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A Victorian cult: inside the strange world of the Agapemone
00:38:17
Stuart Flinders takes listeners inside the Agapemone – a Victorian Christian cult presided over by rogue Anglican priests
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- [00:01]
Wendy
This is Wendy from Science Versus. This month, our friends at Ford are the presenting sponsor of Science Versus. If you're curious to learn more about things like electric vehicles, Science Versus is a great lesson. We dive into topics like how beavers are helping the fight against climate change, what the greenest way to die is, and what a 100% renewable future looks like and more. Listen to Science Versus on Spotify, brought to you by Ford. The holiday season officially starts when you get that first card in the mail. Shutterfly makes it easy to add more meaning to the everyday with hundreds of holiday card designs that can be personalized in seconds with your favorite photos from this year. Select your greeting, customize the color, and even add little extras like personalized foil to make a holiday card that really shines. Enjoy 40% off with code smile40@shutterfly.com and send something meaningful this year. See site for more details. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the 1840s, a strange, secretive community known as the Agapemanites set up camp in Spaxton in Somerset. Presided over by a rogue Anglican priest who believed he had a hotline to God, this religious cult attracted wealthy members in search of a deeper connection to the Lord. But once they'd handed over their worldly possessions in order to join the cult, the members soon found out that it was rather harder to leave. Stuart Flinders explores the story of the Agapenites in his new book, A Very British Cult, and I spoke to him to find out more.
- [01:56]
Ellie Cawthorn
Thanks for joining me, Stuart, to talk about your new book, A Very British Cult. So to kick us off, introduce us to that titular Very British cult. Who are they?
- [02:08]
Stuart Flinders
Well, the Agapemanites, known originally as the Princites after their founder, Henry James Prince, were a radical sect of Christians at a time of great fervour in Christianity in the 1840s. There was lots of talk of revival and reformation and enthusiasm. Their peculiarity was that they believed that the Day of Judgment was just around the corner. It had arrived. God had already decided who were the saved and who were the damned, who was going to heaven and who was going to hell. And it was they, the Princites, who were going to heaven. And all they had to do was wait to be called and they'd be transported to heaven in the twinkling of an eye, without even the need of death. Henry James Prince led them into what became a big mansion in Somerset in a place called Spaxton, and they waited. The house became known as the Agapeni which is from an ancient Greek word, agape, meaning love. So the place was the abode of love. And they waited for the world to end. And of course, it didn't. And they weren't supposed to die, but they did. And year after year, more and more Agapenites died. And they were buried mostly at first within the grounds of the house, because obviously, it would be very embarrassing to the cult for people beyond to realize that these people who weren't supposed to die were in fact dying. And then in 1899, Prince himself died. And you would have thought this would be a real challenge to the survival of the cult. But in 1902, one of his main followers, who had been instrumental in growing the congregation in London, stood up in a church in Clapton and declared himself to be the Messiah. He was Jesus Christ reincarnated. That gave the cult a new lease of life, and it really continued until he died in 1927. But from that point, it did start to wither. Religious practice at the Agapemini died out, basically. His family continued to live there. His daughter even converted to Roman Catholicism. And by the 1960s, it's really a sort of glorified old people's home for people who may have gone in there full of enthusiasm, but were now just living out their lives. And the money had run out. And by the early 60s, the Agapemidi had to be sold. And that kind of brought the whole story to an end.
- [04:23]
Ellie Cawthorn
And in your book, you chart some incredible stories of those who joined the cult and left the cult, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force. But the man at the center of all of this is Henry James Prince. So let's start with him. What do we know about Prince's background and how he came to acquire these acolytes?
- [04:44]
Stuart Flinders
Henry James Prince was born in 1811 in Bath. He was born into a very wealthy family. His father had a share in a plantation in the West Indies. He was a slave owner in Jamaica. But he died when Henry was very young. And Henry trained to be a priest in the Church of England. That was never going to be a very good fit for one particular reason, and that is that Henry felt that he had a very close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. And most Christians, all Christians, believe they have a personal relationship with God. Most Christians believe that God exists as the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Prince believed that his relationship with the Holy Spirit was so intimate that they had a sort of ongoing conversation about the most mundane things. He believed that he asked the Holy Spirit to change the direction of the wind because it didn't agree with him. And the Holy Spirit did. He tells us in his diary as a young man that he was about to leave the house and he wasn't sure what the weather was going to be like. So he asked the Holy Spirit, should I take an umbrella? On another occasion, the Holy Spirit told him when he was studying for his exams, you don't need to do any revision. And he felt he was vindicated because the exams were canceled because they coincided with the accession of Queen Victoria. So here's a man who's got this, what he thinks is an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit to such an extent that he came to believe that he was the physical embodiment of the Holy Spirit. So the idea that he is going to succumb to the authority of the Church of England is a complete non starter. And sure enough, he goes to his first parish in Somerset in a place called Charlinge. And within a couple of years, the bishop tells him he's got to go. Prince tells his parishioners, some of you are saved, some of you are damned. And he tells the ones that he thinks are damned not to bother coming to church anymore. And of course, his bishop can't stand for this and he withdraws his license to preach in the diocese. So Prince went to another parish at the other end of the country, in Suffolk, and again he fell out with his local bishop for similar reasons. But this time he turned his back on the church altogether. He went back to Somerset, where he'd left behind quite a loyal following. And he built a chapel and accommodation for his followers that became the Agapemini. And once inside there, his authority was absolute. I mean, how do you challenge a man who has such an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit? And this perhaps explains how the cult was able to survive some extraordinary eff episodes, perhaps the most scandalous of which was what became known as the great manifestation in 1855 or 1856. It's not clear exactly when it happened, but Prince told his followers, who'd all assembled in the chapel as a congregation, that he was, as he put it, going to take flesh. He was basically telling them that he was going to have sex with one of the members of the cult. Now, bear in mind that Prince was a married man and his wife was standing there in the congregation. He said that he, as Henry James Prince, wasn't going to choose who this woman should be because that should be left to God. Surprise, surprise, God picked one of the Most beautiful women in the congregation. Prince walked up to her, he took her by the hand, he kissed her, and he told her that his union with her was a mark of God's love for the flesh. Now, whether they consummated that relationship there and then in front of the congregation isn't clear. Many people think that that is exactly what happened. I think that's unlikely. But consummate it they did, because a few months later, the woman had a child. It may even be that she was pregnant before this ceremony. And the whole thing was an elaborate charade to hide the fact that Prince had had this adulterous affair. It's an extraordinary episode, but it doesn't appear to have caused any great disruption at the agapemen. Some of them were obviously unhappy about it. Prince mentions this in his writings at the time, but there was no mass exodus. The numbers remained stable, and largely Prince's authority went unchallenged.
- [08:40]
Ellie Cawthorn
I think you raised some really interesting points there about Prince, because on the one hand, we have this guy who you could see as a religious fanatic and that he really believed in what he was saying. On the other hand, you could see him as a con man who essentially found vulnerable followers, got them to give their money over to him, which he did, and, of course, used his position to do things that benefited him. I wonder if you have a take on where you see Prince there. Do you see him as this true believer, or do you see him as a. An opportunist who used this to fuel his own power?
- [09:16]
Stuart Flinders
I think he was all of those things. I think he was a profoundly religious man from an early age. He certainly engaged in the big theological discussions of his time. He was a very prolific writer. I don't recommend that anybody goes to read his books. They're. They're very dull and very grandiose, and in a style that isn't at all easy to appreciate. But he was trying to engage in those great issues at the time, and he did debate them in his work with contemporary writers. But he was also a man who was capable of exploiting the opportunity, and he did attract very wealthy people, and he was very capable of getting their money often. And there is, of course, this incident with a woman at the great manifestation. We don't know whether there were other incidents of sexual promiscuity during his time, but clearly he was a man who was able to exploit any opportunity that came his way, and a very powerful man who brooked no disagreement. So there was really no challenge to his authority within the agapemen. His word went well.
- [10:17]
Ellie Cawthorn
Tell us a bit more about the people that followed him. Cults often prey on the vulnerable. Is that the case here?
- [10:23]
Stuart Flinders
Yes. Well, let me tell the story of the Nottage sisters, because this is a strange and very sad story, but also explains how Prince was able to find so much money so quickly to open this agapemene in Somerset. The Nottages were parishioners of him in his second parish in Suffolk, and some of the women in the family became so taken by his preaching that when he left the Church of England, they followed him and they were very generous in their donations towards the building of the agapemony in Somerset. But Prince knew that they had more to give. When their father Josias died, he'd been a very wealthy merchant. He left each of his daughters £6,000. Now, that's a lot of money. In today's money, that's approaching half a million pounds. So how was Prince going to get hold of that money? Well, he had one problem. As women, unmarried women, in the 1840s, the law didn't consider that they were responsible enough to manage their money. And their brother in law had the final say on how that money was spent through a power of attorney. Prince had to get round that. So what he did it was one day he called Harriet Notting to see him and he said, harriet, it's God's will that you marry Lewis Price, one of his disciples. Now, there's no evidence that Harriet had any kind of relationship with Lewis Price. She may well have known him, but they don't appear to have had any firm friendship. But what's extraordinary is that there and then, and this was not a teenager, this was a woman who was 40 years old, she agreed to it. She said, I'll marry him next. Agnes was called. Agnes was 28. And Prince said to her, God's decided that you're going to marry George Robinson Thomas with another of his disciples. She agreed. And then a third sister, Clara. It was God's will that she marry William Cobb, who was the man who was building the new Agapeman. He was an engineer. He used to work for Isambar Kingdom Brunel. And sure enough, all three women were married in a single ceremony in Swansea. Suddenly their husbands had access to their money and through them, so did Prince. Harriet and Clara seemed to settle into this strange new life without too much trouble. But not so Agnes. Agnes became pregnant and that was not at all part of Prince's plans. And both he and her husband, George Robinson Thomas, completely shunned her. It was as if George had had nothing to do with it. She was even kicked out of the community. Here's a woman who, a year earlier had been very fortunate, very wealthy, well educated, with a nice family. Now she was destitute, heavily pregnant and.
- [12:58]
Ellie Cawthorn
Very ill. Why was it offensive to Prince that she was pregnant?
- [13:02]
Stuart Flinders
They were not there to have families, they were not there to have children. They were there to wait, to be called to heaven. And basically, she'd gone against his word. This was a threat to his authority. In other words, she was made quite ill. She was lucky to survive the birth and she decided to throw herself on her family's mercy. She'd fallen out with her mother, but she went back to Suffolk and her mother took her in and her young son. And the surprising thing is that she decided to call her young son George, after the father. And you'd think she wouldn't want any reminders of him, but there you go. Now, that isn't the end of the story, because three years later, George Senior, the father, turns up in Suffolk at the house, uninvited, and tries to abduct his son. He goes into the grounds and he says to the boy, are you George? And he says, yes, and he tries to take him away. And fortunately some of the servants step in and they prevent it. And in the end, Agnes had to go to court to secure custody of her son. And that's not the end of the story as far as the Notages is are concerned, because as a fourth sister, Louisa, in spite of all this with Agnes, she decides she wants to join the Agapeni and she goes off to Somerset. Well, this was all too much for her mother, Emily. She'd already lost three daughters to this cult. She decided she had to take some drastic action. And what she did was to organize the kidnapping of Louisa. Three men turned up at the Agapeni, to a cottage where Louisa was living at the time before the Agapeni had been completed. And she was abducted and thrown into an asylum. And she spent 17 months in there, had the additional indignity of being asked to pay for her incarceration there. But it didn't do the trick because at the end of it all, she continued to believe that Prince was the Holy Spirit. And she came out of the asylum in London, went straight back to Somerset and joined the Agapemany again. And that's where she died some years later.
- [14:55]
Ellie Cawthorn
The story of the Nottage Sisters is truly extraordinary. And I want to pick up on the fate of another of those Sisters, Harriet, who, as you mentioned, married a follower of Prince Louis Price. Later he left and essentially tried to take her with him. Can you tell us a bit about that story?
- [15:14]
Stuart Flinders
You simply weren't allowed to leave the Agapemeni in the early years, and those that did had to go to extraordinary lengths to do so. And the most famous case was that of Lewis and Harriet Price. So Harriet Price, one of the Notties Sisters, involved in what we would now regard as a forced marriage. Lewis Price, one of Prince's loyalist followers, been with him since the very beginning. But for some reason, Lewis becomes disenchanted and he leaves the Agapement. He manages to get away. He goes to the police station and he says, my wife is being held at the Agapemeni against her will. And the police say, there's nothing we can do about it. So he gets a lawyer and he and the solicitor go to the Agapemini. They knock on the door, but they're prevented from being admitted. So plan C is that Lewis goes to a nearby town and he recruits three men and he goes back to the Agapemini with them and says to them, you wait here, and I'm going to climb over the wall and I'm going to grab Harriet and get her out. So he goes over the wall and he hides in the garden near the conservatory. And the following morning, when Harriet makes an appearance on the terrace, Lewis reaches for it and he lunges for it and he grabs her. And at this point, it becomes apparent that Harriet doesn't want to leave and she cries, murder. And other men run outside the building and they fight Lewis off and he's forced to leave. But he still isn't beaten yet. He goes to Bridgewater, and this time he enlists an entire army of something, between 30 and 40 men who march on the Agapemane. And by this point, it's a small place. A lot of people take an interest in this. They come out to watch. It gets in the newspapers. The Times calls it the Invasion of the Agapeni. And they storm the Agapeni. The Agapenites are prepared inside the building. They've actually built barricades. And there's a standoff, an armed standoff. One member of each army produces a gun. In the end, wiser councils prevail and Lewis is given permission to search the building. But still, Harriet can't be found. Eventually, he does catch up with Harriet when she's on a shopping trip. He gets Harry, gets her into a train and takes her to Glastonbury. Where he books into some lodgings. And he stays there while he tries to work out some sort of reconciliation. This goes on for weeks. She tries to escape, but she doesn't manage it. But in the end, it does seem that they were reconciled. Because Lewis returned to the Church of England. He too, had been ordained, and he had a very successful career as a parish priest. And Harriet by his side. And many decades later, when he died, there was a big funeral. And many people turned out, and they were very grateful. It was reported in the local newspapers. But what I found interesting was that, of course, in the pre Internet age, nobody knew about his colorful past. The newspaper was not able to report the fact that this is the man who escaped the Agapemani because nobody knew, nobody could do a Google search. So he managed to keep that very notorious past secret.
- [18:03]
Ellie Cawthorn
I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about life at the Agapenny. Paint a picture for us. What kind of people were living there, how many? And what was the atmosphere like and the settings, the surroundings?
- [18:14]
Stuart Flinders
Well, at the time of the great manifestation that I told you about, there were probably about 60 or 70 people living there. And that appears to have been the sort of number that was constant. I think it dipped up and down. There were moments of great drama, like the great manifestation, like the Great Escape by Lewis Price and Harriet. But for the most part, the pattern of life there wasn't so dissimilar to life at a country house at the time. One visitor described it as one of the loveliest houses in the south of England, with the air of an Oxford college about it. It had a beautiful flower garden. It had a conservatory with exotic shrubs. The chapel was richly decorated with a great thick Turkish carpet. There were comfortable sitting chairs. It didn't really look like a chapel at all. There was a billiard table in there. And one of the Agapemanites said it was all about life made easy. And he wasn't wrong. There were stables. They could take horses and go riding. They played hockey in the grounds. And all this was paid for by incomers handing over their money into a common fund. And anybody who had money could join, but you didn't have to have money. If you didn't have money but you wanted to join the agapemony, you could. But then you had to become a member of what they called the kp. This was the kitchen parlour or the serving staff. So these people, they didn't have money to give, but they could give their labor. They made the beds. They did the Washing. They cooked the food and so on. And in those early decades, you think that these were very devout people, but there was not a lot of religious practice going on. There was no need for prayer. They'd already been served. There's no need to ask for God's mercy. They admitted that there was very little charity work carried on there, but they were very strict about their privacy. There was one occasion when a passerby peered into the grounds of the Agapemni. He could hear some noise there, and he looked at him and he saw that the men and women were playing hockey together. And this in itself at that time, the idea of men and women engaged in sport together would have been remarkable to him. So he stood there watching and three of the men playing hockey spotted him and gave chase. They ran outside the agate pen and they ran after him. Now, bearing in mind that two of those three had been ordained as priests in the Church of England, they got hold of this man and they beat him so badly with their hockey sticks that part of his skull was exposed. It ended up in court, so absolutely no tolerance of any prying eyes.
- [20:34]
Ellie Cawthorn
So they were very keen on privacy. But how much information did get out to the wider world about what was going on at the Agapemone? Did the press, press and the public know, and how did they feel about it?
- [20:45]
Stuart Flinders
Well, the press had a field day, particularly with the emergence of the popular press. There were stories of strange midnight ceremonies with women traveling from London to take part. Some seem to think, in Smith Piggott's time as leader, that it was a sort of playboy mansion, with him as the Hugh Hefner figure. Some of the media fulminated about the immoral goings on there, but for the most part, they treated the Agapeni a bit of eccentric function. Many of the stories are barely credible, but very entertaining. Prince refusing to answer letters addressed to him as Mr. Prince. They had to be addressed to the Lord. One milkman who delivered to the Agapeni was told, you better send your bills in every week rather than every month. And he said, why? What's the problem? And they said, well, we might not be here, we might be gone to heaven and you wouldn't get paid. Who knows whether these stories are true or whether journalists just had to be a little bit creative. But the wider public was concerned too, about heresy and blasphemy. It was a more religious time, don't forget. And when Smith Pigott had declared himself to be the Messiah in 1902, thousands of people turned up. When Further services were scheduled there. They tried to assault him. They managed to get inside the church. They heckled him to such an extent that he didn't feel he was safe in London. And he retreated to Somerset and barely made an appearance in London for the rest of his life. But what's most surprising is that the Church of England appears to have been very relaxed about all this. There was lots of toing and froing in terms of pamphlets during the mid and late 19th century. But this business of Smith Pigott saying that he was Jesus Christ, you think that would have mobilized the church authorities because he, too, had been ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He still was technically a priest, but no action was taken. And yet in later years, Smith Pickett, who also a married man, his wife Katie, lived at the Agapemini. He took what he called a spiritual wife. There was a big elaborate ceremony where he married in inverted commas, a woman called Annie Priest. He renamed her Ruth. And they had three children, and they called them glory, power and life. Imagine going through life settled with those names. And it was only at this point that it became too much for the church authorities. They seem to cope with his claims of divinity, but not with the idea of illegitimate children appearing on the scene. So he was charged with immoral acts and immoral conducts, and he was defrocked by the Church of England. He doesn't seem to have been too concerned about it. He's reported to have said, I'm God. It doesn't matter what they do.
- [23:17]
Ellie Cawthorn
So it's clear what Prince and Smith Piggot got from their status. Money, followers. But what about those followers? What do you think that this cult offered them?
- [23:29]
Stuart Flinders
Well, I think with any cult, you're bound to ask, how could people be so foolish as to get involved in that? As an outsider, it seems so obviously a mistake. I wonder if one of the reasons why so many educated and wealthy women got involved, like the Notage Sisters, was that at that time, in the early days in the 1840s and right through into the 20th century, there were so few outlets for their talents. I mean, you imagine now that Louisa and Agnes might have been doctors or lawyers or journalists, but at that time, what could they do? They needed some sort of fulfillment, but those occupations weren't open to them. And they were seduced by the teachings of this man who made a very convincing argument that they should join him in this agape and wait for the end of the world. There was a man called Bert Harris, who was a carpenter, who did a Lot of work for the Agapemini in the early 20th century. He wasn't a believer, he wasn't a follower, but he lived in the neighborhood and he did lots of odd jobs for them. And when Smith Pigott died in 1927, he was asked to make the coffin. And years later, in the 1980s, he was asked for his reflections on what he saw inside the Agapemene. And I think what he said is pretty hard to beat. He said, the amazing thing to me was that there were so many people, not what one would call the ordinary, everyday man in the street, but people with good education, very clever. Some of them could be taken in so completely. He said, you know, it's astonishing, isn't it? And I think that's a pretty good summing up of what was going on there.
- [25:00]
Ellie Cawthorn
I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the position and the treatment of women in the cult. It's something you kind of alluded to there with the Notage Sisters.
- [25:09]
Stuart Flinders
Well, we've seen how Prince convinced his followers, and maybe himself, that he should be allowed to have an adulterous relationship with a woman at the Agapemone. Some of the stories emerging from the agapemone at that time are barely credible. When there was one story that every Sunday, Prince would assemble eligible women on a platform, the stage would be spun round, and as the rotation stopped, whichever woman ended up facing him would be his bride for the week. There was another story that he insisted that his followers walk around the grounds of the Agapemeni naked because he wanted to recreate the conditions of the Garden of Eden. I don't know that we need to lend a lot of credence to those stories, but it's under Prince's successor, John Hugh Smith Piggott, that the stories of promiscuity and women being assaulted become more persistent. There are lots of stories about him taking what he called spiritual wives. And he was, as I said, already married. One female member of the cult who abandoned it, was reported as saying, sexual irregularities are the beginning and end of life at Spaxton. It is our religion. Again, it's not really possible to say to what extent these relationships were consensual, but there were claims, two claims that I think we have to lend some credibility to. One of them appeared in a magazine. It was claimed that two young women visiting from Norway, there were members of a sort of satellite agape there, that they'd visited the Agapemone in Somerset and been raped. Now, there's no record of this. There's no police record, Nothing ended up in court. But of course, as we know, that doesn't mean it didn't necessarily happen. The other serious allegation came from a solicitor who had been a member of the cult, but he left in 1898 and he claimed that he had hard proof that Smith Pigott had, in the word he used, victimized three women there. So some question about whether this was just free love or whether there really was assault going on there, but certainly the public perception at that time was that the abode of love was an abode of lust, as one headline put it. And there certainly does seem to be enough evidence that Smith Bigot, at least, was very free in his relationships.
- [27:23]
Ellie Cawthorn
Another darker element connected to the cult was a series of suicides that were connected to it. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about those and what you think was maybe motivating them.
- [27:33]
Stuart Flinders
Well, there do seem to have been a high number of suicides involving cult members throughout its existence under both Henry James Prince and John Hugh Smith Piggott. There was Mary Maber, who was a member of a wealthy family from Wales that joined the cult. She left a note suggesting that she'd been driven by a loss of belief into killing herself. There was a sad case of Elizabeth May in 1905, another member of the cult. She didn't live at the Agapemini by that time. There was quite a strong following in London and they had their own church there and she was a regular attender there. She was a servant in a doctor's house. But she'd been left with just a few shillings to her name because she'd apparently given all her money to John Hugh Smith Pigott. And at the inquest, the coroner said her mind had been unhinged by the dangerous teachings of the Agapemanites. It's not clear whether the cult attracted people who were mentally unstable in the first place, who suffers from some kind of mental illness, or whether they were so disturbed by what they saw at the Agapemeni or by what they were asked to believe that they felt unable to continue. But certainly there was an extraordinary number of suicides recorded at the Agapemene.
- [28:46]
Ellie Cawthorn
I think part of the reason why I found your book so fascinating is because I like. I think many of our listeners will associate cults with the mid and late 20th century. It's something we think about in the 1970s, not the Victorian age. And, of course, something that we alluded to is the fact that people gave their money over to this Cult in a huge way. I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about the financial aspect of things.
- [29:12]
Stuart Flinders
Well, you were expected to hand over your money when you joined the Agapemini and there were stories of people who tried to keep back a bit of jewelry or something being kicked out. But Prince attracted people who were seriously rich. There was the Maber family from Swansea. Arthur Maber was a surgeon. His sisters were wealthy in their own right and they'd seen Prince preaching in Swansea, took him at his word, believed the world was going to end and wanted to join him in the Agapemen. They donated an eye watering £10,000 between them. That's something like £850,000 in today's money and secured their places in the agapemony and certainly contributed towards the cost of building it. It didn't end happily for them, given that they joined a cult that claimed that nobody was going to die. Pretty quickly, one of Arthur's sisters did die of an illness. His young daughter died of illness. And it was his sister who was one of those who committed suicide, saying that she lost her faith in what Prince had said. And yet, in spite of all this, they continued to live at the Agapemone. But Prince certainly wasn't afraid to ask for money. I mean, he once famously passed a note to one of his followers which read, the Lord hath need of £50 to be used for a special purpose unto his glory. The spirit would have this made known to you. Amen.
- [30:36]
Ellie Cawthorn
Not very subtle, no.
- [30:37]
Stuart Flinders
So whether it's £50 or thousands of pounds, he just had the knack of persuading people to part with the money.
- [30:44]
Ellie Cawthorn
So how did the cult eventually come to an end? When did life at the Agapemany end?
- [30:50]
Stuart Flinders
It petered out, really, with the death of John Hugh Smith Pigott. His family continued to live in Somerset at the Agapemene, and they treated it as the family home. They weren't widely regarded by the community at large. I spoke to one of Smith Pigott's granddaughters who told me that they were embarrassed because people knew what had gone on there and they had a bad reputation as a result of it. The money ran out, basically. They had to sell property. There were no new members coming in, there's no money coming in. And in the early 1960s, the Agapeni was sold. Interestingly, it ended being a bit like an old people's home and it really did become an old people's home. Later in its life, it first of all became a TV studio. They used to make Trumpeton and Camberwick Green there. Then it became an old people's home and now it's a bed and breakfast, so you can actually go and sleep in the chapel there. But as much as the Agapemane may be long forgotten, he did make the headlines again, only quite recently, but briefly. The church in London, which was built in the late 19th century as the London branch, as it were, began to take off under John Hugh Smith Pickett, was called the Ark of the Covenant, and it's still there. You can go and see it in Clapton. It's a very grand building. The stained glass is particularly attractive. But this went on sale in 2011 and it was sold for just over a million pounds to the Georgian Orthodox Church. But the family of Smith Pigott were not allowed to share the money between them. A judge decided that because that money had been donated to the Agapemanites as a religious charity, the proceeds of the sale had to be used by a religious charity. The Agapemanites no longer existed, so they had to choose another one. So they chose to give the money to Iona Abbey in the Inner Hebrides, which was undergoing refurbishment and it reopened, opened only in 2021. So this gift to one of Christianity's oldest settlements ends one of its strangest stories.
- [32:53]
Wendy
That was Stuart Flinders speaking to me. Ellie Cawthorn. Stuart's book on this subject is called A Very British Rogue Priests and the Abode Of Love, and it's published by Icon Books. If you're interested in the wider history history of cults, then check out our episode with Stephen Tal, who charted the 1993 Waco siege, which was a standoff between a religious cult and the FBI. You can find the link to that conversation in the episode description of this podcast. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.