 The society owes its survival partly to a long tradition of radical thought in Leicester, going back to the Lollards, Luddites, Dissenters, Chartists and the Cooperative movement, but also to the building of the Leicester Secular Hall in 1881.This was financed by subscription from the members although the Leicester engineer and councillor Josiah Gimson was the main benefactor.It was Gimson who chose the young and innovative architect, W Larner Sugden, and who engaged the sculptor Ambrose Louis Vago for the five busts on the front of the building which depict Robert Owen, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Socrates and, most controversially, Jesus.