The story of the Findhorn Community
The story of the Findhorn Community
Scotland, January 1962. The founders of this community are at Cluny Hill, making a huge success of running the Victorian hotel on love and – to quote Peter – spiritual laws.
They’ve trebled earnings, and taken the hotel from 3 stars to 4.
Fast forward 11 months to November, 1962, and … They’ved been fired, with just four hours’ notice, and with nowhere else to go, the only option was their caravan.
Peter and Eileen Caddy, their colleague Dorothy Maclean, plus the Caddy’s three young sons, arrived at the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park and all six of them squeezed into their new home – which, incidentally, is still where they parked it 60 years ago.
The fourth founder, Lena Lamont, followed soon after, and moved into a second caravan right next door with her three children. Her story has only recently been told.
For more stories about this community, please visit Celebrating One Incredible Family (COIF), a vibrant and growing record of our Community history, written largely by those who created it.Read more stories
As weeks of unemployment became months, they started a vegetable garden to supplement their food – even though they were on a pretty barren and windswept peninsula, where the soil was ‘just sand and gravel held together by couch grass,’ Peter wrote.
But, against all odds, the garden thrived, to the point where people would come just to see it. Peter wrote: ‘People … would go away shaking their heads, scarcely able to believe it was only three months since the first seeds were sown. How could there be so much greenness and vitality when all around was dry deadness?’ The garden was unbelievable, by all accounts. Plants were lush and green, the vegetables impossibly large. The famous cabbages weighed 40 pounds.
It was the Sixties; you might be picturing them with long hair and bell-bottoms. In fact they were very respectable: Peter, with his short, back and sides, had been an RAF squadron leader. Eileen was raising her three boys and Dorothy had been a spy – working for the British intelligence agency. They were perfectly ordinary people – except that Eileen would retire to the caravan park toilet block (the only place she’d get any peace from her three sons) and receive spiritual guidance on what to do next. She practised Inner listening.
Dorothy found she could connect with the overlighting spirits of the plants – which she called devas – who rejoiced that someone from the human realm was listening and taking advice. She co-created with nature.
And Peter acted on their guidance to the letter, putting love into action.
Understandably, it was a long time before they confessed publicly to their X-factor: that the secret to the extraordinary success of the gardens was that they were getting spiritual guidance, and they were living with and through spirit. They weren’t just trying to survive, they were wholly focused on creating heaven on earth.
They thought they would be here for six months and then move on. Then Eileen got guidance that thousands and thousands of people would come here. She thought it was ridiculous. ‘Who’d want to come to a dump like this?’ she said.
As word spread, volunteers came to help and many began to stay. The community grew and thrived. In 1975, proof that the universe works in mysterious ways, they ended up buying Cluny Hill hotel, which was then used for workshops and retreats for decades.
Those six months have turned into more than 60 years. All four founders have now passed on – most recently Dorothy, early in 2020 shortly after celebrating her 100th birthday, and Lena in 2022. Today the community is famous around the world, and the Park is a renowned ecovillage and showcase of green technologies.
And thousands upon thousands of people have come here over the decades – hopefully we’ll see you here some time too!
