ANN INcReDIBle geNeRAtION

On a misty morning in 1948, as Britain limped on from the social and economic wreckage of the Second World War, a boat arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex with 500 people aboard. That boat - the Empire Windrush - would lend its name to a generation of Caribbeans who came to build a life in the UK. Some of them settled in St Ann’s, just outside of Nottingham city centre - where, novelist and local resident Rosey Thomas Palmer explains, the community played a key role in preserving the area’s historic allotments

Windrush is a provocative word, recalling at once the excitement of foreign travel, the appeal of a young queen, patriotism for the “Mother Land” on the one hand; rejection, betrayal, separation, deportation on the other. The time has come to review particular triumphs and benefits from Britain’s long association with the Caribbean. That St Ann’s Allotments still stands today is one such story. Without the Caribbean community’s care, much of what was once more commonly referred to as Hungerhill may have been lost. Our local Windrush community stands tall amongst those throughout history who’ve fought for their preservation.

Despite allotments being promoted during the war as essential to the food production process, Hungerhill had become neglected and overgrown by the time the Caribbean community found them. The council of the time was sceptical of their value and eager to reclaim their acreage for building homes, but our Windrush residents went to work. Men such as George Powe, Steven Stevens, George Leigh, Donald “Pipe Man” Rowe, Thomas H., Oscar Reid, and Charles “Pete” Barratt, who had come from farming backgrounds in Jamaica to work in Nottingham for the likes of Severn Trent Water, Raleigh, Players and Boots, but resisted the constraints of urban living.

Seeking their fresh callaloo and spinach and sweet, full-bodied pumpkin for their rich one-pot soups, some of the men began adopting abandoned plots, reopening rusted gates to the narrow Victorian avenues, clearing, digging and mulching. In doing so, they kept the site in use as the vital food growing resource that it has been for hundreds of years. Unafraid of the less clement British weather, they sought a way to extend their meagre resources and escape the urban sprawl. Abundant harvests flowed.

Now, as respected elders of the area, they are lauded at funerals, loved in the care system and fabled in developments of their own making such as the ACNA Centre and the Marcus Garvey Action Group, as well as in local churches. Yet, aside from scattered publications and small-scale exhibitions, the role of the Windrush generation in preserving Hungerhill and in enabling our inheritance of the most historic and extensive allotment gardens in Europe is inadequately acknowledged. The story of this historic site has been traced back to its first dedication to the people of Nottingham in 1304, said to be in continual use for the last 600 years. It has been perpetuated as an amenity of some sort through war, development and social unrest.

The late Margaret Hall, who recently passed and was memorialised at the Anglican church on St Ann’s Robins Hood’s Chase this February, was a long-time gardener and previous holder of five allotments. She offered me vivid descriptions of the post-war neglect into which they fell before Windrush migrants found them. “I saw it all, the joys and the pains,” she proclaimed. Dirt tracks wound between overgrown bankings, most plots were covered with thick brambles, the carefully-spaced beds of Victorian families were covered by weeds or rubble from the ruins of their summer houses. Fruit from valuable old species of apple and pear lay rotting.

Intrepid gardeners like Margaret, with her childhood in an allotment-holding family, had plots for the taking and dedicated days to their perfection. Margaret’s five each