Manea Colony - Archaeology of Utopia

The Cambridge Archaeological Unit has a long-standing interest in this landscape. This particular film is about the Maney Colony, otherwise known as the Hodsonian Community after William Hodson, its founder, but more about him later. Maney Colony was one of a number of 19th century social experiments, what you might refer to as utopias. Utopia really is a place of perfection. It was a term coined by Thomas More in the 16th century. It has two meanings, good place and no place. In other words, it's a paradox, and it's no coincidence that our fieldwork at Maney Colony in the summer of 2016 coincided with the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's publication of that name. There are a number of utopian thinkers in the early part of the 19th century, but there's one in particular whose influence is really important in this story. His name was Robert Owen. Robert Owen was a successful businessman. Around 1800, he inherited a vast cotton business in New Lanark in Scotland at the tender age of only 29, but he was also a visionary, a free thinker. One of his books, A New View of Society, really emphasised this theme. In this, he established ideas of productivity in the workplace, the emancipation of women's rights, educational reform, the promise of the equal distribution of labour and wealth. One of the real essences of this new agenda was the design of what he referred to as model villages, the idea being that the structure of the village would form the structure of a new form of society. Of course, all of this is growing out of the industrialisation of the early 19th century. Rich, poor growing ever apart, the separation becoming ever more apparent, the poor laws, the tithe system. It's in this context that the Maney colony comes into existence in 1838. William Hodgson, its founder, a resident at Upwell, about six miles from Maney, was a local character. He went by the name of Sailor. He'd been at sea for six years, but he returns to Upwell to become a landowner, probably through inheritance. His energy is very much devoted to public life. He serves four terms on the Wisbech Board of Governors. He writes various articles about those poor laws, tithe system, the priesthood, all of which with a critical eye. In 1838, during Robert Owen's tour of eastern England, where he's giving various lectures, he comes into contact with William Hodgson. There are various archives of letters between these two men, the most important probably in Manchester, the National Co-operative Archives. There's a letter from August 1838, written by Hodgson to Owen, in which he claims that he's bought 150 acres of land specifically for building this new community. One of the attractions of this land is a large quarry from which clay can be extracted to make bricks, from which this new society can be built piece by piece. Attached to this letter is a pamphlet written by Hodgson entitled, Each for All, to the Working Classes, the Real Producers of Wealth. In this pamphlet, he proposes the foundation of a community in which none will spoil their hat in bowing to superiors, all will be equal. There are many accomplishments, as we'll see, over the 25 months that this community was in existence. To the degree, actually, that it was almost viable, almost sustainable. But by 1841, the community is dissolved. Why was this? Why is it such a rapid demise? One of the things that we don't really know is even the structure and layout of this community. What we'd really like to question is, does Utopia hold any legacy in this landscape? There aren't very many archival resources, unfortunately. But we do have some maps that we can refer to. The earliest maps, almost contemporary with the community, lack detail. So there's very few conclusions that we can draw from these. But by the 1880s, the Ordnance Survey maps do have the colony firmly marked on those plans. But these maps post-date the colony by some 40, 50 years. And as we can see through the progression of those maps through time, buildings come and buildings go. Some are built, some are demolished. Working out which are contemporary with the original community is a real challenge, maybe something that only archaeology can really answer. However, there are other sources that we can refer to, and these offer clues that are intriguing. We're in the Cambridgeshire Collection in the centre of Cambridge, and this is the working bee, otherwise titled the Herald of the Hodsonian Community. And this magazine was produced in 46 issues, one to 46, weekly, from 1839, almost a year after the formation of the community, and much in response to criticisms published in other magazines about the community. So there's a possible element of bias, but nevertheless, it opens with a quote from Robert Owen, the father of socialism, of course. And on the first few pages, look at that, an illustration of what the community potentially may have looked like, or at least what they wanted it to look like at some point in the future. In September 1839, further progress. We're happy to inform our friends throughout the country that we are progressing gloriously. We're now completing one side of our first square, consisting of 24 houses, which will be finished and furnished in a manner equal to many of the most wealthy capitalists. Address to the socialists. Well, we start to get a real sense here that Hodson has invested his life into this entire project. He's a little concerned about that, to a certain degree. For example, in consequence of the supply of money coming from me, but knowingly well that if the society broke up, I must become a bankrupt. The end of the society deems the end of his life, as he knows it. I had engaged too deeply in the affair to be indifferent, having a wife and four little children. And we do know that several of Hodson's children died on the site and are probably buried there. And then the sort of people that he is really hoping that will be a part of this project. It's really quite beautiful. It was working men I wanted, not mere professors. Which here in Cambridge perhaps would have been rather a challenge to find. Well, we've mentioned the quarry and the importance of that as a resource for brick making. But added to that, there's the location of the river directly next to the colony itself. This was the superhighway of the Fens, a transport link to other communities, as well as a commercial trade route from which the colonists could potentially sell their bricks to other communities outside of their own. And also the land, the land itself being of high nourished soil, something that Hodson was very quick to refer to as a productive soil, a place that he could make the best soil in Europe and the most productive of land resources for his community. Our fieldwork was conducted over three weeks in September 2016, in conjunction with local volunteers, enacting, if you like, a community archaeology of community. We carried out geophysical surveys, field walking, collecting artefacts from the plough soil, as well as small scale excavation. We collected over 6,000 artefacts, almost half of that being pottery, dating from the 19th century and probably also incorporating that period of occupation by the colonists from 1838 to 1841. The distributions of those finds, glass, pottery, metalwork, tobacco pipes and a whole array of other items suggest a core of activity right at the centre of the site, and it's that core that we targeted with a number of trenches. We identified four phases of activity. Phase two is the colony phase, 1838 to 1841. The main representative sample of this particular phase is bricks. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but in two of the trenches we did find the remnants of structures. These were cut into the natural geology, the natural clay, so they're almost underground, but they have walling that remains, which is about four bricks high, and they're about two metres square. Now these would probably have been inside the main buildings, maybe in the kitchens, and we see similar sorts of structures in other buildings that are usually referred to as cooling rooms, maybe for dairies, keeping the milk cool in those warm summer months. What's most interesting about these buildings perhaps are the bricks themselves. Imprinted on about 50% of them was the word drain. Now this is important because this fits these bricks into a very specific timeline, 1826 to 1850, directly in line with that colony phase. After the American War of Independence in the 1780s, the country was effectively bankrupt. In order to bring greater proceeds into the country's coffers there was a new tax. This was a tax on building materials, but by the 1820s it was recognised that there needed to be some leverage, especially for projects relating to drainage, most important in the fence. So from 1826, any brick with the word drain imprinted upon it would be exempt from that tax, and this lasted until 1850 when all tax on building materials was abolished. So we can very specifically align these bricks within a timeline of 1826 to 1850. It fits really nicely into that first colony settlement. But consider the circumstances of where these bricks were found. A kitchen, a domestic building, this has nothing to do with drainage. So one wonders, is this a form of tax evasion from our early colonists? If we look at our geophysics we can see that there are these red blobs, these hot spots, that are probably more of these sunken floored brick structures. There's five or six of them all in a line, again probably inside of buildings, and therefore inside of a terrace of structures, probably cottages, the first cottages that were lived in by those colonists. But what we haven't got is the rest of those buildings, the rest of those cottages and the structures. So whilst we may have one side of one of these quadrangles, we haven't really as of yet been able to see the rest. So why don't we have these buildings? Well certainly some of the materials have been scavenged. There's no doubt that they've been reused in later building projects. But it also seems that actually the foundations of these structures were relatively flimsy. They were built quickly. Utopia, maybe not built in a day, but it was certainly built rapidly. And this was the foundation, this was the foundation for a longer term plan. We're in the Whistbeach and Fenland Museum and it's one of the most beautiful and oldest museums in the country. But importantly here they've got a really nice series of documents that relate to the Maney Colony, specifically its closure. This is a really important document. It starts in 1839, goes all the way through to 1842. It's added to at different stages. And really it is the legal document that first gives the breath of life to the community and then ultimately it is the death certificate as well. It outlines the rules of the community that were something that people would have to effectively sign their name towards. There's 38 different rules. But then towards the end, the trustees that first signed their names to make that community a legally binding and legitimate cooperative, finally again sign their names towards its end, the dissolving of that community. Here we've got W Cutting, William Cutting. We know a little bit about his life. He ends up in America very soon after this moment. Thomas Dottie, Hodges, Wasson. And then it starts to just give a rundown as to what monies are owed to each of these individuals. Seven pounds, 11 shillings, two pence. And really this is Hodson tying up his debts and seeing this through to the very end. And in some ways it's, well, the bells are tolling the end of the document and the end of the community and it's really quite a moving document. Really good to see. Well, it seems from our investigations that there is actually relatively little that has survived from that colony period, in spite of there being rather a lot of post-colony archaeology and perhaps also pre-colony. But that's not to say that there isn't more out there. Of course, what has survived are the remnants of structures that illustrates that there was once a large and thriving community. There's also, of course, the quarry pit, the largest of the features from that first era of occupation. And, of course, the river, the ooze washes themselves that form that transport link, but also that first attraction for that community in the first place. And there is that legacy, that legacy of the broader Owenite movement that has transcended into effectively the labour movement, the cooperative enterprise that we can see today. But there's also that local memory of Hodson and his followers, those unusual colonists, wandering around the landscape on a Sunday, pleasure boating along the river and just being radical in their own way. And it's those people that we would like to remember.