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Conway Hall Ethical Society

Charities based in LondonEthical movementFreethought organizationsHumanist associationsOrganizations established in 1793
Secular humanismSkeptic organisations in the United KingdomSource attributionUse British English from March 2014
Conway hall 2019
Conway hall 2019

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 organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kingdom. It now advocates secular humanism and is a member of Humanists International.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Conway Hall Ethical Society (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Conway Hall Ethical Society
Red Lion Square, London Holborn (London Borough of Camden)

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N 51.519722 ° E -0.118333 °
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Conway Hall

Red Lion Square 25
WC1R 4RL London, Holborn (London Borough of Camden)
England, United Kingdom
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conwayhall.org.uk

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Conway hall 2019
Conway hall 2019
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Red Lion Square
Red Lion Square

Red Lion Square is a small square in Holborn, London. The square was laid out in 1684 by Nicholas Barbon, taking its name from the Red Lion Inn. According to some sources the bodies of three regicides—Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton—were placed in a pit on the site of the Square.By 1720 it was a fashionable part of London: the eminent judge Sir Bernard Hale was a resident of Red Lion Square. The square was ‘beautified’ pursuant to a 1737 Act of Parliament. In the 1860s, on the other hand, it had clearly become decidedly unfashionable: the writer Anthony Trollope in his novel Orley Farm (1862) humorously reassures his readers that one of his characters is perfectly respectable, despite living in Red Lion Square. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association's landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson laid it out as a public garden in 1885, and, in 1894, the trustees of the square passed the freehold to the MPGA, which, in turn, passed it to the London County Council free of cost.A notable resident of the square was John Harrison, the world renowned inventor of the marine chronometer, who lived at number 12, where he died in 1776. There is a blue plaque dedicated to him on the corner of Summit House. At No. 3. in 1826 Charles Lamb was painted by Henry Mayer. At No 17. Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived in 1851. Also at No 17. William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Richard Watson Dixon lived from 1856 to 1859. No. 8 was a decorators shop ran by Morris, Burne Jones and others from 1860 to 1865. No. 31 was the home of F.D. MauriceAt 35 St. George's Mansions in the square, Irene and Hilda Dallas, suffragette sisters had lived (and had evaded the 1911 Census) in protest that women did not have a right to vote.The centre-piece of the garden today is a statue by Ian Walters of Fenner Brockway, which was installed in 1986. There is also a memorial bust of Bertrand Russell. Conway Hall—which is the home of the South Place Ethical Society and the National Secular Society—opens on to the Square. On 15 June 1974 a meeting by the National Front in Conway Hall resulted in a protest by anti-fascist groups. The following disorder and police action left one student—Kevin Gately from the University of Warwick—dead.The square today is home to the Royal College of Anaesthetists. Lamb's Conduit Street is nearby and the nearest underground station is Holborn. The first headquarters of Marshall, Faulkner & Co, which was founded by William Morris, was at 8 Red Lion Square. At No 4 Parton Street, a cul-de-sac off the square subsequently obliterated by St Martin’s College of Art in Southampton Row (later Central Saint Martins), a group of young writers, including Dylan Thomas, George Barker, David Gascoyne and John Pudney gathered about the bookshop run by David Archer.

Novelty Automation
Novelty Automation

Novelty Automation is an amusement arcade of satirical game machines in Holborn, London. The machines are constructed by cartoonist and engineer Tim Hunkin, often by hand, and the arcade includes an expressive photo booth, an interactive divorce and a "small hadron collider". The arcade also includes three of Hunkin's machines which were once on display at Cabaret Mechanical Theatre's Covent Garden exhibition: The Frisker, Test Your Nerve and The Chiropodist.Opened in February 2015, Novelty Automation is Tim Hunkin's second arcade, the first being The Under The Pier Show in Southwold where he first decided to ‘re-invent’ amusement arcadesand allowed a hobby to take over his lifeNovelty Automation is Hunkin's paean to the local history of popular entertainment in London, a place he has said he has an almost "missionary zeal" for. Hunkin has professed his sadness for the commercialisation of the city and he believes people appreciate Novelty Automation's political incorrectness and it being an antidote to the corporatisation of fun.Discussing the venue's Housing Ladder slot machine, in which a player walks the treadmill steps of a physical ladder in order to move an automated figure towards a model house, Hunkin has said "I don’t think political art has an enormous effect, but in the short term it is satisfying to reinforce people’s disrespect of the villains." Hunkin spoke more on the subject at a talk he gave at Novelty Automation in November 2016 arguing that reinforcing people's disrespect for its targets is the primary purpose of satirical art, "but in the long term it can also contribute to change: there comes a point where the villains can no longer laugh it off". Hunkin's machines at Novelty Automation have a technological style that blends old school electromagnetic approaches to movement - motors, pulleys and gears – with some aspects of more modern technology, used for video, sound and programming. Hunkin believes he is exploring a "limitless territory" and that modern world is too focused on “amazing software and simple physical interfaces… very few machines are the other way round".