In the 1960s, residents, friends and descendants of Rugby began restoring the original design and layout of the community, preserving surviving structures and reconstructing others.

Hughes envisioned Rugby as a colony where England's second sons would have a chance to own land and be free of social and moral ills that plagued late-19th-century English cities.

The colony would reject late Victorian materialism in favor of the Christian socialist ideals of equality and cooperation espoused in Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days.

[2] From the outset, however, the colony was beset with problems, namely a typhoid epidemic in 1881, lawsuits over land titles, and a population unaccustomed to the hard manual labor required to extract crops from the poor soil of the Cumberland Plateau.

On the north side of Rugby, the Clear Fork joins White Oak Creek to form a natural pool known as "The Meeting of the Waters" that has been a popular hiking destination since the colony's early days.

In Tom Brown's School Days, Hughes espoused the ideals of Christian socialism, namely the cooperative ownership of community businesses.

[2] In 1870, Hughes traveled to America to meet his friend, the poet James Russell Lowell, and learned of the Boston-based Board of Aid to Land Ownership, which specialized in helping unemployed urban craftsmen relocate to rural areas.

In 1878, Board of Aid president Franklin Webster Smith and an agent with the new Cincinnati Southern Railway, Cyrus Clarke, were travelling on the railroad's new tracks along the Cumberland Plateau when they identified the future site of Rugby, and were impressed with its virgin forests, clear air, and scenic gorges.

[2] Knoxville attorney Oliver Perry Temple, who became the colony's legal and agricultural advisor, began the complicated process of securing land titles.

Hughes formed a partnership with British lawyers Sir Henry Kimber and John Boyle, and bought the Board of Aid.

The colony's first frame structure, known as the "Asylum" (now the Pioneer Cottage), was erected in early 1880,[5] and the first wave of colonists constructed tennis and croquet courts, and built a walkway to "The Meeting of the Waters."

[3] On opening day, Tennessee's Episcopal bishop, the Right Reverend Charles Quintard, chartered Christ Church and licensed colonist Joseph Blacklock as lay reader.

By 1884, the colony boasted over 400 residents, 65 frame public buildings and houses, a tennis team, a social club, and a literary and dramatic society.

[2] In 1892, Sir Henry Kimber reorganized the Board of Aid as the Rugby Tennessee Company, which focused on harvesting the region's natural resources, all but abandoning the anti-materialistic ideals on which the colony was founded.

[2] Robert Walton's son, William (1887–1958), maintained the Thomas Hughes Library, the Christ Church Episcopal, and Kingstone Lisle until the mid-20th century.

The group has also reconstructed several buildings based on their original designs, including the Board of Aid office, the Rugby Commissary, and Sir Henry Kimber's Percy Cottage.