Littledene’s Dominion : re-imagining Crawford and Gwen Somerset’s Oxford experiment : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History, Massey University, New Zealand
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2025
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Massey University
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Abstract
Crawford Somerset’s attractively written Littledene emerged from a distinct social experiment in rural community education during the interwar years. An early study of its kind in New Zealand, the location in Oxford, North Canterbury, remained undisclosed at the time, hence the pseudonym Littledene. Crawford’s overall interpretation of the Oxford community is illuminated within his intellectual network which included his wife and educational collaborator Gwendolen Alley, academic supervisor James Shelley, and research associate Clarence Beeby. Influenced by ongoing debates in education and its place in social development, the group shared similar aspirations for education reform. As teachers at Oxford School Crawford and Gwen illustrated a sense of social dislocation from urban New Zealand and its greater society. Perceiving the Oxford farming community as detached from intellectual and cultural life, they creatively experimented with new ideas in community education. The Oxford experiment included an environmental approach shaped by the respective value Crawford and Gwen placed on fostering a sense of belonging within the Canterbury landscape. As a sophisticated blueprint demonstrating their ideas for wider social change, Littledene appears as a symbolic portrayal of the Oxford community. This thesis will demonstrate how far the Somerset’s projection of Oxford was influenced by a palimpsest of ideas introduced to them via the movement of intellectuals between Europe and the Dominion during the early twentieth century. Alongside archival sources, this critique draws on autobiographical material from Victoria University and audio-visual material from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision archive. The sources offer an understanding of the local and international forces that shaped Crawford and Gwen’s intellectual histories from childhood. Importantly, the sources provide a vista of the intellectual culture that informed the Oxford experiment as the product of a rich intellectual history within the context of interwar studies in New Zealand.