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A team of Cambridge archaeologists have been hard at work in the Cambridgeshire Fens - in a bid to find a long-lost Utopia.

In 1838 businessman William Hodson bought a plot of land in Manea, a village on the edge of Littleport.

Inspired by socialist visions for the future of humanity, he aimed to establish a community based on radical principles of cooperation and rational thought, which he hoped would become a model for England, and eventually the rest of the world.

(Image: CAU)

But despite abolishing all money, separation from the capitalist world proved too much for his fledgling community, with the project collapsing after experiencing financial troubles after just three and a half years.

But now a team from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU), a branch of Cambridge University, has returned to uncover the secrets of Manea Fen, which at its height provided a home to some 150 fellow dreamers.

Marcus Brittain, site director for the Manea Colony Archaeology project, said: “With a team of local volunteers, our investigations have been locating traces of this incredible experiment, one aim being to consider the challenges faced in building a community ‘from scratch’ with a broad and diverse membership.”

Residents of Hodson’s utopia swapped cash for ‘labour tokens’, designed to be more representative of the work each member would put into their community.

Despite its eventual failure, the project was one of the more successful 19th century social experiments, with its achievements documented in The Working Bee , a weekly newspaper printed on-site.

Built around a central square, the village included terraces of cottages, a public dining hall, communal kitchen, a school and a grand tower from which much of the fen could be observed over tea.

All of this was built by the colonists themselves, mainly from locally-sourced materials.

The CAU team has been successful in locating the wood and brick foundations of some of the original buildings, along with pits containing the refuse discarded by their inhabitants.

Dr Brittain said: “These indicate that the buildings were fairly sizeable, but relatively flimsy in construction and maybe not equipped for sustaining 1,000 years’ of community as was envisaged in their design.

“Their refuse also tells us that personal adornment with decorative dress items was commonplace, in spite of concerns that the promotion of individuality led to greed and disharmony in the industrial world.”

Further analysis is hoped will provide insight into the community’s culinary habits, and shed light on their private behaviour.