Alcott House

Alcott House in Ham, Surrey (now in Richmond in Greater London), was the home of a utopian spiritual community and progressive school which lasted from 1838 to 1848. Supporters of Alcott House, or the Concordium, were a key group involved in the formation of the Vegetarian Society in 1847.

The prime mover behind the community was "sacred socialist" and mystic James Pierrepont Greaves, who was influenced by American Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, and Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Together with his followers, who included Charles Lane – and the help of wealthy sponsors, Sophia and Georgiana Chichester – he founded Alcott House on Ham Common in Surrey in 1838. The Ham Common Concordium, as it came to be known, consisted of a working mixed cooperative community and a progressive school for children.

The community was dedicated to a regime of spiritual development and purification, in the words of Greaves, aiming to produce the "most loveful, intelligent and efficient conditions for divine progress in humanity". To this end the members submitted to an austere regime of early rising, strict vegetarianism (usually raw food), no stimulants, celibacy, and simple living, and experimented with various practices such as astrology, hydrotherapy, mesmerism and phrenology. The men grew their hair and beards long and wore loose fitting clothes, while the women defied convention by not wearing the traditional, restrictive corset.

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