What began as a moody teenager’s impulse purchase at a Hobby Lobby in the late 1990s eventually became the foundation of a successful business and a lifelong obsession with a single English village. This is the intertwined story of how Jonathan and Jackie Thomas fell in love with Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and how that love affair directly led to the creation of Anglotopia—one of the most popular websites about British culture and travel.
A Poster That Changed Everything
The story begins in the “deep dark days of winter” during Jonathan’s miserable high school years. As he recalls, “High school was a place I wanted to leave as soon as possible,” and the harsh Midwestern winters only amplified his teenage angst. During one of his regular visits to Hobby Lobby to browse posters—a quintessentially late 90s teenage activity—Jonathan discovered something that would alter the trajectory of his life.
“I came across a picture of an English village scene and like it just struck me as like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” Jonathan remembers. The poster depicted “a village curved down a hill” with “an ancient ruin on the side” and “a beautiful hilly valley green and hilly valley” in the background. The image was labeled simply “Cottages of Dorset,” with no indication of the specific location.
Jonathan bought the poster and a frame, hanging it next to his bed where he would look at it daily. “In those deep, dark days of high school and winter, and you don’t want to be there, I thought life isn’t so bad because one day I’m going to go there,” he explains. The poster became more than decoration—it was “a totem” and “a force for motivation” that helped him endure the difficulties of adolescence.
Love and Shared Dreams
When Jonathan met Jackie in 2002 during their first day of college at Columbia College in Chicago, the poster was still hanging on his bedroom wall. Jackie’s first impression of Jonathan’s room was telling: “Your average 18-year-old boy in America does not have pictures of castles and village or villages on their bedroom wall… it just struck me as something really different.”
As their relationship developed, Jackie came to understand the significance of the poster and Jonathan’s dream. “You really had a dream. That you, it was more than a dream. That it was a goal,” she observed. This goal-oriented approach was part of what attracted her to Jonathan—”if I said I wanted to do something I would figure out how to do it.”
By 2004, they were both attending Purdue University’s Westville campus, and their limited finances from school and work provided an unexpected opportunity. Jonathan had already visited England once with his mother and wanted to return. The couple decided to use their spring break money for something educational rather than a typical beach vacation. “Why don’t we go to England and go do museums and go see architecture and all of that good stuff,” Jackie recalls thinking.
The First Journey to Gold Hill
Jackie’s initial reaction was skeptical: “You’re full of it. There’s no way we’re going to England for our spring break.” But Jonathan booked the tickets anyway, and by then he had learned that his poster depicted a real place called Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
Their 2004 trip to London was Jackie’s first experience of England, and it lived up to every storybook expectation. “When we stepped off the train, it looked like a storybook. It looked like all of the stories and images that are kind of like drip fed to American kids by England,” she remembers. The seeds of what would become Anglotopia were planted during this trip, but the immediate goal was reaching Gold Hill.
However, Jonathan’s social anxiety nearly derailed the plan. The day trip to Shaftesbury required booking train tickets by phone, and as Jonathan admits, “I have a thing about making phone calls.” Jackie stepped in: “This is ridiculous. This is the place you’ve been dreaming about for years. We’re going to go.” She picked up the phone and made the reservations herself.
The journey itself proved to be an education in British travel realities. What was supposed to be a straightforward train ride became an odyssey involving “rail replacement buses”—a concept completely foreign to the young Americans. “We learned some new British words that day,” Jonathan notes wryly. The confusing journey took most of the day, but they eventually reached Gillingham and took a taxi to Shaftesbury.
Standing in a Dream
The moment they rounded the path behind Shaftesbury’s town hall and saw Gold Hill for the first time was transformative. “Like, there was the poster,” Jackie remembers. “It’s the most surreal thing to stand in a poster.”
For Jonathan, the reality exceeded his imagination: “It was there. And it was a real place. And I was finally there and it just blew my mind… it was more beautiful in person than it was on the poster.” Even the typical English weather—rain and sleet during their visit—couldn’t dampen their spirits. They had tea and cake at the Salt Cellar café and simply absorbed the view.
The visit had a profound effect on Jonathan: “This place is amazing and now I want to be here as much as possible and because like this place is real it’s not a fake place it’s a place you can live it’s a place you can visit and it’s always there.” The experience was so significant that he later described it as “one of the top five days of my life.”
Financial Struggles and Business Inspiration
The years following their first visit were marked by attempts to return to Gold Hill, but financial constraints and personal challenges repeatedly intervened. Jonathan’s first job out of college didn’t pay well, and a pregnancy loss in 2006 both devastated the couple emotionally and created health complications that prevented travel.
By 2007, Jonathan was working at an internet retail company, learning digital marketing skills while struggling to make ends meet. “I wasn’t making enough at my job and I wasn’t going to for a while,” he explains. The combination of financial pressure and his growing expertise with online marketing led to a revelation: he couldn’t find a website that covered everything he was interested in knowing about Britain.
“I was like okay I want to start that website maybe I’ll make some money from doing it someday and maybe it will get us there get us back there,” Jonathan recalls. The goal was modest—not a full-time job, but enough extra income to fund their British travels.
Building Anglotopia from a Closet
In their tiny 600-square-foot Chicago apartment, Jonathan set up his “gigantic desk” in a walk-in closet that was large enough to sleep in. This became Anglotopia’s first headquarters. Initially, Jackie was skeptical about the venture’s prospects: “Nobody likes England as much as you like England… that’s nice, dear. Have fun with that.”
The early days involved total immersion in British culture. Sunday mornings became ritual recreations of British life: “We would like have a fry up… we would go down to the newsstand and get the British newspapers… we’d sit there and have our tea and toast and look at the papers. And it was a really special time.”
Jonathan poured all his free time into the website, often creating tension in their relationship. “I was spending my time with no return when I could have gotten a second job,” he admits. The project remained a side hustle for several years while they moved back to Indiana, where Jonathan got a better-paying job and could afford a house with a full basement that became proper Anglotopia headquarters.
The Contest That Changed Everything
The breakthrough came in 2009 when Jonathan learned about British Airways’ “Face of Opportunity” contest. The airline was trying to promote face-to-face business meetings during the post-2008 economic downturn when video conferencing was reducing transatlantic travel. The contest would award 100 round-trip tickets to Britain plus additional tickets to anywhere in the world that BA flew.
Unlike typical sweepstakes, this contest required contestants to write an essay explaining how winning would help their business grow. “This was a contest where you had to do something to win and I’m good at doing things,” Jonathan explains. A marketing executive at BA encouraged him to enter, saying he was “exactly the right kind of small business that we want to encourage.”
When Jonathan learned he had won while attending Dragon Con in Atlanta, the news was life-changing. “This is it like we’re finally gonna go back after I think it was three years at this point,” he remembers. For Jackie, the recognition was equally significant: “The fact that it was, and from a big corporation like British Airways, it felt like… this is not a hobby. This is a real thing now.”
Sleeping on Gold Hill
The contest prize included business class flights, two nights at the Park Lane Hilton, and business seminars in London. But the most meaningful part was what they arranged afterward: staying in Up Down Cottage on Gold Hill itself. They had been contacted by the cottage’s owners, who had begun renting it for self-catering accommodation.
“Somebody emailed us one day and said that hi we own one of the cottages on gold hill now and we’re letting him out for self-catering accommodation you can rent the cottage and sleep on gold hill we were like take our money,” Jonathan recalls.
The experience of actually living on Gold Hill exceeded even their dreams. “After going from seeing the poster on my wall, going to see Gold Hill and realizing it’s a real place and it’s a wonderful place… and then to sleep on Gold Hill,” Jonathan reflects. “Hearing the rain on the slate roof… cooking our own meals in the kitchen… that cottage became Anglotopia.”
For Jackie, the cottage immediately felt like home: “When I walk in the door to the cottage, it feels just as comfortable as the home I’m sitting in today.” The connection was so strong that they have since stayed 38 nights in Up Down Cottage, celebrating family milestones including their daughter’s first Christmas and first time sitting up independently.
From Hobby to Full-Time Business
The 2011 royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton presented another pivotal moment. When the BBC contacted Jonathan about covering the wedding, he committed to going despite having a newborn son and potential job complications. The situation came to a head when Jonathan was fired from his Chicago job just six weeks after William’s birth.
“I’ve just been fired from my job,” Jonathan called to tell Jackie, walking down a Chicago street with his box of belongings. Her response was immediate and supportive: “Congratulations, babe. Today is the first day you work for Anglotopia full time. Well done.”
The royal wedding coverage proved to be Anglotopia’s breakthrough moment. When technical difficulties prevented Jonathan from live-blogging from London, Jackie stepped in from their Indiana basement office, managing the website while caring for their newborn. “I feel like that at that point I noticed a trend with me it’s usually like trial by fire in every position I’ve ever had,” Jackie notes.
The Continuing Dream
Eight years after Jonathan began working full-time for Anglotopia, Gold Hill remains their spiritual home and ultimate goal. Despite business challenges and the practical difficulties of immigrating to Britain, the dream persists. “I have a very good life. I’m very blessed… but it’s a different kind of happiness when I’m sitting in the piano room at gold hill and looking at the blackmoor veil and having a cup of tea,” Jonathan explains.
Jackie shares this deep connection: “I feel like I’m meant to be there.” Their long-term goal remains owning “a cottage in English countryside somewhere” and spending as much time as possible in Britain. As Jonathan puts it, “The goal one day is we want to have… we want our own English… we want a cottage in English countryside.”
From Poster to Purpose
The journey from a Hobby Lobby poster to a successful business built around British culture demonstrates how deeply personal passions can evolve into professional purposes. What began as a teenager’s escape from winter misery became a shared dream, then a business model, and finally a way of life.
The story also illustrates the power of having a physical representation of one’s dreams. That poster hanging on Jonathan’s bedroom wall served as a daily reminder of possibilities beyond his immediate circumstances. When Jackie first saw it, she recognized something different about the young man who would choose villages over rock bands for his wall decorations.
Most significantly, the Gold Hill story shows how the most meaningful business ventures often spring from authentic personal connections rather than market analysis or profit projections. Anglotopia succeeded not because there was an obvious gap in the market for British culture websites, but because Jonathan’s genuine passion for one particular English hillside resonated with thousands of others who shared similar dreams of connection to Britain.
Today, that original poster might seem quaint in an age of infinite digital images, but its power lay not in its artistic merit but in its ability to represent possibility. For a miserable teenager in the American Midwest, it offered proof that beauty and tranquility existed somewhere in the world—and that someday, with enough determination and the right partner, he might actually reach it.
The cottage on Gold Hill where Jonathan and Jackie have spent 38 nights represents the fulfillment of that original dream, but also the launching point for new ones. As they continue to navigate the challenges of running a business built on passion for a place thousands of miles from home, Gold Hill remains both their inspiration and their ultimate destination.
