Stapleton Colony

{{Short description|Christian anarcho-pacifist intentional community}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

File:Entrance to the Brotherhood Church, Stapleton - geograph.org.uk - 274521.jpg

The Stapleton Colony, based in Stapleton, North Yorkshire, is a Christian pacifist and anarchist community, and the only remaining colony of the Brotherhood Church.{{cite web|url=http://www.thebrotherhoodchurch.org/intro.htm |title=The Brotherhood Church |author=Brotherhood Church |quote=The Brotherhood Church originated as a Christian anarchist pacifist community}} By 2016 the population of the colony had declined to four residents.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/life-at-one-of-englands-last-tolstoyan-communes |title=Life at One of England's Last Tolstoyan Communes |magazine=The New Yorker}}

In 1897 several members of the Brotherhood Church, some from a Quaker background, moved to Leeds. The receipt of a legacy left to a member, Lillian Ferris, enabled the group to relocate to a seven and a half acre smallholding at Stapleton in 1921.{{cite web|url=http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/index.php?fld=initial&val=B&one=dat&two=det&sel=brothood |title=Brotherhood Church |publisher=Diggers and Dreamers}}{{cite book|author-last=Hardy |author-first=Dennis |title=Utopian England: Community Experiments, 1900-1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YiTBDbHoS7MC&pg=PA181 |year=2000 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-419-24670-1 |page=181}}

The Stapleton community are vegetarian, grow much of their own organic food and attempt to live independently from the government. They are affiliated to the Peace Pledge Union, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and War Resisters' International.{{cite web|url=http://www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/pages/YORKS.htm |title=Brotherhood Church |publisher=Utopia Britannica |quote=British Utopian Experiments (1325-1945), Yorkshire}} Residents have included Len W. Gibson (1919–2007) who was a lifelong peace campaigner and conscientious objector.{{cite web|url=http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2007/gibson.htm |title=Obituary for Len W. Gibson |publisher=War Resisters' International}}