Power & Politics

A political history of Britain in the places where it happened: parliament and palace, courts and counting houses, and the streets where people pushed back.

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Conway Hall

The hall of the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and a century of the arguments of the left.

Ideas & memory

Photo by StewE17, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Performance venues.

The society traces itself to a congregation of 1787 that rebelled against the doctrine of eternal damnation, moved to South Place in Finsbury, and over the following century quietly stopped believing in God while carrying on meeting - about ethics instead. It is now Conway Hall Ethical Society, named after Moncure Conway, the American abolitionist minister who led it in the 1860s and 1870s. The hall was built for it and opened in September 1929, with 'To thine own self be true', from Hamlet, cut above the platform. Nearly every radical, pacifist, secular and trade-union campaign of the twentieth century has hired the main hall; George Orwell was at a press-freedom meeting here in 1945. The library upstairs keeps the papers.

Where
25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL
Nearest station
Holborn · 4 min walk

Coming up

The office is open weekdays 09:00-17:00; the hall itself opens for its concerts, lectures and hires.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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