Abstract
From the final decade of the nineteenth century evangelical religious interest in leisure was challenged by secular models of voluntary association, which defined leisure not primarily in moral terms but in those of an imagined ideal social community. Utopian thinking had historically associated leisure with ideals of community and the good society, notably through Plato and Aristotle and later Thomas More, whose Utopians devoted an hour to recreation each day and tended their gardens when not following Aristotle’s guidance to pursue intellectual development. In terms of the built environment, Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, both connected to the Chelsea Utopians discussion circle on citizenship, developed a sociological approach to urban living in which leisure and the cultural environment formed the seedbed of community in a new type of town. A different type of community was envisioned in socialism, which developed a leisure culture imbued with co-operative and collective values.