Tag: communes
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Pant Glas: a Meirionnydd commune in 1840
Barmouth was not the only place in Meirionnydd to host utopian settlements in the nineteenth century. Fanny Talbot’s Ruskinian village there was preceded by a quixotic attempt to set up a socialist commune in a very different part of the region, Abergeirw. In Liverpool in 1839 a splinter group began to break away from Robert…
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Castle of light
Barmouth and utopia make an unlikely combination. But for a brief period the town, best known for its donkeys, candy-floss and Brummies, was the home of an idealistic social experiment, and an historic act of generosity. Fanny Talbot was born in Somerset in 1824, the youngest daughter of John and Mary Bowne. Her father was…