Spencer Murphy's images of Runnymede's off-grid community

It’s a been a few years since we last featured photographer Spencer Murphy, but since winning the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize in 2013, his portfolio has grown considerably and is just as stunning. His latest project The Dwelling is not only beautiful but it has fascinating origins. “At a time when I was deep in the throes of attempting to buy my first flat in London, after over a decade of paying extortionate rents in the capital, I found myself escaping to the woods, just the other side of the M25, the city still a throbbing reminder on the horizon,” Spencer explains. 

The photographer spent time with a group of people who had decided three years ago that “[city] life wasn’t for them and they wanted to live a more simple, sustainable existence, free from the ties of modern day living.” The eco community squatted the grounds of a disused Brunel University campus and set up home on the hillside. Since then, with a supply of fresh running water, food from an allotment and active freeganism they’ve managed to build a small community. 

Just a few hundred metres from this woodland group in Runnymede is the site where the Magna Carta was sealed 800 years ago. Seen by many as the foundation of liberty and the basis for human rights laws that followed, Spencer saw strong correlations and disparity between The Great Charter and modern day life during his time there. This came to fruition when permanent residents of the hillside community were served with eviction notices by Orchard Runnymede, “a firm notorious for their heavy-handed approach.”  

Today, 15 June, marks not only the anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta but the day the people of Runnymede Eco Village have been summoned to attend court and find out their eviction date. Only time will tell what will happen, but Spencer’s photographs stand as a wonderful exploration and reminder of what freedom in the modern day can look like. Gloriously lush, green trees frame the community and inform the shelters they’ve built. The community’s worn expressions allude to the hard work that goes into this free life, but there’s a sense of quiet serenity beneath the tired eyes and bedraggled hair. 

Spencer says: “Once the novelty of eco communal living had worn off, what I found was an enchanting woodland full of poetry that reminded me of my youth and a group of people with all the same hopes and fears as any of us have… but perhaps less trivial stresses distracting them from what is important.”