Little Gidding

Little Gidding was a small Anglican religious household established in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar, who had purchased the manor there with his cousin Arthur Wodenoth as trustees for Ferrar's mother. Never a formal religious community bound by an official rule, it required no vows and practiced no enclosure, instead following High Church principles and the Book of Common Prayer under Ferrar's leadership. King Charles I visited three times, including in 1646 while fleeing military defeat, and after Ferrar's death in 1637 the household continued under his brother John Ferrar until 1657, when John and their sister Susanna Collett died within a month of each other; the settlement itself had formally closed in 1646. The community later inspired T.S. Eliot's poem of the same name and became an object of idealization for nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics.