Richard Wyatt

You’d think I’d avoid trudging up a steep hill on a hot day, wouldn’t you? But I have to say –while catching my breath –I was rewarded with a fine view when l reached the top and passed through the gates of the Larkhall allotments.

On this productive site overlooking the Woolley Valley and Solsbury Hill, local people have been tilling the soil and reaping the benefits for many years. They’re amongst the thousands of ‘allotmenteers’ in this country who rent space to grow their own.

The idea of renting a little extra plot of land to enhance your larder is nothing new in this country. According to local historian Jacqueline Burrows, who has been researching the history of the allotments in Bath’s Combe Down district, the oldest known continuously worked allotments in Britain are in Nottingham and have been in use since the 1600s!

I must explain that I had climbed my local hill to meet Jacky Wilkinson from the B&NES Allotments Association. This body is independent from the Council and represents 368 members (plus about 180 linked members) and growing...

The Council runs the majority of allotment sites in Bath, and Parish Councils run them in the outer areas. There are some private sites as well. Jacky is very passionate about the role such long-established community spaces can play in our lives and how important it is that more land is found to create them. There’s a long waiting list of people wanting to get digging –especially so during our current cost-of-living crisis.

Another issue is replacing allotment land that falls victim to redevelopment, as can happen, especially when its land is leased from private individuals. This takes us to Combe Down where Jacqueline Burrows has been tracing the history of its allotment plots, established in the 19th and 20th centuries for the villagers who quarried the stone that built our World Heritage city.

Jacqueline has discovered that the origins of the allotments are linked to the first Vicar of Combe Down, the Revd George Newnham who was himself a keen gardener. He came to a parish with significant social problems. Labouring in the stone mines and quarries was difficult, dangerous and poorly paid. Drunkenness and poverty were commonplace.

This clergyman in 1851 decided that holding a spade would leave less time for clutching a beer mug and found land to create at least 33 allotments “for the benefit of the labourers of Combe Down.”

Getting a plot came with conditions. A list of rules included attending a place of worship at least once every Sunday and not having a reputation of being “a known frequenter of drinking houses.”

Jacqueline told me that the annual rent to be paid was sixpence a year, at a time when agricultural labourers were earning around £40 per annum. Since that time, allotments have continued to play an important role in the lives of local people. Jacqueline says, “the crops they produce and the social interaction they encourage have sustained a community for generations.”

She says, however, “The sites that remain face significant challenges, and are constantly under threat as there is still active quarrying in the area.”

So far plots lost have been reinstated elsewhere, but Jacqueline –an allotment holder herself since 2006 –decided to research this local amenity to demonstrate its historical value and the role allotments still play in giving a sense of fellowship to those who share these community assets. She tells me there are two remaining “peaceful and productive” sites in Church Road and Bradford Road.

“Both must be safeguarded so they can continue to play their part in the daily life of Combe Down which looks to a future with an everincreasing population but (compared to previous generations) with reduced access to the pleasures of gardening for food, good health and recreation,” she said.

According to the National Allotment Society, during recession or economic and political uncertainty people turn to the land. Demand for allotments soared to new levels during the 2020–21 pandemic and lockdowns with waiting lists of up to three years in Combe Down.

Jacqueline says, “There are an estimated 330,000 allotment plots remaining in the UK according to 2020 figures. It has never been more difficult to get an allotment.

“Protecting existing sites from developers is increasingly challenging”, she thinks. “Finding new land on which to create new allotments or replace statutory allotments lost to development often results in an unequal fight between well-financed commercial interests and cashstrapped local councils.” n