Whiteway Colony is a

residential community A residential community is a community, usually a small town or city, that is composed mostly of residents, as opposed to commercial businesses and/or industrial facilities, all three of which are considered to be the three main types of oc ...

in the Cotswolds in the parish of

Miserden Miserden is a village and civil parish in Stroud District, Gloucestershire, England, 4 miles north east of Stroud. The parish includes Whiteway Colony and the hamlets of Sudgrove and The Camp. In the 2001 census the parish had a populatio ...

near Stroud,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, United Kingdom. The community was founded in 1898 by

Tolstoyan The Tolstoyan movement is a social movement based on the philosophical and religious views of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Tolstoy's views were formed by rigorous study of the ministry of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mo ...

s and today has no spare land available with over sixty homes and 120 colonists. At the beginning, private property was rejected and personal property shared; however, today the colonists' homes are privately owned and sold at market value. As the colony abandoned Tolstoy's philosophy it has been regarded by many, including Mohandas Gandhi who visited in 1909, as a failed Tolstoyan experiment.

History

The colony was set up in 1898 by a Quaker journalist, Samuel Veale Bracher, along with other Tolstoyans. Bracher purchased along with seeds, tools, materials and provisions. The colonists then burnt the property deeds on the end of a pitchfork in a symbolic rejection of the notion of

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

. Aylmer Maude led the founding board of trustees for the colony. According to Maude, the story by Leo Tolstoy that inspired the commune settlers to come together and found their colony was ''" Walk in the Light While There is Light"''. The early settlers had

utopian socialist Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often de ...

ideals, sharing provisions and going

back-to-the-land A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-suffic ...

. The founding colonists numbered about eight but over time the community rose to forty with anyone welcome. However Bracher, his family and other founders left the colony soon afterwards as they became increasingly frustrated with the other residents' idleness. Early life in the colony was spartan with some residents using a barn as shelter - piped water did not arrive until 1949 and

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

not until 1954. The site was originally open land surrounding Whiteway House but is now heavily wooded and home to a collection of mainly wooden buildings - as no one owns the land, mortgages could not be obtained so people had to build their own houses. A court ruling in 1955 established that nobody owns the legal title for the land. A communal hall was built by residents in 1924 to house social activities and a school, and a swimming pool was built in 1969. Whiteway Colony is still in existence today and houses, among others, descendants of its original settlers. Though it no longer has an explicitly anarchist character, today's residents are aware, and proud, of its origins. Traces of them run through the community still, the best examples being the continued use and maintenance of communal facilities (hall, swimming pool and playing field). In addition, the governance of the community is still done by a

general meeting A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presb ...

of its residents. Over the years residents have included immigrant anarchists, conscientious objectors and refugees from the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, as well as co-operative ventures such as Protheroe's Bakery, the Cotswold Co-operative Handicraft guild and the Co-operative Gardening Group. For a period the anarchist newspaper '' Freedom'' was produced here by Thomas Keell.

References

External links

Utopia BritannicaGeorge Walford: Review of ''Whiteway Colony, the social history of a Tolstoyan community'' by Joy Thacker
{{authority control 1898 establishments in the United Kingdom Intentional communities in the United Kingdom Populated places established in 1898 Stroud District Tolstoyan movement Utopian communities Villages in Gloucestershire

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links