Thirteen Acres: John Ruskin and the Totley Communists

Each morning when I wake up, smack bang in the middle of the view from our Totley window is St. George’s Farm, that site of utopian dreams. John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic and social reformer bought it in 1877 in order for Sheffield working men and their families to work the land collectively and to make high quality boots and shoes. No machines. No booze. We’ve often joked that we live on a wonky socialist ley line – St. George’s Farm, then Holmesfield Church where Joseph Sharp - harpist, socialist and one of the original group renting the farm from Ruskin - is buried, and down the other side of the ridge in the Cordwell Valley, the house of Edward Carpenter - gay writer, simple lifer and socialist - who knew the farm and its occupants. Our everyday default dog walk takes us past the Shepley Spitfire and along White Lane, just below the farm. 

St, George’s Farm, 1940s

But I first went to take a look at St. George’s Farm as a young woman, over thirty years ago and fresh from my own spot of utopian, argumentative, commune dwelling. I was, appropriately enough, on my bike. I’d learned about it from an evening class taught by socialist-feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham. She told us how, like most of us attending the class in the radical-vegetarian-lets-all-wear-dungarees 1970’s, socialists a hundred years before had ridden bikes, grown their own food, worn smocks, and tried (and sometimes failed) to live collectively. 

George Pearson and sons

Two years ago, I researched and wrote a two-mile walking performance about St. George’s Farm and its legacy for the greening of our city – Boots, Fresh Air and Ginger Beer. It was a sort of promenading flash-mob in which characters from the story emerged from the audience in the very landscape around the farm. Though I sort of knew the story, none of the accounts of what had happened there quite made sense, and the whole research process for the play was appropriately rather like unravelling a huge ball of garden twine. I roped in Dorothy Prosser from the Totley History Group to help with research on the men and their families – the self styled “Totley Communists”. Another member of the History Group, Kerry Clark, helped with deciphering some early Victorian Pitman’s shorthand. After the performance, the Guild of St. George, the charitable trust that was set up by Ruskin to carry out some of his ideals and which still exists, asked me to capture all my research and to write it up. My new book, Thirteen Acres: John Ruskin and the Totley Communists, is the result.

Edward Carpenter on right, with friend and razor grinder George Hukin. Carpenter lived for a while on Queen Victoria Road. Hukin later lived next door to the young Harry Brearley (inventor of stainless steel) on Mickley Lane.

             Lucy Pearson, George’s daughter. She was in the socialist Clarion Cyclists Club

I’ve tried to make the whole thing engaging, not only of interest to academics but also to a wider audience who enjoy a good story of folk who saw the world differently and wanted to change it. There’s still some of those about.

The book is available from The Guild of St. George Publications, 10 St Oswald’s Road, York YO1 4PF or via their on-line shop at www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk

Sally Goldsmith

August 2017