Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener鈥檚 historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all 鈥榤ake鈥 history.
Programme 9
25听November 2008
Vanessa Collingridge and the team explore themes from Britain鈥檚 past thanks to queries raised by listener鈥檚 own historical research.
This week鈥檚 programme from Sheffield.
John Ruskin鈥檚 Commune
Making History listener Rony Robinson lives in Totley on the south west fringes of Sheffield. It was here in the 1870s that the utopian thinker, John Ruskin founded a commune. But, what was the ambition behind it and what happened to it?
Making History consulted听Louise Pullen听from the听 at Sheffield Museums and , Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University
Ruskin's promotion of ideas that helped lead to the Arts and Crafts movement was related to the growth of Christian socialism, an outlook that he helped formulate in his book Unto This Last, in which he attacked laissez faire economics because it failed to acknowledge complexities of human desires and motivations. Ruskin didn鈥檛 believe in competition, he believed that jobs should be paid at a fixed rate, so that the best workmen got employed, instead of those that offered to do the job at a lower price:
He argued that the State should intervene to regulate the economy in the service of such higher values. His ideas were similar to the ideas of Thomas Carlyle, but whereas Carlyle emphasised the need for strong leadership, Ruskin emphasised what later evolved into the concept of "social economy" - networks of charitable, co-operative and other non-governmental organisations. In The Stones of Venice, the chapter "The Nature of Gothic" attacked the division of labour, which Adam Smith advocated in the early books of The Wealth of Nations. Ruskin believed the division of labour to be the main cause of the unhappiness of the poor. Ruskin argued that the rich had never been so generous in the past, but the poor's hatred of the rich was at its greatest point. This was because the poor were now unsatisfied by monotonous work that used them as a tool, instead of a person.
In the 1870鈥檚, not long before Ruskin helpeds to set up the Totley commune, he established the Guild of St George. A charitable trust, according to Chris Coates the Guild of St George was how Ruskin was going to transform the declining state of Britain into his utopian fantasy. "
We will try to take some small piece of English ground, beautiful, peaceful and fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none idle, but the dead."
The Guild was to be a band of men of good will, giving a tithe of their income, and the best of their energies, to acquiring land, and developing it, in accordance with Ruskin's ideas and ideals.
The Guild was set up in Sheffield. Ruskin was attracted to Sheffield because it was home to highly skilled, craft workers who were beginning to be organised in factory conditions鈥 For Ruskin, capitalism in Manchester and London had gone too far...Workers there were enslaved. For him, Sheffield was still 鈥淥ld England鈥. What鈥檚 more, nature and landscape were the key to Ruskin鈥檚 world-view. He had defended Turner and the pre-Raphaelites and had set up home in the Lakes. The Peak District 鈥 next to Sheffield - offered access to nature that Ruskin felt was so important.
So, having set up the guild in Sheffield he was then persuaded to finance a commune in Totley 鈥 really nothing more than what we would think of as allotments. But the idea was to set up a community of working families who didn鈥檛 use machinery who would become self-sufficient.
According to fellow thinker Edward Carpenter, the Totley commune was:
"A small body - about a dozen - of men calling themselves Communists, mostly great talkers, had joined together with the idea of establishing themselves on the land somewhere; and I have understood that it was at their insistence that John Ruskin bought the small farm (of thirteen acres or so) at Totley near Sheffield, which he afterwards made over to St George's Guild ".
The Totley Colony went through various changes starting off as an alloment scheme turning into a land colony with a dozen members and finally being taken over by Ruskin's head gardener from Brantwood as ' Mickley Botanical Gardens' to try and show `the best methods of managing fruit-trees in the climate of northern England鈥!
Growing fruit on the hills outside of Sheffield was never going to work 鈥 and it didn鈥檛. The farm (St George鈥檚 Farm) was sold off in the 1930鈥檚.听
A view of St George鈥檚 Farm, Totley near Sheffield 漏 Sheffield Museums
Useful Links
Sheffield and the Longitude Problem
Making History listener Colin Daly lives on the Scilly Isles. It was there in 1707 that the British Mediterranean fleet was wrecked with the loss of maybe a thousand or more men. Navigators had lost their way.
The problem was trying to establish a vessel鈥檚 longitude. No instrument existed that could measure time (which is the way to establish longitude) accurately.
The British government decided to hold a competition to find such an instrument. The eventual winner was clockmaker John Harrison who, after three attempts using a clock, came up with a watch which was accurate at sea.
Colin Daly wondered whether the move from a clock to a watch was promoted by the development of the stronger, more workable steel in Sheffield called Huntsman鈥檚 steel?
Useful听links:
Totley Tunnel
Dr James Symonds of the University of Sheffield told the human story of the building of Totley Tunnel which linked Sheffield with Manchester and Liverpool and is still today the largest railway tunnel under land in the UK.
Vanessa has presented听science and current affairs programmes for 成人论坛, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for 成人论坛 Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.听
Contact Making History
Send your comments and questions for future programmes to:
Making History
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Vanessa has presented听science and current affairs programmes for 成人论坛, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for 成人论坛 Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.听