Purleigh Brotherhood had self-sufficient colony near Maldon

You know the sort of thing – unless you have completed a course of academic studies you are not worth talking to.

When it comes to history, I have always said nobody owns it - it’s ours (yours and mine) regardless of qualifications and any of us can read about it, research it, talk about it and write about it - PhD or not.

That said, although I have had some awkward experiences with doctors and professors of history, I have also had great support from others – above all of them, dear old ‘Vic’.

Essex County Archivist from 1978 to 1991, Victor Gray MBE, MA, FSA, sadly died in 2021, but I remember him as a modest, approachable man, with a great sense of humour.

I first met him in the early Eighties when we both worked on an exhibition about the history of Beeleigh Abbey.

He ensured that our contribution was seen as 'equal' and in that way he was an inspirational historian who encouraged everyone (including me).

He was the epitome of modern-day ‘inclusiveness’ and that came through in one of his chosen subjects.

In 2019 he wrote A New World in Essex: The Rise and Fall of the Purleigh Brotherhood Colony, 1896-1903 (Campanula Books).

It is a curious subject for someone who went on to be headhunted by one of the wealthiest dynasties in the world, the Rothschilds, to manage their vast UK archive - for the book is all about a late-Victorian, utopian community, that settled in a rural part of our district.

A New World In Essex by Victor Gray (Image: Stephen Nunn)

Although known as the ‘Purleigh Brotherhood’, their base was actually in the hamlet of Cock Clarks.

In 1896, a group of Christian socialists, inspired by the writings of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) of War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1887) fame, purchased a ten-acre plot from my namesake, Joshua Nunn, of Hill House, Purleigh.

Land prices were depressed at the time and the sale of what was part of Avenals Farm, was agreed at £20 an acre. In 1899, they built six-roomed Colony House out of bricks that they had fired themselves from the land.

As the community grew, they rented other cottages and purchased more land.

The emphasis was on self-sufficiency through community living and it became so popular that the members even established their own printing press at nearby Hill Farm, turning out affordable translations of Tolstoy’s works and their own periodical The New Order.

Colony House at Cock Clarks as it is today (Image: Stephen Nunn)

Vic drew on surviving copies of that anarchist magazine to describe the evolution (and eventual failure) of the colony.

The make-up of its membership was, to say the least, diverse and included, among others, the ‘Doukhobors’, a group of Russian folk-Protestants, who were persecuted for their beliefs and forced to flee their homelands.

Can you imagine how all of this was received by the locals in what was a class-structured, landowner-led area of the country, that relied on organised agriculture for its economy?

The Brotherhood even dressed differently - particularly the ‘Doukhobors’. Their activities attracted interest from the press who then (as now) liked a bit of a quirky story.

However, when a reporter visited them in 1897, he was surprised to find a “happy-go-lucky” group of people. They were just finishing their “frugal midday meal of vegetarian diet” and “their soiled faces, hands and clothing did not hide their intellectual culture”.

Their hard work paid off and for the first two years, at least, the settlement was a success.

However, their progress depended on decision-making by consent – not easy when a disparate group (described by one source as a “fissile mix”) have to work so closely together.

The group printed works by Leo Tolstoy (drawing by Ann Puttock) (Image: Ann Puttock)

Despite the insistence on equality, there were some dominant characters (leaders, you might say) and as they left the Brotherhood for other ventures, the colony began to break down.

As Vic concluded, “it is impossible to identify a single, overriding cause of the collapse”, but with the ‘Doukhobors’ moving to Canada and others to a sister colony in Gloucestershire, the experiment that started with such promise, floundered and died.

When the census was taken in 1901 there were just a few stragglers left and by 1903 it was all over.

Today, apart from the legacy of Colony House on Hackmans Lane, the Purleigh Brotherhood is the stuff of history. But how fortunate we are that Vic documented it in such a fascinating, easily accessible book for all of us to read – professionals and amateurs alike.