The sect also built a church in Upper Clapton, London, and briefly had bases in Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk, Brighton and Weymouth.

[3] The vice principal of the college contacted the Bishop of Bath and Wells who, in 1840, installed Prince as the curate of Charlinch in Somerset, where he had sole charge during the illness and absence of the rector, Samuel Starkey.

[6] By that time, Prince had contracted his first "spiritual marriage" and had persuaded himself that he had been absorbed into the personality of God and become a visible embodiment of the Holy Spirit.

This was done, even by the poor, all of whom looked forward to the speedy end of the present dispensation and were content, for the short remainder of this world, to live in common and, while not repudiating earthly ties, to treat them as purely spiritual.

With the money thus obtained the house at Spaxton that was to become the "Abode of Love" was enlarged and furnished luxuriously, and the three Nottidge sisters, who contributed £6,000 each, were immediately married to three of Prince's nearest disciples.

[1] Agnes, the eldest of the Nottidge sisters, objected to the spiritual marriage which entailed a celibate life and, as one writer reports, became pregnant by another member of the community;[13] however, it is unlikely that she committed adultery because her husband never accused her, and she later gained sole custody of their child in 1850 after proving herself of good moral character before a court.

Emily instructed her son Edmund, her nephew Edward Nottidge, and her son-in-law, Frederick Ripley, to travel down to Somerset and to rescue her unmarried daughter, Louisa after her arrival.

[17] Louisa escaped from the asylum in January 1848, travelling across London to meet the Reverend William Cobbe from The Agapemone at a hotel in Cavendish Square, but was recaptured two days later at Paddington railway station.

[24][25] In 1856, a few years after the establishment of the "Abode of Love", Prince and Zoe Patterson, one of his virginal female followers, engaged in public ceremonial sexual intercourse on a billiard table in front of a large audience.

[26] The scandal led to the secession of some of his most faithful friends, who were unable any longer to endure what they regarded as the amazing mixture of blasphemy and immorality offered for their acceptance.

Behind 15-foot (4.6 m) high walls were built a 20-bedroom house and attached chapel, as well as a gazebo, stables, and cottages, all set within landscaped gardens.

The buttressed chapel, with its pinnacles and stained glass, was completed in 1845;[31] today, together with the attached house, it is a Grade II listed building.

[33] In the early 20th century, a number of houses (some in the Arts and Crafts style) were built at Four Forks by members of the Agapemonites, including Joseph Morris and his daughter Violet.

The two flanking weather vanes show a certain symbolic debt to William Blake's Jerusalem depicting, as they do, a fiery chariot and a sheaf of arrows (presumably of desire), while the main steeple is clearly surmounted by a spear.

Around 1890, Smyth-Pigott again started leading meetings of the community and recruited 50 young female followers to supplement the ageing population of Agapemonites.

Cited are two August 1905 newspaper clippings from the Auckland Star and The Cambrian detailing separate eyewitness reports of both Smyth-Pigott claiming to be God and his followers still openly preaching his divinity.

[47][48] Similarly, following Mirza Ghulam's death in 1908, Smyth-Pigott once again claimed to be God in 1909 during his inhibition by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, as recorded in the Nottingham Evening Post of March 1927.

She claimed that both wives were happy with the arrangement (one being older and unable to have children) and that the sect had to be viewed as of its time, emerging shortly after religious emancipation in the 1830s.

It allowed many rich women an alternative lifestyle to their other options of governess or wife and they lived in luxury at the Agapemone in Somerset until their death.

[53] Kate Barlow deftly dispels rumours of a 'revolving stage of virgins' as described by one newspaper at the time as myth in her memoir 'The Abode of Love' and details many interesting aspects of the cult such as its own signature tea served at 4pm every day.

[54] The Abode of Love by Aubrey Menen – "an appallingly inaccurate popular account" according to one review [55] – is a novelisation of the history of the Agapemonites under Prince's leadership.