I keep getting asked about our allotment by my Merikan friends. I am guessing that no such thing exists in Merika. So, I'll try to explain it for you. I think I have done this before so bare with me.
An allotment is a small piece of land that is rented out to an individual for the purpose of growing food crops. The land is generally owned and rented by the local council but more and more as demand increases private land lords are also renting allotments. They tend to be more expensive though.
There is no set size for allotments but they are generally around 253 square metres. It's an odd figure but it relates to the old measurements of rods. Many years ago when the allotment system began the land was measured in rods and an allotment was 10 rods which equals today’s measurement of 253 metres. It is possible sometimes to rent a half plot or even a quarter plot.
Ours is a full size plot rented from our local council for the sum of £52 per year. This is about average. Local councils can charge whatever they want. Here there is a reduction for pensioners and they pay £32 per year.
The history of allotments goes back more than a 1000 years to the times when the Saxons cleared fields from woodland and the land was held in common. After the Norman conquest land ownership was most often in the hands of the manorial lords, the church and the monasteries. Then came the reformation in the 1540's and a lot of the church land was confiscated and transferred to the lords.
In the late 1500's during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first, common land which was used by the poor for growing crops and grazing animals began to be enclosed. This made life very hard for the lower classes. To compensate them plots (allotments) of land were attached to tenant (tithe) cottages. It is here where allotments really began.
During the 17th and 18th centuries more and more people lived in the towns and more land was being enclosed. The change from a subsistence economy to an industrial one saw increasing numbers of poor starving with no money to buy food and no land on which to grow it. in 1836 and 1840 acts of parliament made it possible for landowners to enclose land without reference to parliament as long as they were all in agreement. These were the general enclosure acts.
A further act in 1845 and other amendments tried to provide protection for the public. The government of the day were fearful of uprisings and so this act provided for land to be set aside for the poor who had no land of their own. It was to be in the form of field gardens of a quarter acre.
Unfortunately the act failed to actually provide much land. In fact of the 615,000 acres enclosed only just over 2,000 actually became allotments.
Next came the allotment act of 1887. This act obliged local authorities to provide allotments if there was a demand for them. The local authorities resisted complying with the act which meant several further acts being passed in 1907 and 1908.
Then of course in 1914 came the war and food shortages, suddenly the demand for allotments was at it's highest. Land was urgently needed. One source of land suitable for allotments but not large enough for general agricultural use was the land owned by railway companies. These parcels of land were often allotted to the railway workers and this is the reason that you will often see allotments by railway lines today. Our allotment has the London (kings Cross) mainline to Edinburgh running right behind it
After the War there was a decrease in demand for allotments and this, combined with increased demand for building land for housing reduced the number of allotments..............until once again war came and of course food shortages. The pressure this time round was even greater than that of the First World War and even public parks were pressed into use for food production.
Most of you will have seen the famous 'Dig for Victory' campaign memorabilia which exhorted and educated the public to produce their own food . Food rationing kept the demand for allotments and home grown foods high until the end of the war and beyond.
However after the war there was huge demand for more and more building land and the Allotments Advisory Body recommended a scale of provision of 4 acres per 1,000 head of population. This resulted in the Allotment Act of 1950.
Following the peak of 1,400,000 in 1943 there was a sharp decline in allotment provision to around 500,00 in the 1970s. The decline continued during the 1970s but at a much slower rate. During the mid to late 1970s there was a huge upturn in interest in self-sufficiency and home food production due mainly to the popular TV series The Good Life which ran from 1975 to 1978. It was short lived though and the rate of decline again increased encouraged by the continuing increase in land and housing costs, which created an incentive to hard pressed local authorities to sell allotment land for high prices to housing developers.
By 1996 there were around 297,000 plots available across the whole country. Much more recently the trend has once again started to climb upwards as people have started to become concerned about genetic modification of foodstuffs, chemical pollution and contamination amongst other things. Then of course there are rising prices and our growing concerns about food miles. All of this means that empty plots are now a thing of the past and in fact a great many places have very long waiting lists. I do mean long too. 5- 8 years in some places is not unheard of.
We struck lucky. When we first made enquiries in January of 2009 our nearest allotment site had a 4 year waiting list but the nice man at the council said there was another site across the other side of the city that had no list and several vacant plots. The other side of the city just happened to be 5 minutes walk from where Coralie used to live and as it was Coralie and I who were taking it on, it was perfect.
Coralie of course dropped out after that first year because she had Evan and Flynn was on the way. She likes to visit with the boys and will help out occasionally but it is very much mine and Simons. Why did we take it on? Well for pretty much all the reasons mentioned above. Plus it is exercise out in the fresh air which has to be good.
Our garden here at home is very, very small and with 3 large Dalmatians running around the place it isn't suitable for much growing certainly not on the scale we wanted. I do grow stuff at home in pots though and in fact all my tomatoes are grown here. The allotment is about 4 or 5 miles away so tomatoes with their need for regular water would never survive. The allotment has stand pipes for water which are on from April until September. We have a water butt which we keep topped up.
We took on our allotment at the end of January 2009 so we are just beginning our third year. We were and still are complete and utter gardening novices. We are learning as we go. When we started out the site was completely overgrown and had a ramshackle “shed”. It has now been totally cleared and this year the entire plot will be planted. We have also laid a path and built a shed and another lean to building for storage and shelter from the rain. I think we have done rather well in 2 years. Remember we have very limited time. Weekends and summer evenings is about it. I am hoping this year if the weather is good to cycle over there after lunch and Simon will meet me after school. We will probably cook there after doing some work.
That has been one of the best unexpected aspects of the whole venture the social side of it. I don't mean with other allotment holders as we rarely see them (they are mostly retired people so tend to be there during the day) but with our own family. All the grandchildren love the allotment and are very keen to help. We have had some wonderful barbecues with the whole family in attendance even my sister. They have to work to get their food though! Hopefully if the summer is good there will be a lot more this year.
Hope that has now explained the whole allotment thing for you! If it hasn't, well Google it!
Jilly
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