From the Archives allows us in the Humanist Library and Archives to share some of our wonderful items and our learning with you!
It also includes entries from the former A2R (Alternatives to Religion) blog, a collaborative project between Conway Hall and Bishopsgate Institute which sparked exploration of some of the ways people have tried to make sense of the world and live together ethically without the need for faith in a God or gods. The key themes linking this broad movement are Freethought, Ethics, Humanism, Rationalism and Secularism. Material for these entries came from the British Humanist Association, The National Secular Society and Conway Hall Ethical Society. Posts were written by archivists, Nicky Hilton and Carl Harrison.
Today, Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, has received £88,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting project, Victorian Blogging – The Pamphleteers Who Dared to Dream of a Better World.
Conway Hall is a purpose built building designed by F. Herbert Mansford, a member of the South Place Ethical Society (now called Conway Hall Ethical Society), and built in 1928-29. It contains capacious basements that provide a large amount of space for storage. Over the 80 plus years that the…
Often archive inquiries can lead you down interesting paths and this was the case with an inquiry we received last year. A researcher asked for information regarding Clarence Heinrici Seyler (1840-1906), father to the actress Athene Seyler, while attempting to discover what connection Clarence had with the researcher’s grandfather. Clarence…
Many of the items included in our digitisation project, Architecture and Place, were leases for the property on which Conway Hall was built. They span several centuries and the oldest dates back to 1685. There are many interesting aspects of these documents and two of these are explored below. Peppercorn…
Coming soon. A one hour documentary about Moncure Conway, noted abolitionist, writer and freethinker and the mystery of his missing bronze bust.
It has been some weeks since we launched the Architecture and Place digitisation project in September during the 2016 Open House London Festival. We had over 300 people visit the library over the weekend (well above our usual attendance!) and several took advantage to join the tours given by our CEO,…
“Sunday, September 1, 1929, is a memorable date in the history of the South Place Ethical Society, for on that morning its members met for the first time in Conway Hall. It was a moment of joyful excitement. At last the new home was ready for occupation and here we…
A profound design process eventually makes the patron, the architect, and every occasional visitor in the building a slightly better human being. – Juhani Pallasmaa Welcome to the June update for the Architecture and Place digitisation project underway at the Humanist Library and Archives at Conway Hall. We have included…
Moncure Daniel Conway was a prolific writer, authoring a multitude of books and pamphlets and contributing to a number journals and magazines. In 1860, when Conway was twenty-eight, he founded The Dial, the title of which paid tribute to a Transcendentalist journal of the 1830s and 40s founded by his…
“All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.” – Philip Johnson Conway Hall opened in September 1929 for the members of the South Place Ethical Society. It was designed by F. Herbert Mansford, a member…
