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The Allotment: Its Landscape And Culture
From the back cover:
“ Allotment gardens are taken for granted as part of the everyday scene on the fringe of every city, town and village. This unique and fascinating book explores the culture and landscape of the allotment and the part it has played in Britain for 150 years.
The old mental image of the cloth-capped plot-holder, sitting in his shed on a Sunday morning and pedalling home with a bunch of carrots over his handlebars is no longer valid. Recent research is showing that more and more plot-holders are young or women. However that allotment is under threat and long-held sites have been taken over. A new introduction describes these changes.
Rich in local history and anecdote, The Allotment explores regional variations like pigeon-fancying and leek competitions, as well as alternative uses and international comparisons.
Are allotments simply a recreation like tennis or golf, or the last precious vestige of everyone’s natural right to a patch of land to produce food? ”
“ Allotment gardens are taken for granted as part of the everyday scene on the fringe of every city, town and village. This unique and fascinating book explores the culture and landscape of the allotment and the part it has played in Britain for 150 years.
The old mental image of the cloth-capped plot-holder, sitting in his shed on a Sunday morning and pedalling home with a bunch of carrots over his handlebars is no longer valid. Recent research is showing that more and more plot-holders are young or women. However that allotment is under threat and long-held sites have been taken over. A new introduction describes these changes.
Rich in local history and anecdote, The Allotment explores regional variations like pigeon-fancying and leek competitions, as well as alternative uses and international comparisons.
Are allotments simply a recreation like tennis or golf, or the last precious vestige of everyone’s natural right to a patch of land to produce food? ”
- GenresNonfiction
313 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
65 people want to read
About the author
David Crouch
66 books17 followersDavid Bruce Crouch, FRHistS, FBA, was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Hull, where he taught from 2003 until his retirement in 2018.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 20, 2024
If you're after a definitive history of how allotments originated, developed and survived in England, this is a must read.
I didn't realise that they came about following the Enclosures Act when commonly owned land used by ordinary people to grow produce and rear animals, was seized by landowners and sealed off. I would like to have read more about why landowners thought such common land was theirs to take and whether their actions were tested in court but I guess that's another book.
The chapters about allotments during the two world wars are fascinating, how private landowners generously gave land to be turned into plots as the governments of the day challenged and encouraged people to grow their own. It led to a massive allotment movement, contributing a huge amount to food production when it was so scarce. The authors write how many households became virtually self sufficient, particularly those with livestock too. They remind the reader how many industrial communities - miners and railway workers used their nearby plots throughout the year for raising vegetables, fruit and meat, and how there are still the odd allotment keepers who keep chickens and even pigs.
There's a theme running through this book about how allotment keepers have always been outside of the normal population - often free thinkers fed up with modern processing of food, mass production and bland tasting produce, certainly individuals, most often lovers of fresh air, the earth, organic produce and revelling in the fact that they've got a little bit of their own land to cultivate, albeit rented. But that in itself is quite extraordinary as illustrated by the authors - how in this modern world where property and land prices are outside the dreams of the average working Englander, that there are small plots of land being rented at very low rates.
I congratulate the authors in highlighting how some councils have deliberately neglected their duties as custodians and landlords of allotments to pretend they're unwanted despite long waiting lists and then selling the land off for yet more housing.
On the flip side of that, again highlighted by the authors, is the law that stipulates if five or more different residents in a council area demand an area to cultivate - the council must provide it. Hear hear ....but I wonder if that's ever happened ?
I had to smile when I read the chapter about the odd shaped sheds and other structures built on allotments and how they give the often junkyard view to onlookers. To administer such individualism is quite difficult for allotment landlords and committees.
They also describe well how tough it is to get allotment holders to organise themselves and run the national society, how often it's the same small group of wiling and hardworking peopleeft with the responsibility of running things. Aligned with that is the authors' observation that most allotment holders are older and how young, fresh blood is needed.
There's an interesting chapter on allotments in other countries and how they thrive but sometimes disappear as in Sweden, and how allotment holders in the UK who've settled from foreign countries have introduced new crops and vegetables to the scene.
The authors are to be praised for this book - for standing up for the allotment movement - "the allotment is a humble part of the contemporary world but it enshrines values and priorities that everyone agrees with....a whole range of human rights...human relationships within a physical world...the man with a bunch of carrots over his handlebars has not survived despite the enormous changes in our culture, but because of them.'
I didn't realise that they came about following the Enclosures Act when commonly owned land used by ordinary people to grow produce and rear animals, was seized by landowners and sealed off. I would like to have read more about why landowners thought such common land was theirs to take and whether their actions were tested in court but I guess that's another book.
The chapters about allotments during the two world wars are fascinating, how private landowners generously gave land to be turned into plots as the governments of the day challenged and encouraged people to grow their own. It led to a massive allotment movement, contributing a huge amount to food production when it was so scarce. The authors write how many households became virtually self sufficient, particularly those with livestock too. They remind the reader how many industrial communities - miners and railway workers used their nearby plots throughout the year for raising vegetables, fruit and meat, and how there are still the odd allotment keepers who keep chickens and even pigs.
There's a theme running through this book about how allotment keepers have always been outside of the normal population - often free thinkers fed up with modern processing of food, mass production and bland tasting produce, certainly individuals, most often lovers of fresh air, the earth, organic produce and revelling in the fact that they've got a little bit of their own land to cultivate, albeit rented. But that in itself is quite extraordinary as illustrated by the authors - how in this modern world where property and land prices are outside the dreams of the average working Englander, that there are small plots of land being rented at very low rates.
I congratulate the authors in highlighting how some councils have deliberately neglected their duties as custodians and landlords of allotments to pretend they're unwanted despite long waiting lists and then selling the land off for yet more housing.
On the flip side of that, again highlighted by the authors, is the law that stipulates if five or more different residents in a council area demand an area to cultivate - the council must provide it. Hear hear ....but I wonder if that's ever happened ?
I had to smile when I read the chapter about the odd shaped sheds and other structures built on allotments and how they give the often junkyard view to onlookers. To administer such individualism is quite difficult for allotment landlords and committees.
They also describe well how tough it is to get allotment holders to organise themselves and run the national society, how often it's the same small group of wiling and hardworking peopleeft with the responsibility of running things. Aligned with that is the authors' observation that most allotment holders are older and how young, fresh blood is needed.
There's an interesting chapter on allotments in other countries and how they thrive but sometimes disappear as in Sweden, and how allotment holders in the UK who've settled from foreign countries have introduced new crops and vegetables to the scene.
The authors are to be praised for this book - for standing up for the allotment movement - "the allotment is a humble part of the contemporary world but it enshrines values and priorities that everyone agrees with....a whole range of human rights...human relationships within a physical world...the man with a bunch of carrots over his handlebars has not survived despite the enormous changes in our culture, but because of them.'
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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