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

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

Burlington House was originally a private mansion in the Palladian style, and was expanded in the mid 19th century after being purchased by the British government. It was at this time in the 1870s when these statues were added.

The main building is at the northern end of the courtyard and houses the Royal Academy, while five learned societies occupy the two wings on the east and west sides of the courtyard and the Piccadilly wing at the southern end.

These societies, collectively known as the Courtyard Societies are:

• the Geological Society of London
• Linnean Society of London
• Royal Astronomical Society
• Society of Antiquaries of London
• Royal Society of Chemistry

Burlington House is most familiar to the general public as the venue for the Royal Academy’s high profile temporary art exhibitions.

The rear of the building is now home to a commercial art gallery Haunch of Venison.

Visting

The statues are on the south side of Burlington Gardens. The closes underground station is Picadilly Circus.

Also see…

• Royal Academy article on Burlington House
• Wikipedia article on Burlington House

Gallery 22

Its gallery number 22 contains busts of a number of ancient Greek thinkers and writers who are part of the humanist tradition.

Socrates (469-399 BCE), whose freethinking scepticism brought him into conflict with authoritarian political forces of the day and led to his execution and whose ethics were based on reason and experience, not religion

Epicurus (341-270 BCE), who believed that human life had come about by natural processes, that happiness depended on moderation and the respect and friendship of others, and that there was no afterlife

Chrysippus the Stoic (280-207 BCE), who believed reason, sympathy and knowledge were the tools human beings should use when addressing ethical problems.

Gallery 15

Gallery number 15 contains a very famous bust of the Athenian democratic statesman Pericles, whose funeral oration as recorded by the historian Thucydides presents a model of the open society which has inspired humanist political philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Karl Popper.

Gallery 36

In gallery 36 is a Portrait plaque of Dr Joseph Priestley – a nonconformist minister and scientist who aroused controversy with his various publications on religious matters, and was condemned as an atheist.

Visiting

The Museum is free to all visitors and is open daily 10.00am–5.30pm.

Also see…

• British Museum

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Jeremy Bentham plaque. By Christian Liits

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham lived for forty years in a house on the site now occupied by the Ministry of Justice (102 Petty France).

The house, in what came to be called Queen’s Square Place, was bequeathed to Bentham by his father Jeremiah on his death in 1792. Jeremiah had first rented the house in May 1763 while Jeremy was a fifteen year old undergraduate at Oxford. Jeremy’s first comment on the family’s move from Crutched Friars in the City, comes in a letter written from Queen’s College Oxford to his father on 24 March 1763:

I received the favour of yours on Friday, and am very glad to find by it, that you are likely to suit yourself with a house so much to your liking; for my part, from the description you give me, and the idea I have of it, I really think it must be very pleasant and convenient; I should be glad to hear that you have taken it, of which I can only draw a probable conclusion from your data, as you have not expressly mentioned it.

The house proved convenient for Jeremiah bought it at the end of 1764. Bentham’s house could be entered through a dark passageway from Queen Anne’s Gate near the site of the plaque, or through a gate into his garden from Bird Cage Walk to the left of the Barracks.

Councillor Catherine Longworth, Lord Mayor of Westminster and Professor Malcolm Grant, the President and Provost of University College London, unveiled a commemorative plaque to Jeremy Bentham on the gateway of the current building.

Visiting

The current building is a government office and not open to the public.

See also…

• Reporting of unveiling of plaque

Would you like to write it for us?

Humanist Heritage relies on contributions from users so if you’re interested in helping us please drop us a line.

Sorry, this article hasn’t been written yet.

Would you like to write it for us?

Humanist Heritage relies on contributions from users so if you’re interested in helping us please drop us a line.