A Spiritualist pioneer- Arthur Findlay and The Arthur Findlay College

There are 2 organisations that have been at the fore of the Spiritualist movement-The Arthur Findlay College in the UK and the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain.

Both share a common theme with the Enmore Spiritualist Church. All were visited by one of the most reverred Spiritualists, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the writer of the Sherlock Holmes books and a man who during his lifetime faced organised opposition to his beliefs.

Stanstead Hall in  Bishop's Stortford, Stansted Mountfitchet and about 2 hours from London is a beautiful building and the home of the The Arthur Findlay College. It was left by Arthur Findlay for the advancement of Spiritualist beliefs and holds regular courses during the year. Students can live in and take advantage of it's pleasant gardens, libraries and the calming atmosphere.

Arthur Findlay MBE JP (1883- July 1964) was a writer, accountant, stockbroker and Essex magistrate, as well as a significant figure in the history of the religion of Spiritualism, being a partial founder of the newspaper Psychic News and also a founder of the International Institute for Psychical Research. In his will he left his home, Stansted Hall, to the Spiritualists' National Union.

Aged 17, he had become interested in the field of comparative religion, something of which his staunchly Christian parents disapproved of - they even burned many of his books on the subject.

In 1913 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his organisation work for the Red Cross.
In 1919, he began to believe in the practice of spiritualism, after an encounter with a medium known as John Sloan. With his interest in various world religions, Findley questioned the spirits that Sloan conjured, and came to the conclusions that most gods and other deities worshipped in religions were in fact simply spirits of deceased humans. His interest increased, and in 1920 he founded the Glasgow Society for Psychical Research.


In 1923 he took part in the Church of Scotland's enquiry into psychic phenomenon. In the same year, he retired from his profession and purchased Stansted Hall in Stansted, England, a manor house built in 1871.
In 1932, he became a founding member of Psychic News, a Spiritualist newspaper, along with Hannen Swaffer and Maurice Barbanell.

He also helped to found the International Institute for Psychical Research, which he became the chairman of. He also became an honorary member of both the American Foundation for Psychical Research, Edinburgh Psychic College and the honourary president of both the Institute of Psychic Writers and Artists and the Spiritualists' National Union.

In his will, he left Stansted Hall to the Spiritualists' National Union as a college for the advancement of Psychic Science, which was named the Arthur Findlay College of Psychic Science after him.