Allotments

Allotments  have a variety of forms and uses. They are important today as they were in the past. The purpose of them and their function may have changed, but as fiscal pressures become greater they may become even more significant to people by reverting to their original purpose: To enable those not receiving enough renumeration from their labours to support themselves and their families.

This was the original purpose of allotments, whether to enable those denied their own land rights by enclosure to still supply their own food, or to enable industrial workers and their families fend for themselves in jobs of seasonality  with uncertain income.[i]

As such I will dance around the history of the rich tapestry of allotments that adorn Britain and look at their origins and development, alongside other schemes and structure, from their rural beginnings to a more widespread  asset valued by so many more than the labouring and working classes that dominated their use until relatively recently.

A Northumbrian Allotment

Allotments are often misunderstood as they have fulfilled many functions in different areas and are popularly perceived today as a means of urban folk in city areas having access to land to cultivate their own fruit, vegetables and flowers. But this is not the origin of allotments which is firmly based in the realms of the landless rural labouring classes and to an extent before that time.

To consider allotments I will first go back in time to a different system of land management that dominated East Anglia and the East Midlands from the 6^th century onwards – the open field system. Like allotments, this system of land management and use was not the most economically efficient, but it inbuilt an important social function, ensured co-operation and a structure that worked until the enclosures and estate building of the sixteenth century, the later having more in common with the larger Roman farming estates in Southern England.

The open field system was brought to Eastern England by European colonists along with common grazing land shared by all that continued to survive to modern times albeit greatly reducing as commons rights have been eroded. As colonists arrived in Eastern England individual farm steads were established. As these grew and became larger settlements and villages the structure of open field farming, already well established in Europe (and possibly of Persian origin) was adopted. If you visit Laxton in Nottinghamshire there is the last remaining open field system adapted to modern farming.

The open field system typically involved a village having three or four large fields and a common ground. Each field was split into furlongs, effectively smaller fields and each furlong into strips. As these formed by taking land into cultivation each farmer received a share of land in the form of so many strips. To enable a degree of efficiency each field would usually grow the same crop in rotation. In a three field system this would typically have winter sown wheat in one field, spring barley or peas in a second, and the third field would be fallow. Of course, modern farming means the fields of Laxton are considerably difference in appearance to the past, but the structure of management by a local jury has remained with the Crown being the overall landlord. Now in itself the actual open field system has no direct relation to allotments until you account for how allotments were used to “compensate”  those losing land by the enclosures of land which effectively amounted to a land grab by landlords from the previously co-operative movement of open field management. I use compensation in the loosest form, for what happened is that prior manorial and copyhold  rights in land were lost by people along with rights to common land. This made more people reliant upon the larger land owners  for income and as an ultimate source of welfare either directly from land owners or via the Church and Parish. Landowners needed workers and people that could be self-sufficient and not too large a draw on resources, therefore, as land was enclosed, allotments were created to enable people to grow their own food or keep small amounts of livestock subject to the land owners consent.

Alongside the development of allotments you saw the rural cottager develop as a self-reliant man and family unit that owned their meagre dwelling, worked the land around it, and exploited the environment. In the Fens this was rich pickings with wildfowl, waders, eggs, eels, fish, common grazing rights, reed cutting, willow pollarding to name but a few of the relatively freely available resources. The cottager was less reliant upon allotments than his tied land-working counterpart who had less resources, independence or freedom and was reliant upon the landowner for housing and work.

In 1908 we still see the farm worker referred to as “farm servants” in two classes: “Farm servants are stewards or bailiffs, ploughmen, shepherds, cattlemen, hedgers and field workers who are hired by the year, half-year or month and ought to be lodged on the farm. Whereas occasional workers need not be lodged on the farm”[ii] – these lived in villages, cottages or camped out seasonally.

The emphasis that I make is that the origins of allotments were rural, but it needs to be remembered that the barriers between urban and rural were much more blurred in the pre-industrial age.

The development of agriculture, the Agricultural Revolution, as it is so often labelled, enabled more economically efficient land use and the growth of the towns and cities where industry thrived. But, key to understanding allotments is that they were originally intended to supply a means of self provision to the rural landless, many who had suffered inter-generational loss of land and subsequent succession through enclosures.[iii] As industry developed so too did the ability to migrate to towns for work that was often closer to any accommodation.

The rural allotment was seen as a source of the poor helping themselves, but also a means of keeping the rural poor out of trouble and working rather than other temptations such as inns and beer houses and debauched and criminal behaviour.  As Canon Edward Moore describes in Spalding in 1867, “ It employs their leisure hours, keeps them out of idle company and beer shops, gives them an interest in their Sunday walk, makes them thoughtful in their cultivations of their gardens, and is profitable to them. They teach their children also to work on the land.”[iv] Thus we see the rural allotment used as a means of social and moral control.

There were others that saw the rural allotment as a business opportunity as with many tenants they could charge a high aggregate rent on very poor land, have it improved by the efforts of the allotment holders and then evict them and sell it at its new higher value.  Canon Moore expressed his disgust at Sir Culling E Smith and other land owners in the Spalding area that had allottees take on derelict land, work it and redeem it from a bad state to a useful cultivated state only to be  given notice to quit, and sell the land from under them at a profit. Other sharp practice saw landlords only allowing the tenants to use seed bought off them, or charging to plough the site of the allotments negating much of the benefit. Canon Moore advocated that allottees should have compensation when being evicted from land they had maintained and improved. There were also restrictions upon livestock on allotments, often deemed as practical, but this limited the potential for the poor to accumulate capital. Livestock were a tool of social mobility.

The 1845 Inclosure Act did little to help rural allotments, however it did establish a legal process and structure  for acquisition of land to provide allotments that could be used by local authorities.

You see great variations in the rules applied to the use of rural allotments  and this would also be seen as allotments became urbanized.

From the 18^th into the 19^th century decline in rural living conditions in some regions combined with increased opportunity in towns and cities saw the migration of country people to the towns. These people had the skills and knowledge to grow their own food, but no area to do it in. Thus allotments grew in number. In 1765  you can see adverts in Birmingham for “guinea gardens” to be rented.

This transition of industrialisation and change was extremely painful to poor rural workers. They were squeezed from two directions: land was being lost to enclosure; agricultural efficiency and machinery were being used to lower wages. There were great regional disparities in the fortunes of agricultural workers  with the worst affected being in the South-East of England. The period of peace after the Napoleonic Wars brought lower grain prices. The church was demanding tithes to fund an increasingly poverty stricken population. Hence there grew a political pressure from the land-owning voter to see an increase in allotments. Poor people with allotments could tend those rather than cause trouble and in doing so reduce the welfare burden of the parishes. The influx of cheap Irish labour  from 1845 added to the pressures driving  more agricultural labouring class into the cities.

The migration of rural poor to growing industrial towns and cities of the Midlands saw large groups of rural people in some areas being housed in new conurbations and allotted allotments to enable them to self-support using their past rural growing skills. There was a recognition that this made business sense as it would help maintain low wages and keep people from pubs, crime or prostitution.

The Swing Riots of agricultural labour in the South East in the 1830’s had a harsh response from the government with executions and deportations. The development of industry in the Midlands reduced the pressure of low wages in the Fens where there was a growing shortage of labour as more land was being drained. Labour in the Fens saw little interest in rioting  and the resources available for extra income in the Fens combined with its remoteness meant there was very little interest in rioting in the area. However, land owners and Parish Councils took note of the unrest elsewhere and sought to expand allotments.

We see a massive increase in the requirement for both rural and urban plots of allotments from 1850 onwards. By 1894 it was a significant issue for local politics in the Fens of South Lincolnshire and you see candidates for Parish Councils, “strongly in favour of the working man having the full benefit of the Allotment Acts of 1887 and 1890” , promising to do their best to secure suitable and sufficient local land as allotments. You see this issue echoed from Spalding all the way through the Parishes to the Norfolk border at Long Sutton. The 1894 Local Government Act had democratized the old Incorporations that managed the towns and parishes and the independence of a small amount of land was a significant Fenland issue.

By 1908 Acts of Parliament created a duty of local authorities to provide allotments with as few as six registered voters or rate payers being all that was required to demand such provision.

The period from the 1880’s through to the 1950’s saw the greatest growth of allotments in both rural and urban areas, with Birmingham being a leading provider of allotments as the city grew.

In the Fenland counties we saw the growth of the flower and bulb industries initiated by smallholders and allotment tenants. Similarly in cities and towns allotment holders increasingly found they could make money from growing cut flowers in a relatively short season. Town and country allotments possibly complemented each other. Thus from the 1850’s on you see increasing numbers of local flower shows and competitions alongside fruit and veg growing. Such activities were encouraged by the Church, gentry and the newly wealthy owners of industry as wholesome activities keeping the labouring poor, rural and urban, farmer or miner, away from drink, crime and lewd behaviour.

It is interesting that when you compare the importance of allotments in say rural Lincolnshire or in a coal-mining area such as Durham you see differences and commonalities. Both miners and farm labourers had difficult manual jobs with poor housing and a dependence upon avoiding death or injury for the main breadwinners. Looking at newspapers of the same era you see individual injuries and death in both industries, but the miner had the risk of many being killed and therefore a more dramatic record was created. The modern equivalent is that more people are killed in road accidents than aeroplane accidents, but the later tends to be more noticeable due to the greater loss of people in one incident. Both miners and farm labourers had a common hazard of seasonality. This is more greatly understood in farming as the seasons tend to be obvious. George Orwell in Road to Wigan Pier goes to great pains to explain that whilst miners often appear well paid the seasonality of coal demand could cause lay-offs resulting in periods of no income. Indeed today, in modern times, we see a great play by some large vegetable producers in farming claiming good pay available whilst overlooking the seasonality of the work and the lay-offs due to weather or crop condition. In the nineteenth century the allotment was a lifeline to both types of working class when income dropped. At the same time, as well as providing an element of self-support, allotments provided community engagement for families, both rural and industrial.

By the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 there were a growing number of allotments across the country with industrial and urban areas seeing the largest growth. Allotments were supplied by a mixture of local authority purchases, private landlords, local charities or in the case of industrial areas, worker’s associations obtaining their own allotments.

As WW1 broke out concern for food security that had been expressed by the Admiralty since the turn of the century came into focus. Local authorities were given the power to compulsory purchase land for the War effort including the supply of allotments. The situation was to be so much worse than the Admiralty predicted as 60% of Britain’s food supply was imported including 80% of its wheat. Over 60% of our sugar supply was from our enemy, Germany. Britain was not only reliant upon its Empire for food, but had become reliant upon its enemy for a key food commodity. The Admiralty had warned of this, and the  only area it had made any preparation was by procuring large quantities of frozen meat from Australia, New Zealand and South America. Land use in Britain was transformed with public parks and gardens transformed into allotments resulting in a growth of the allotment to such an extent that by the end of the War there was the equivalent of an allotment for every five households providing some food to take the pressure off a population that was subject to rationing.

Wartime would start to see a widening difference between rural and urban allotments in various ways. Rural allotments would see greater provision for livestock by having separate grass areas fenced off with restrictions on how these grazed areas are used, usually restricting livestock numbers and the access by horses for grazing.

Throughout the twentieth century the rural allotment was a source of social mobility in various ways. In the Fens in particular it enabled many farm labourers to amass a small amount of extra capital to buy a small holding and grow from there. I have seen many examples of this with perhaps the most memorable being Clem Tompsett, a Cambridgeshire farmer that was to become known as the Carrot King of the Fens. Clem told me that aged 11 he had the use of a small allotment, planted asparagus and took that to market on his bike and after two seasons had bought his first field of 8 ½ acres at age 14.

In contrast urban and industrial allotments had no provision for large livestock and many had restrictions disallowing rabbits and poultry being kept – rationing in WW1 changed this in many cases. In addition pigeon lofts were common on industrial and urban allotments and you see a legacy of this to this day, especially in former mining areas, as retired miners became a core occupier of allotments in those regions. Another key group of people in urban and industrial areas that occupies allotments were railway workers who in the 1920’s and 30’s enjoyed preferential listing on the waiting lists for allotments owned by the railway companies. A legacy of this is why so many allotments are adjacent to railway lines. [v]

World War 1 saw a class of allotment develop out of the 1917 land Settlement Scheme. Learning from the Napoleonic Wars  it was realized that a large scale mobilization of soldiers and sailors in WW1 would cause a severe problem as they were discharged, either through injury and illness or by the ultimate end of the War. The risk was that the barrack towns and naval seaport areas could become  over-run with men without adequate employment or means to support themselves. Insurrection was also a fear looking to Russia. The Land Settlement Scheme gave the authority primarily for Crown land to be procured and split into small holdings to address the twin problems of returning servicemen and food shortages. There was also an issue caused by conscription in that smallholding tenants had lost their livelihoods in the War because they were unable to maintain their tenancies leaving them landless and without their prior means of income. In addition farm workers found themselves denied return to their former jobs and housing. Farming and farm work was not a fully protected reserve occupation. Long Sutton born Sir Richard Winfrey was an advocate of the scheme. These were originally spread throughout England, Scotland and Wales taking 8000 acres of Crown land in total, with the largest acreage of land settlement colonies set up in Yorkshire totalling 2000 acres. 1000 acres of settlement land was obtained in Lincolnshire. But the whole scheme was half-cock. Sir Richard Winfrey identified this in a speech in August 1917 that was to become a growing issue:

“The Government had made no arrangements for the advance of capital to soldiers to enable them to become smallholders. But he had seen several who were discharged from the Army, and found that a good many of them had a little capital of their own, and the Board were of the opinion that if these men were, in the first instance, put on land as ordinary working people they would be able to, with their small capital and the pensions some of them had, to take the small holdings.”

The problem was Sir Richard Winfrey and his Board were relatively well-off people, many of them liberal idealists, but out of touch with reality. The early success stories were heralded in the press and the failures buried. One of the first heralded success stories  was an officer retired out of the army setting up as a pig farmer at Moulton Seas End Crown Colony. The reality is that only a few land settlements worked, others got broken up into allotments, or local farmers that had been initially displaced from their land tenancies with the Crown took back the use of the land. The thinking behind these settlements  and allotments was the idea of a “Yeoman” class half-way between peasants working the land and the landed gentry. The flexibility of such people was commercially and socially attractive to those well off. Bizarrely, it had a spin-off with some of the industrialists that were from the land-owning gentry seeking to replicate this with larger allotments in industrial and urban areas.[vi]

So we see in many parts of the country what was intended to be small holdings reverting to becoming allotments.

Post WW1 saw the restoration of the agricultural depression that had started in the late 19^th century in many rural areas, coupled with a slump in industry that was to enlarge into a full blown economic depression by the late 1920’s . Coal miners, steel workers and manufacturing were all hit hard. Hunger, starvation and even revolution were feared. Politically allotments were seen as a fashionable solution. The prolific real crime writer of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, Hargrave Lee Adam advocated for allotments to be used as a basis of creating garden cities for the growing numbers of unemployed, supported by such contemporary literary friends as H.G. Wells. What is notable in his essay advocating this is the way the “unemployed workers” are spoken of as “others!. Hargrave Lee Adam even argued that these garden cities could be established not just in Britain, but in other countries – lets ship our poverty abroad in a colonial way as long as we shift the problem. H.L. Adam and H.G. Wells were both Labour party supporters, but their concept of garden cities of allotments was also advocated by National Socialists like Henry Williamson and Oswald Moseley, possibly summing up the lack of worth of intellectual socialists of both types, out of touch with the reality of people’s suffering. The alarming factor for me is that they saw allotments as a solution, whereas they were clearly not.

In Wales and Durham I have read accounts of miners in the 1920’s being unable to pay the rent of their allotments, some of the local authorities in these areas sub-letting these allotments did not feel able or willing to fund the loss so relinquished the holdings back to the land-lords resulting in eviction of all, including those able to pay rent for allotments. Parts of Durham saw 40% unemployed and this was to get worse in the 1930’s. What made the period of unemployment worse into the 1930’s was the cut in unemployment benefit – the sale of up to 3 shillings  of produce a week from an allotment was permitted without unemployment benefit being disallowed, but this concession barely bridged the gap. The number of suicides being reported of older men and women in areas most seriously hit by unemployment was significant and can be seen throughout the 1920’s through to 1938.

The Land Settlement Scheme again rose its head as a solution  and following a supporting Act of Parliament in 1931 many schemes took place. The schemes were tasked with two main aims: to transfer unemployed families from their areas to full time occupation on self-supporting holdings; to  provide part-time holdings of between a quarter and half an acre  for the unemployed in their own areas.  As with the Serviceman’s Settlement Scheme of 1917 funds were not forthcoming relying upon charitable public donations for capital with matched funding £ for £ by the Development Commission capped at a total expenditure of £75,000 over three years. In my book, “Marsh Fen and Town South Lincolnshire and Beyond” I describe some of the mixed successes of these schemes. Taking working age men from their old communities took a significant psychological toll, but in many parts of the North East of England unemployment levels had reached 73% by 1935. Men were taken from the Tyne Tees area and Durham to work in Spalding. In 1935 we see one trainee land settler receiving notice from his 17 year old son of his wife’s suicide in North Shields. Another account sees a boiler maker by trade having had only piecemeal casual work for 15 years finding the change to land work away from his wife and three children a huge strain. These land settlement schemes were well intentioned, but were established by a class of people that did not understand the place of trade in a different working class culture had invested in their identity and lives.

Successes in the land settlement scheme were heralded giving a familiar impression of government doing something and failure was ignored. One of those heralded successes was with former Durham miners moved to Potton in Bedfordshire in this rather polished description of success:

“Developments on the social side have been promising. The total community represented well over 150 people, and the problem of assimilating so large a group into the general life of a small village was not easy. The work had to be done gradually and the men made accustomed to regard themselves no longer as Durham miners but as Bedfordshire farmers. Already four of the settlers are on the committee of the local British Legion, one of their wives is on the committee of the Women’s Institute and several sing in the village choir. Every one of the settlers families over school age has already found employment in the district.”

Many failed. In the Spalding land settlement this resulted in successful horticulturists and their families gradually acquiring more plots. In other areas it saw the land settlements split into smaller allotments worked by farm labourers and the cottager class.

Allotments in the North East fared better in their management as the social family and friendship structures to support each other in managing their plots already existed. The 1930’s saw a massive increase in allotments in both rural and urban areas, but this was to more than double over the period of WW2 with “Dig for Victory” during wartime and “Dig for Plenty” after 1945 in the post-War rationing period.

The increase in fortunes in Britain was summed up famously in 1957 by Harold Macmillan saying in Bedford, “most of our people have never had it so good.” For many this was not the case, but as food in particular came off ration, became cheaper and employment improved those people that had time and a need in an era of shortage no longer had a wish to keep allotments. In addition, the ‘absolute beginner’ generation had a wider choice of leisure and entertainment to spend their time and money on. By 1960 allotments dropped to pre WW2 numbers.

As allotment use declined we see a wide variation in the regions. Certainly in the industrial northern areas and in London the popularity of allotments was maintained. I have seen pictures of tiny stalls outside people’s homes selling produce in Ashington and Burnley and have been told people supplemented their income selling eggs, and fruit and veg from these. Allotments retained their popularity in smaller rural towns and villages, but this tended to wane in larger towns where competition for land use was displacing them. Key to their viability was low cost of rents and affordability of the allotments.

In rural areas in the 1970’s there was a significant change in how allotment land was used and for some it had the benefit of cheap land to be farmed as tenants were allowed to rent increasing areas or whole allotment sites. For some this had the benefit, and still does in some areas, of cheap rented land to be farmed providing a degree of social and economic mobility for some entering farming, or farming on a small scale as a supplementary income. However, this denied the use of the land for its original intention as individual allotments. That is, we see people acquire adjacent and multiple plots of allotments and eventually the whole site. I’ve seen this in the Fens and elsewhere in both the East Midlands and Norfolk where I saw farming clients effectively benefitting from the low rent of what was actually allotment land. Effectively these allotments became fields  rented cheaply by one tenant. This was highly controversial as we entered the 1990’s and a greater interest in allotments in both town and country grew. Perhaps fuelled by the likes of Ainsley Harriot flouncing around a City allotment in Bristol or Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Nigel Slater using food in their gardens and “living off the land” the interest in allotments grew with the middle classes. A generation that had been brought up in working class households were entering the property owning middle classes. In addition Tom and Barbara Good had dropped out of the rat race and turned their suburban garden into a micro farm in the sit com The Good Life. But the 1980’s was seeing a shrinkage in the size of housing that has continued to this to this day. In my old home town of Spalding, as in almost every town, this is illustrated by the size of houses and plots in the 1970’s built houses being much larger than those built from the 1980’s onwards, with modern four bed houses building upwards on relatively small plots in 2025. Elsewhere if you look at the council houses built before or just after WW2 the size of gardens is typically much larger than today’s “affordable” housing. [vii] Therefore, it is not surprising that increasingly more middle class people sought allotments throughout the 1990’s and into the following century. Some sought to gentrify allotments with increasing bans on keeping chickens or pigeons in some areas. Rents increased in fashionable areas and on private allotments. In Bristol in 2024 we see the ability for the local authority to subsidize allotment costs, despite its green credentials, looking at 100% rises on some plots plus extra fees for sheds or keeping chickens or bees.

The rise of the middle class entering allotments had a potential benefit. It has to be recognized that allotments and their nature are as varied as the many tongues and accents that speak throughout the UK. Where middle class enter allotments of traditional working class area it does have a great social benefit of interaction between the classes on an equal footing. This mixing of classes was so much greater in the 1960’s and was lost in my opinion.

An allotment can be a great equator where within the fence of the allotment individuals can mix on a level.  All sorts of social barriers can be broken down by the common interest that is the allotment. The allotment can be a great escape from stress, status, class and can be a great freedom. I believe Jeremy Corbyn understands this  as he tends his marrows and interacts with fellow allotment tenants. It is perhaps, in this way, a most English thing. To understand this consider Lord Exeter at Burghley chatting to one of his tenants, a relation of mine, wondering what she was cutting in her garden. “Cress” she replied, “would you like some?” With that she cut some and put it in a paper bag and the elderly Lord wandered off, “Jolly good, I will get cook to make some egg and cress sandwiches I haven’t had any for years.” Such interactions across class are priceless and remind us of each other’s humanity.

Allotments have always competed for land use, but now increasingly we see them move away from being a working class amenity to becoming significant real estate bolstered by long waiting lists. Not least in the form of Network Rail that benefits from a legacy of the old Railway Companies with allotments on otherwise underdeveloped land adjacent to railway lines. Network Rail, owned by the Department of Transport has a huge asset base of undeveloped land that includes allotments. Any government short of cash will look at the commercial utilization of these land assets to the detriment of allotments. Now as I write, I know little about these sites and their usage, but I do understand their historic importance in the past and whilst this may have evolved I believe the importance of allotments has not diminished. As such any attack on what was a traditional working class asset is now an attack on a far wider group of beneficiaries, but, as ever, those at the bottom of the pile will feel it most and bare the greatest consequence.

Allotments in Rothbury Northumberland

[i] It is often not understood that those working in industry suffered from uneven incomes, for example cotton mills only provided work when the supply of cotton was plentiful at the right price, if you read George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier he describes the nature of uneven income for miners with less coal required at times causing lay-offs, thus what was on the face of it was a good wage was eroded by the uncertainty and variation of that income to the detriment of the workers and their families. Also the nature of industrial development meant that each conurbation in Britain largely relied on one industry, or one type of industry, making it very vulnerable to the fortunes of that industry.

[ii] Stephens Book of the Farm 1908

[iii] China has seen a similar land grab and loss of  land by rural populations over a shorter period in modern times, that the West easily condemns without acknowledgement of its past.

[iv] Employment of Young Women and Children in Agriculture 1867 Edward Stanhope’s report

[v] In 2025 this is possibly of great significance for Angela Rayner’s proposed permitted development of allotments.

[vi] There was a clear class and religious/political split – the landed gentry were largely Conservative and Church of England; the self-made industrialists were largely Liberal from non-conformist faiths such as Quaker, Methodist and Baptists.

[vii] The 3 bed home I current live in was built as a council house in 1947, both the plot and the house are over a third larger than my old 3 bed house built in Spalding in the 1980’s.