Robert Owen Museum. Photograph courtesy of Robert Owen Museum

The Robert Owen Memorial Museum is the only museum specifically devoted to social reformer Robert Owen.

It is located on the ground floor of the Town Council building in the centre of Newtown, Wales. The Grade 2 listed building, of Arts and Crafts design was erected in 1902, in order to provide a Free Library and a meeting room. The Co-operative Union subscribed part of the cost, in memory of Owen.

The bulk of the collection was acquired in the 1920s, some seventy years after his death. Most of the items are from Robert Owen’s time and have a direct association with him.

Much of the collection consists of books and other printed material, most of which is not on display, but can be viewed by prior appointment. The Museum has 55 of Robert Owen’s letters, one of which is on display together with a transcript (his writing is almost illegible). This and other transcripts can be viewed on this web site.

Visiting

The Museum is open throughout the year, except Christmas Week and Bank Holidays and admission is free. See the Museum’s website for more details.

The Museum is easily found, being on the ground floor of the Town Council building in the centre of Newtown, opposite the Town Clock.

There are two car parks within easy walking distance. It is ten minutes walk to the railway station. There is a two-hourly train service from Birmingham.
Other things to see in Newtown include Robert Owen’s Tomb and Statue, and the Textile Museum.

Groups are welcome, preferably with a few days notice. Groups of more than 30 people are advised to split to avoid congestion.

The Curator will gladly arrange to be on hand, or to give a short talk. They will allow researchers access to items not on display by prior appointment.

A Simple Quiz and a more difficult Quiz Sheet are available for school visits. Teachers are welcome to download them and make copies before their visit.

Also see…

• Robert Owen Museum

The Bath Royal and Literary and Scientific Institute

The Bath Royal and Literary and Scientific Institute (BRLSI) is an educational charity founded in 1824.

Rev. Leonard Jenyns – friend and close correspondent of Charles Darwin bequeathed the BRLSI his library of over 2,000 books, correspondence of over 700 letters, scrapbooks and his Herbarium.

Jenyns was orginially supposed to be the naturalist accompanying the H.M.S. Beagle but was not able on account of his clerical duties.  In his stead, he recommended the young Darwin to take his place.

Visiting

The BRSLI is located in Queen Square, Bath and today hosts public talks, exhibitions on science, the arts and current affairs but also maintains an extensive collection of books and fossils.

The BRSLI museum and archives have various sections:  Library, Geology, Natural History and Humanities.

The library includes volumes from Erasmus, Darwin, Lamarck and Linnaeus. Part of the Geology archive is made of the collection of Charles Moore purchased after his death in 1881.

See also…

• Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute

National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery primarily located in London but with various satellite outstations located elsewhere in the UK. It houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter.

Around 1,400 portraits are on display at the Gallery in London throughout the year, a number of  whom are part of Humanist heritage.

• Matthew Arnold
• Clement Attlee
• Charles Darwin
• Sir Richard Doll
• E.M. Forster
• William Godwin
• T.H. Huxley
• John Stuart Mill
• William Morris
• Thomas Paine
• Bertrand Russell
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Algernon Charles Swinburne
• Mary Wollstonecraft

Others are included in the full collection:

• John Baskerville
• Jeremy Bentham
• Charles Bradlaugh
• Joseph Conrad
• George Eliot
• Thomas Hardy
• George Holyoake
• David Hume
• Julian Huxley
• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Robert Owen
• J.M. Robertson
• Herbert Spencer

Visiting

The gallery is open daily 10am – 6pm (9pm Thursday and Friday).There is no charge for admission.

Visitors can buy prints of over 25,000 images online and in person via the Portrait Printer service.

Also see…

• National Portrait Gallery

165 Railton Road. Photograph by sarflondondunc

C.L.R James, the journalist, socialist theorist and writer, lived the final years of his life and died in this building in South London.

Visiting

The building is a private residence but is marked with a Blue Plaque.

Also see…

• Open Plaques
• The Brixton £10 note features James on the reverse

C.E.M. Joad's grave. Photograph by Iain MacFarlaine

C.E.M. Joad, English philosopher and broadcasting personality is buried at St John-at-Hampstead, London.

St John-at-Hampstead is a Church of England church dedicated to St John the Evangelist in Church Row, Hampstead, London. The history of the church goes back to a Charter granted to the Monks of Westminster in 986 AD

Visiting

Tomb Trails are available in the church. The Camden History Society publication Buried in Hampstead, by Christopher Wade, which gives details of a selection of the most well-known, is also available from the church’s online shop.

Also see…

• St John-at-Hampstead
• Wikipedia article on St John-at Hampstead

Chilvers Coton Church. Photograph by Aidan McRae Thomson

Novelist George Eliot was baptised (as Mary Ann Evans) at Chilvers Coton Church, Nuneaton.

Parts of the church date back to the second half of the 13th century. The church was destroyed by bombs in May 1941 and later was rebuilt with the help of German prisoners of war.

The modern traditions of the church and parish are associated with George Eliot, and visitors are shown entries in the registers in connexion with her and her family, also graves of relatives and friends said to be originals of characters in her novels.

Many of the places in Eliot’s novels are based on the village of Chilvers Coton, which she calls Shepperton in Scenes of Clerical Life. Nearby is Arbury Hall, which, in Mr.Gilfil’s Love Story is called Cheverel Hall.

Visting

The village of Chilvers Coton is less than a mile from the centre of Nuneaton and is now absorbed into the town. All Saints is a living church. See website for details.

Opposite the Church is the free school. Built about 1800, it is now a heritage centre.

See also…

• All Saints, Chilvers Coton
• All Saints description and plans on History Online

Alan Turing Building

The Alan Turing Building is named after the mathematician and founder of computer science Alan Turing.

It is located at the University of Manchester, in England, where Turing himself read mathematics. It houses the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, part of the School of Physics and Astronomy.

The building was designed by architects Sheppard Robson, incorporating the ideas and suggestions of many of the School’s staff and students. It was completed in 2007

It has a steel frame, reinforced concrete stair wells and grey zinc exterior cladding. It consists of three four-story ‘fingers. The northern two fingers are joined by an atrium, which is spanned by a series of bridges. The southernmost finger was designed to hold low vibration laboratories, and is joined by a glazed bridge at third floor level to the middle finger.

An ‘over-sailing’ roof structure connects the three fingers acting as a suspension system for a photovoltaic array/solar shading using thin film technology. This photovoltaic array is designed to produce nearly 41 megawatt hours per annum, a saving of 17,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide each year. At the time of completion this was the largest photovoltaic array in North West England, and helped the architects to win an award for ‘Business Commitment to the Environment’.

Visiting

The building is located in the Chorlton-on-Medlock district of Manchester, on Upper Brook Street, and is adjacent to the new University Place.

See also…

• University of Manchester
• Wikipedia article on the Alan Turing Building

Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales

Plas Penrhyn was Bertrand Russell‘s home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.

Russell had a fondness for Wales and would live there for most of his later years.  The original idea to move to Wales was to provide a suitable place for his grandson’s family to live comfortably.  John, Russell’s grandson wanted to be a writer and there was little way to support his wife and three children in this manner.

Plas Penrhyn was near Duedraeth castle where Russell had stayed before and was near the sea (Penrhyndeudraeth means peninsula with two beaches in Welsh).  Percy Bysshe Shelley also had maintained a cottage in the local area.

It was from this regency manor that Russell would telgram both Khrushchev and Kennedy during the Cuban Missle Crisis, write his biography and live out his later years. In one passage of his biography he describes his first impressions of the house:

We stopped in North Wales where our friends Rupert and Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams had found a house, Plas Penrhyn, that they thought would make a pleasant holiday house for us and the children. It was small and unpretentious, but had a delightful garden and little orchard and a number of fine beech trees. Above all, it had a most lovely view, south to the sea, west to Portmadoc and the Caernarvon hills, and north up the valley of the Glasslyn to Snowdon. I was captivated by it, and particularly pleased that across the valley could be seen the house where Shelley lived. The owner of Plas Penrhyn agreed to let it to us largely, I think, because he, too, is a lover of Shelley and was much taken by my desire to write an essay on ‘Shelley the Tough’ (as opposed to the ‘ineffectual angel’). Later, I met a man at Tan-y-Ralt, Shelley’s house, who said he had been a cannibal…

Russell died at Plas Penrhyn on February 2, 1970, He was cremated at Colwyn Bay and his ashes scattered over the Welsh hills.

Visiting

Plas Penrhyn is now a private residence.

See also…

• BBC Wales biography of Russell

Conway Hall. By George Jelliss

Conway Hall at at 37 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, is the home of the South Place Ethical Society and today is a landmark of London’s independent intellectual, political and cultural life.

The Hall was built in 1926 on the site of a tenement, previously a factory. The Ethical Society moved here after 100 years at South Place in the City of London, to have a wider range of influence and greater scope for development.

According to an appeal pamphlet published in 1927, the new building would

help to enable the South Place Ethical Society to continue and increase its work and activities for a fuller and more vigorous moral, intellectual, and religious life…It is the aim of the Trustees and Committee to place at the disposal of the members and visitors from the Provinces, British Dominions, United States of America and other countries, Headquarters in the heart of London, where men and women of advanced thought could meet and enjoy the amenities of social discourse, with facilities for writing, rest and refreshment.

Plans were prepared for “a dignified and commodious building, which it is hoped may become the Headquarters of the Ethical Movement in the British Isles, and also provide an open platform for speakers from any part of the world.”

The Conway Hall was opened in 1929 and was named after Moncure Conway who led the Society from 1864–1885 and 1892–1897, during which time it moved further away from Unitarianism.

Conway Hall today

Conway Hall hosts a wide variety of lectures, meetings, classes, performances and community events.

The Conway Hall Library holds the Ethical Society’s collection which is largest and most comprehensive Humanist Research resource of its kind in the United Kingdom.

Visiting

Holburn is the nearest underground station to Conway Hall. The Hall is host to a number of public classes and lectures on a wide variety of topics and issues relating to ethics, rationalism, secularism and current affairs.

Also see…

• Conway Hall

The catacombs at Warstone Lane Cemetery

This grade-two-listed cemetery is where atheist printer John Baskerville is buried.

Warstone Lane Cemetery was opened in 1848 by the Birmingham Church of England Cemetery Company and acquired by the Birmingham City Council under a compulsory purchase order in 1951.

Baskerville left instructions in his will that he was to be buried in a lead coffin in a conical vault which he had prepared, in his own garden. After the house was sold in 1788 the vault was removed, but the coffin remained until 1821. The open coffin was put on display, for 6d a head, until in 1829 people start to fall ill!

The coffin was reburied secretly among others in a church vault and only rediscovered in 1892. When the church was demolished in 1898 he was reburied in the catacombs at Warstone Lane.

Previously the catacombs’s unpleasant smells had led to the Birmingham Cemetery Act (1846?) which required that non-interred coffins should be sealed with lead or pitch.

The cemetery chapel of St Michael at the cemetery was demolished in 1954 but the grade II listed  blue brick cemetery lodge survived today.

Visiting

The cemetery is open to visitors (see website for opening times). The number 101 bus goes there from Birmingham City Centre; Jewellery Quarter rail & Metro station.

See also…

• Warston Lane Cemetery official site
• Wikipedia article on the cemetery