The Society's origins trace back to 1787, as a nonconformist congregation, led by Elhanan Winchester, rebelling against the doctrine of eternal damnation.

[2] The congregation, known as the Philadelphians or Universalists, secured their first home at Parliament Court Chapel on the eastern edge of London on 14 February 1793.

[7] In 1929 they built new premises, Conway Hall, at 37 (now numbered 25) Red Lion Square, in nearby Bloomsbury, on the site of a tenement, previously a factory belonging to James Perry, a pen and ink maker.

In 1969 another name change was mooted, to The South Place Humanist Society, a discussion that sociologist Colin Campbell suggests symbolized the death of the ethical movement in England.

This replaced the previous object: "The study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment.

"[9] In 1935 twenty members of the Society signed a document stating that Conway Hall was their regular place of worship.

He was probably influenced by the 1970 ruling of Lord Denning, that marriages could only be solemnised in places whose principal use is for the "worship of God or [to do] reverence to a deity.

[10] Until the ruling the Society had an established tradition of performing secular funerals, memorial ceremonies and namings of children at Conway Hall.

Women composers featured in the first 1,000 concerts included Alice Verne-Bredt, sisters Amy, Annie and Jessie Grimson, Liza Lehmann, Ethel Smyth, Edith Swepstone, Josephine Troup and Maude Valérie White.

[18] Prominent lecturers have included Bertrand Russell, Lancelot Hogben, Stanton Coit, Joseph Needham, Edward John Thompson (1942), Jacob Bronowski, Fred Hoyle, Edmund Leach, Margaret Knight, Christopher Hill (1989), Gilbert Murray (1915), Hermann Bondi (1992), Harold Blackham, Laurens van der Post, Alex Comfort (1990), Fenner Brockway, Jonathan Miller, David Starkey, Bernard Crick, AC Grayling and Roger Penrose.