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South Place Ethical Society began as a radical nonconformist congregation, founded in London in 1787 by an American, Elhanan Winchester (1751-1797). It acquired premises in Bishopsgate in 1793, and in 1824 built a new chapel in South Place, Finsbury. Over the course of the nineteenth century the congregation, guided by a series of charismatic leaders, notably William Johnson Fox MP (1786-1864) and another American, Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907), evolved continuously away from religious observance towards freethought and rationalism. In 1888 it followed a third American, Stanton Coit (1857-1944), into the Ethical Culture movement and adopted its present name.
From the latter half of the nineteenth century the Society’s meetings have been a forum where social and political issues were publicly debated from what became an essentially humanist stance – setting the pattern of activity that still shapes the Society’s public meetings today. Eminent lecturers who have stood on the South Place platform have included Annie Besant, Harold Blackham, Charles Bradlaugh, Fenner Brockway, Robert Browning, Richard Dawkins, GJ Holyoake, TH Huxley, CEM Joad, Jonathan Miller and Bertrand Russell, amongst many others.
South Place also became a centre of musical activity in the nineteenth century with concerts and soirees, and from 1887 a series of Sunday chamber music concerts (established to deliberately flout the Sabbath observance laws) which continues to attract renowned performers. These concerts are the longest running series in Europe.
In 1926 the Society sold South Place Chapel and in 1929 opened Conway Hall, in Red Lion Square, which remains the London base for its own activities and those of its ‘kindred’ secularist and humanist bodies.
The collection contains the archives of South Place Ethical Society under its various names: Parliament Court Chapel (1793-1824), South Place Chapel (1824-1926), Finsbury Unitarian Congregation (c.1802-c.1834), South Place Religious Society (1879-1888), and South Place Ethical Society (1880-date). Records of Conway Hall are also kept, including architectural plans and deeds of the Red Lion Square site. In addition, the Society holds the archives of the National Secular Society and the concert programmes archives of the South Place Sunday Concerts Society.
The Library is open to the public at no cost, but it would be advisable to make an appointment to use archival material. Please contact library@ethicalsoc.org.uk to make an appointment or for any enquiries.
Conway Hall is owned and operated by South Place Ethical Society, an educational charity.
Registered charity number 251396.
