Allotment Tales: Battles on Home Front changed landscape
Since 1892, local authorities had been obliged to provide allotments whenever six or more ratepayers requested them. However, a surge in the provision of allotments came during the First World War. The Board of Agriculture obtained powers under the Defence of the Realm Regulations, ‘to enter on land for the purpose of cultivating it or using it for the keeping and breeding of livestock, poultry or bees, or arranging for its cultivation”. Some of those allotments are still in existence. My own allotment site in Musselburgh dates back to that time, although no longer on its original site. Glasgow’s Beechwood site dates back to 1917 when 31 plots were established with an annual rental of 4s.3d each. The owners of the Kirklee site resisted, arguing that the ground was unsuitable, but nonetheless it was converted to allotments. With the men fighting overseas, it fell to the women to get involved in producing food. In 1917 the first branch of the Women’s Rural Institute was founded in Longniddry, East Lothian to help them rise to the challenge.
At the Oatridge Campus of Scotland’s Rural Colleges (SRUC), horticultural lecturer George Gilchrist and his students have created an allotment demonstrating some of the gardening methods and varieties used by people during the First World War. It’s recently been displayed at the Royal Highland Show. Some of the potato varieties grown then, such as Kerr’s Pink, are still popular.
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Hide AdClasses in an old show schedule from Musselburgh Allotments give an idea of the crops grown. They are a mixture of vegetables for immediate consumption together with others which would store well, including six different brassicas and three kinds of turnips. There was a prize for the heaviest shaw of potatoes which was harvested under the watchful eyes of the judges. Self-sufficiency is less of an issue today. I often give space to crops which would not have seemed sensible a hundred years ago. n