DID YOUR ANCESTOR HAVE AN ALLOTMENT?

The enclosure of the countryside resulted in many small and scattered landholdings being consolidated into larger areas of land . This subsequently removed food production from small producers to the wealthy landowners. In addition to losing their land, cottagers and even the yeoman farmers lost their common rights. The loss of land and poor harvests in the mid to late 1790s, the Napoleonic Wars, decline in real terms of wages and unemployment all contributed to economic hardship. This initiated the allotment movement.

By 1830 the position of the agricultural labourer, besides being affected by the elements listed above, was that many were unable to subsist and this resulted in the Swing Riots. One positive aspect of the plight was the growth in the allotment system over the next forty or so years. The success of the allotment scheme was in part due to the involvement of the Labourers' Friend Society, established in 1815 by helping labourers to acquire land and generally promoting and raising awareness of allotment grounds. The Labourer’s Friend Magazine helped by providing practical information on establishing an allotment and providing information about allotment tenancy agreements.

From the seventeenth century land was being enclosed and many families moved from rural areas to large towns and the cities. This migration, which took time to achieve, meant a move from rural to urban poverty for many - despite the incentives to move. If anything, it increased the number of poor who needed land on which to grow fruit and vegetables to subsist. In the rural communities most had access to land to grow their vegetables but in urban areas there was an increasing shortage of available space.

By the nineteenth century the General Enclosure Acts made it possible for landowners to enclose land without the need for permission, and as long as a majority of them agreed to do so. The General Enclosure Act 1845 and later amendments to that Act attempted to provide for the interests of small proprietors and the general population. There was an increasing threat of civil unrest and revolt, so land was set aside for allotment use by making sure that provision for the landless poor be made in the form of field gardens which were limited in size. This was really the beginning of the allotment system. However, the Act failed to make enough land avaiable for the use of the poor. Only around 2,200 acres become allotment gardens.

Potato grounds

Potato grounds were allotments only used for growing potatoes not other crops which utilised uncultivated fallow land. Farmers would let potato grounds to their employees often as part of their contract and normally as a benefit in lieu of wages.

When the men returned from the Napoleonic Wars, there was an excess of labour so eventually potato grounds became more important for the income they generated rather than to retain the labourers. Their existence was short-lived.

Urban allotments

Notwithstanding this, the urban allotment was beginning to emerge by the second half of the eighteenth century but as urban expansion took place, some of this land was swallowed up by building schemes. Things began to change after the Allotment Act 1887 which forced local authorities to provide allotments where there was a demand for them. In many developing areas, the local authorities resisted and did not comply with the requirements of the Act so further legislation was needed to strengthen compliance to the Act but it was slow to move.

To the Victorians, allotments were a productive use of timekeeping which helped to keep the poorer communities from the evils of drink. The allotmants provided wholesome food for those who lived in the back-to-back slums of industrial towns which had no gardens. It was not until the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 that compulsory responsibilities were placed on parish, urban district and borough councils to provide allotments and further legislation actually consolidated previous Acts.

During the First World War there were food shortages which necessitated an increase in the demand for allotments. At the time, land owned by railway companies was ideal for the purpose and this may be why many allotments appeared adjacent to railway lines and sidings. After the war ended, much of the land forming wartime allotments was used for housing which effectively led to the decline in allotment land use.

There was a huge increase in allotment use during both World Wars. In the Second World War as a result of the dig for victory campaign, public parks, sports fields and private gardens were all transformed and used to grow fruit and vegetables from around a million and a half allotment plots. After the war the steady decline in allotment use continued.

There was no real definition of an allotment but it was accepted as being a piece of land allotted to a person as the result of an enclosure award. Much of the allotment land was created in this way but the Allotments Acts introduced between 1908 and the 1950s further defined what an allotment was.

An allotment garden: this was an allotment wholly or mainly cultivated by the occupier in the production of vegetable or fruit crops for consumption by himself or his family.

An allotment: was also a parcel of land, whether attached to a cottage or not but held by a tenant and cultivated as either a garden or smallholding.

Most allotment land owned by councils had been inherited from other persons or bodies. In 1895 parish councils were created and assumed the non-ecclesiastical functions and properties of the parishes of the Church of England

It was a way for a family to help sustain itself by cultivating the land to grow their own vegetables and also space to keep a pig or poultry.