Evacustes Phipson & the origins of Letchworth Garden City

The Cock Inn, St Albans

The previous post, on The Peaceful Path has remined me of Edward Arthur Phipson who is already recorded on my web site as a water colour artist. He went round the country painting pictures of historically interesting buildings in the early 20th century. However he was also a radical socialist who knew Ebenezer Howard and was clearly interested in the foundation of Letchworth Garden City. A few years ago I started to investigate his early history and the following is a brief summary of his very interesting radical past.

E A (Evacustes) Phipson came from a well-to-do Birmingham factory-owning family, and may have been articled to an architect. He became a socialist and had contacts with William Morris. He failed in an attempt to found a socialist colony south of Sydney, Australia, in about 1884. He then became the London agent for Topolobampo, an attempt to establish a socialist community in Mexico. In 1893 he was treasurer of the Nationalization of Labour Society at the time when Ebenezer Howard was one of a committee set up to consider the formation of a co-operative land colony in England. Later the same year he was talking about the possibility of setting up a colony at Champions Farm, Woodham Ferris, near Chelmsford, but this apparently came to nothing. He clearly found Howard's plans for Letchworth not socialist enough, but in 1903 he corresponded with Albert Kinsey Owen and urged the American to offer his services in the building of Letchworth and the following year wrote a letter about the Australian plans for a Federal Capital saying "Having studied for many years the subject of ideal cities, and taken part in the founding of several, from Topolobarapo, on the Gulf of California, to the Garden City now building 60 miles from London ..."  In 1907 he wrote in the February Edition of Garden City comparing Letchworth with the English Fairhope. However it was said that he has spent most of his inheritance on the Australian project and his paintings may well have been to provide additional income, starting in 1894.

Several years ago I started to research this aspect of Evacustes' life and prepare some draft notes with a view to posting much fuller details on my web site, but had a long list of research still to do - particularly in connection with Letchworth Garden City. It is now clear I am unlikely to have time to finish this research and will try and put a tidied up version of my draft notes online sometime next year.

In the meantime if anyone has any information on his links with Letchworth (and perhaps later Welwyn Garden City) I would love to hear from you. In addition I suspect there are a number of his Hertfordshire paintings in private hands and I would love to be able to include details in my draft biography. As he concentrated on painting historic buildings it would be of particular interest if he ever did a painting of Letchworth Garden City.

I've been rather busy - but I haven't forgotten about genealogy

In Bunhill Fields

Joseph Phipson's grave

Over the last few weeks various matters have meant that I have not been able to spend much time on the newsletter or the web site - but when I have a moment I haven't forgotten about local history research.

On Sunday I attended the reunion of the Leo Computer Society in London and caught an early train so I could also have a look at Bunhill Fields - which is a very interesting cemetery in central London. It was used as a burial ground between 1665 and 1854 and it is estimated about 123,000 people were buried there - including many well known people such as John Bunyon, Daniel Defoe and William Blake.

One of the reason for my visit is that one of the few accessible and readable graves is one of my wife's ancestors and I wanted to make sure I had a good digital image of it.

Hopefully I will be able to continue working on the web site and this newsletter later in the month.

Evacustes Phipson (1854-1931) Watercolour Artist & Anarchist

St Peter's Green, St Albans, 1917

Some years ago I published a page about the Hertfordshire watercolour paintings of E. A. Phipson and recently I have had several emails about him, and the Phipson family.

I decided to investigate further and discovered that he had strong socialist views and was involved in new ways of living - including an unsuccessful colony in Australia, and a proposed new town in Mexico which did not use money. He was also connected with the pioneering new town in Hertfordshire - Letchworth Garden City - although it was not socialist enough for him.

I felt he deserved a more extensive biography and have started work on it. There are a number of leads that need to be followed up so I have posted the first part of the biography, dealing with his family, on the main web site together with outline notes and a time line of his travels around England and the world. The idea is to update the pages as more information comes in. If you can help fill in the gaps I will be very grateful.

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