall is the UK's foremost resource of its kind in Europe and the only library in the UK solely dedicated to the collection of Humanist material.

Prominent members (past and present)

Annie Besant Annie Besant ( Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights activist, educationist, writer, orator, political party member and philanthropist. Regarded as a champion of human f ...

* Harold Blackham * Fenner Brockway *

C. Delisle Burns Cecil Delisle Burns (26 January 1879 – 22 January 1942) was a leading English atheist and secularist writer and lecturer. Early life Burns was born in Saint Kitts and Nevis, West Indies, where his father was treasurer of St. Christopher-Nevi ...

Herbert Burrows Herbert Burrows (12 June 1845 – 14 December 1922) was a British socialist activist. Early life Born in Redgrave, Suffolk, Burrows' father Amos was a former Chartist leader. Burrows educated himself using Cassell's shilling handbooks, becoming ...

Peter Cadogan Peter Cadogan (26 January 1921 – 18 November 2007) was an England, English writer and political activist. Life On 26 January 1921, Cadogan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. For his education, Cadogan attendeded The King's School, Tynemouth du ...

* Stanton Coit *

Moncure Conway Moncure Daniel Conway (March 17, 1832 – November 15, 1907) was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia an ...

Andrew Copson Andrew James William Copson, FRSA, FCMI, MCIPR (born 19 November 1980) is a Humanist leader and writer. He is the Chief Executive of Humanists UK and the President of Humanists International. He has worked for a number of civil and human rig ...

* George Hutchinson *

Naomi Lewis Naomi Lewis (3 September 1911 – 5 July 2009) was a British poet, essayist, literary critic, anthologist and reteller of stories for children. She is particularly noted for her translations of the Danish children's author, Hans Christian A ...

* Elizabeth Lutgendorff * James O'Malley *

Samuel Kerkham Ratcliffe Samuel Kerkham Ratcliffe (1868–1958) was an English journalist and lecturer. Life Ratcliffe's father owned a King's Lynn flour mill, but moved to work as a railway clerk in Manchester when that business failed. Samuel was sent to be live with an ...

, regular lecturer 1910s–1930s *

J. M. Robertson John Mackinnon Robertson (14 November 1856 – 5 January 1933) was a prolific Scottish journalist, advocate of rationalism and secularism, and Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Member of Parliament for Tyneside (UK Parliament constituency), Tyneside ...

* Sid Rodrigues * Donald Rooum * Athene Seyler * Barbara Smoker * Harry Snell *

Reginald Sorensen Reginald William Sorensen, Baron Sorensen (19 June 1891 – 8 October 1971) was a Unitarian minister and Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for over thirty years between 1929 and 1964. Early life ...

* Dr Harry Stopes-Roe * Nicolas Walter * Elhanan Winchester

Other notable people associated with the Society

* Charles Bradlaugh, founder of the National Secular Society, and his daughter

Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (31 March 1858 – 25 August 1935) was a British peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker, and the daughter of Charles Bradlaugh. Early life and teaching She was born Hypatia Bradlaugh, at 3 Hedger's Terrace, Ha ...

Sophia Dobson Collet Sophia Dobson Collet (1 February 1822 – 27 March 1894) was a 19th-century English feminist freethinker. She wrote under the pen name ''Panthea'' in George Holyoake's ''Reasoner'', wrote for ''The Spectator'' and was a friend of the leading f ...

, who contributed hymns; her brothers Charles, the Society's musical director, and

Collet Dobson Collet Collet Dobson Collet (31 December 1812 – 28 December 1898) was an English radical freethinker, Chartist and campaigner against newspaper taxation. Background and work Collet was born in London on 31 December 1812, the son of John Dobso ...

* Eliza Flower and her sister Sarah Fuller Flower Adams, who contributed hymns * Peter Fribbins, C20 director of Sunday concerts formerly held at Conway Hall *

Philip Harwood Philip Harwood (1809 – 10 December 1887) was an English journalist and Unitarian minister, known as the editor of the '' Saturday Review''. Life He was born in Bristol, and when young started work in a solicitor's office. After serving out his ...

, assistant minister to Fox in 1841 * Gerald Heard, lecturer from 1927 * James Hemming, in whose name the Society administers an annual prize since 2009 * Laurence Housman, C20 pacifist and socialist *

Harriet Law Harriet Teresa Law (née Frost, 5 November 1831 – 19 July 1897) was a leading British freethinker in 19th-century London. The daughter of a small farmer, she was raised as a "Strict Baptist" but later converted to atheism. She became a salarie ...

, C19 freethinker * Harry Price, C20 psychic researcher, born on the site * John Pye-Smith, C19 theologian, tutor to Fox *

Rosemary Rapaport Rosemary Rapaport (29 March 1918 in St Albans – 8 June 2011 in Olney) was a violinist and music teacher who founded the Purcell School for musically gifted children. Early years Nancy Rosemary Peace Rapaport was born into a Rabbinic family. ...

, who launched what would become the Purcell School at the Hall in 1962 * Archibald Robertson, popular lecturer 1945–60 *

Samuel Sharpe Samuel Sharpe, or Sharp (1801 – 23 May 1832), also known as Sam Sharpe, was an enslaved Jamaican who was the leader of the widespread 1831–32 Baptist War slave rebellion (also known as the Christmas Rebellion) in Jamaica. He was proclaim ...

, who joined South Place Chapel in 1821 * Timothy West, C20 actor * Anna Wheeler, 1820s speaker on women's rights

Journal

Front page of December 2012 edition of the Ethical Record

The journal of the society, which records its proceedings, is the ''Ethical Record''. The issue shown for December 2012 was volume 117, number 11. This edition outlines the procedure that took place for the historic change of name the previous month.

Sunday Assembly

Since 2014, Conway Hall has been host to the Sunday Assembly, a popular secular service which takes place on the first and third Sunday of every month.

References

Sources

* *Conway, Moncure Daniel. ''Centenary History of the South Place Society: based on four discourses given in the chapel in May and June, 1893''. London/Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1894 *MacKillop, Ian (1986). ''The British Ethical Societies''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

Conway Hall Ethical SocietyThe Ethical Record OnlineConway Memorial Lectures
with texts * {{Authority control Humanist associations Ethical movement Freethought organizations Organizations established in 1793 Secular humanism Charities based in London Skeptic organisations in the United Kingdom