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The Rugby Colony: Oasis in Tennessee |
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“In one word, our aim and hope are
to plant on these highlands a community of gentlemen and ladies; not that
artificial class which goes by those grand names, both in Europe and here, the joint product of feudalism and
wealth, but in a society In which the
humblest members, who live by the labour of their own hands, will be of such
strain and culture that they will be able to meet princes in the gate,
without embarrassment and without self-assertion, should any such strange
person ever present themselves before the gate tower of Rugby in the New
World.”[1] |
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Thomas
Hughes's words on the opening day of his visionary community reflect his
dreams for the young men populating his Rugby in the New World. Invoking
Biblical imagery of American utopian rhetoric, he referred to his colony as a
“New Jerusalem,” as John Winthrop once referred to his Massachusetts Bay
Colony in 1630. Hughes devised the plan for the Rugby Colony, settled as an
oasis in the woods on the Cumberland Plateau in Northeastern Tennessee. Influenced greatly by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Hughes felt that working the land was an honorable pursuit for educated men.
In an address to the public school children at the Rugby School in
England--for which his colony is named--Hughes told the adolescents, “For
those who find after leaving school that they have no such outlook (for
“honest” work) in England, I undoubtedly believe that they can't do better
than go back to the land.”[2] Hughes founded Rugby to create an “honorable”
alternative for sons of aristocratic English families in the United
States. |
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His
dream only survived for eight years as the economic and cultural background
of the residents of Rugby ultimately contributed to its demise in 1888. The
young men and women who would populate this rustic village came from a world
filled with servants, lawn tennis, and the theater, contrasting greatly with
the rural people who grew up on the Cumberland Plateau. Rugbeians'
aristocratic experiences in England permeated every aspect of their new life
in America where they attempted to replicate the urbane lifestyle they
understood. Rugby's elite class of settlers, who distinguished themselves
from their neighbors, prevented the community from succeeding. Rugby's architecture,
their propensity for leisure and subsequent failure of economic endeavors,
and their perceptions of the native Tennesseeans magnify the differences in
class between the colony and its neighbors. The evidence, reflected in the
genteel nature of Rugby’s upper-class residents, ultimately prevented the
colony from ever succeeding in the rural hills of Tennessee. |
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British Roots in an
American Forest
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Hughes
was not only active writing, but served as a politician and reformer. He
founded The Working Men's College in London and attempted to break down class
barriers at Oxford University, his alma mater.[4] Hughes also served as a Liberal member of
Parliament, a judge, and Queen's Counselor. He also worked in the Cooperative
and Christian-Socialist movement, establishing labor associations and
cooperatives. Despite his efforts to dissolve barriers for the working class
in labor and education, the primogeniture system of the British gentry
bothered him immensely. He viewed it as the last remaining vestige of the
Middle Ages. This practice gave the oldest son of wealthy families the entire
inheritance—land, money, and valuables. This left younger sons without land
and few “respectable” options: v
to study
medicine v
to study law v
to join the
clergy.[5] Many
of these younger sons attended the public schools, where Hughes observed
their plight. Hughes set out to remedy this problem and searched for a
suitable settlement for these young, genteel, educated men. |
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He
visited the United States in 1870 and received a hero's welcoming that would
not mirror the reception in Eastern Tennessee. Many dignitaries, including
the Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Charles Sumner, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and others, received him as their guest.[6] He toured the United States, making
numerous contacts, who later would assist him in finding land for his
settlement. A group of Bostonians who were searching for unoccupied farm
lands to promote migration from the crowded Northeast, notified him of good
land in Northeast Tennessee. Hughes then gathered investors and took over the
project in 1879.[7] He initiated an Anglo-American coalition
and formed the Board of Aid to Land Ownership. By June of the next year, the
organization purchased 50,000 acres to resell to Rugby colonists. A settler
needed to put down one-third the price of a lot and then paid off the rest
within two years.[8] This system stopped the cycle of
primogeniture, allowing aristocratic sons to own land. Despite the original
organization's international composition, the majority of settlers were
British. |
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From
the beginning, although nestled in America, the settlement at Rugby,
Tennessee retained a high level of elitism projected by the British residing
there, especially evident in the physical plant of the colony. October 5, 1880 was the official opening
day of the Rugby Colony and at that time the Tabard Inn, three boarding
houses, the commissary, and some private homes already stood on the site. The
name of the inn, the “Tabard,” borrowed its title from the Southwark Tabard
Inn, the gathering place in The
Canterbury Tales. This small gesture reflected the omnipresent British
heritage of the colony. Even the name of the colony, “Rugby,” harkened back
to Hughes's days at the Rugby school in England. |
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The
architectural planning of the colony reflected the high class of the people
settling in the hills of Tennessee, because of their knowledge of popular
architectural styles of the late nineteenth century. The edifices were built
in what Alan Gowans terms the “Picturesque” styles, prominent throughout the
Victorian era in both England and in the United States. The Picturesque style
flourished in urban areas in the late nineteenth century and served the social
function of promoting American ideals and legitimized wealth as
democratic. These styles were so
decorative and intricate—contrasting with Classicism—that Gowans argues, |
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The
plan of the Rugby town imitates the plan of an English Village. The placement
of certain buildings makes the town the center of the colony's life, while
individual plots of farm land lie extraneous to the small area cleared for
the town center. The hamlet includes the church, school, hotel, and library,
and it also became the site for the colony's many leisure activities. The
winding paths and roads situated within the forest, adhere to the contour of
the terrain and follow with the Picturesque motif. Town planners reserved
strips of land near the streams as public parks and always kept the area
well-groomed with various floras of the surroundings. Planning that followed
natural boundaries differed greatly from the rectal-linear planning of most
towns in the American territory west of the Appalachians. |
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The
Board of Aid to Land Ownership, Hughes company, hired architects to design
the buildings and plan a village. Cornelius Onderdock arrived to supervise
the construction of the public buildings in the Rugby town. All of the
buildings were supposed to be “attractive and roomy,” while their names were
distinctively British, such as the Tabard Inn, or Kingstone Lisle, Thomas
Hughes's home. [10] |
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For
many of the communities we have studied this year, including the Shakers, the
Oneidans, and the LLano del Rio settlement, architectural planning has been
an integral part of the community's philosophy. However, the Rugby Colony did
not profess a new social order, religious revelation, or technological
innovations through their architecture. The designs merely reflected
residents' desire to emulate contemporary stylistic trends of the 1880's,
present both in England and in the United States. These stylistic trends
required one-family occupancy of homes, in contrast with other utopian
settlements that emphasized community by constructing multi-family
residences. Even though Rugbeians believed themselves to be pioneers, they
designed the town’s social space and homes to support the lifestyle they knew
in England. |
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Most
of the colony's homes were built in various Victorian styles, including the
Queen Anne's and Stick Styles. Asymmetrical by design, many carried porches
with decorative columns, important for socializing and for escaping the
summer's heat, as well as different sloped pitches in the roof lines. Some,
like Thomas Hughes's home, Kingstone Lisle built in 1884, carried decorated
verge boards on the dormer window roofs, providing extra detailing to a
relatively simple Queen Anne style home. Another feature of the Picturesque
style is a polychromatic texture on all facades, which many of the homes
exhibited. The intricacies of the private homes at Rugby differed greatly
from the homes of the native Tennesseeans. |
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A
vernacular house of the plateau contrasted with the architecture of Rugby by
its simplicity. Built for function
primarily, rather than style, the mountain cabins consisted of a simple one
or one and a half floored structure with unfinished, timber cladding. It is
less finished and refined than Hughes's Kingstone Lisle. His two story
painted home appears much more decorative than a typical cabin of local
residents. The mere fact that there
existed a pre-meditated town distinguished the settlement from anything in
the area. The Victorian architecture, even though it might be found in the
lowlands of the state, set the Rugbeians apart from their neighbors and
labeled them as outsiders. |
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Even
the Christ Church, Rugby's Episcopal Church,
reflected the Picturesque style in Gothic Vernacular. The pointed arch
and detailed stained glass windows mark the Church as Gothic, but its short
steeple and cladding in wood denote it as a mixture of styles.[11] This building's mixed styles allow it to
blend in with the Picturesque styles of the rest of the village, while retaining
the feel of an Anglican Church of England.
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These
styles of Rugby might be found in the lowlands in cities such as Knoxville or
Chattanooga, because they were common in urban areas, but it would be unusual
to discover them in the rural mountains.[12] The region was sparsely populated and
much more rural than the lowlands. Knoxville, the closest urban area to
Rugby, is seventy-five miles away and only was accessible, at that time, by
one crude road on horseback or by ox cart.[13] Within a twenty-five mile radius of this
settlement, there were only three towns populated with over one hundred
people.[14] Gowans described this style as prevalent
in urban areas as a means to legitimize wealth in America. In contrast, these
hills did not showcase monetary abundance, so there was no need for this
style of architecture. As a result, Rugby's buildings differed greatly from
the few existing farm houses in the area.
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The
British settlers at Rugby, already wealthy, tried to legitimized their
existence through the colony, and their architecture assisted them with that
goal. Rugby does not usually come to mind when thinking of symbols from the
Tennessee hills, rather, images of Daniel Boone, Davey Crocket, or Andrew
Jackson. This quaint, English village promoted the wealth of its own and
maintained its upper class status in the woods of Tennessee, while neglecting
to build a thriving community with longevity. |
