The Deserted Tillage

Building land in the south of England has now become so scarce that there are some public authorities who have almost given up building houses because they can find no ground to put them on. In a London suburb I know well, a Victorian house with a fairsized garden was sold for a high price. The price was paid not for the house but for the garden in which there are now six bungalows, standing together as close as a group of garages. A workingman’s club near Reading was paid fifty thousand pounds for the clubhouse and the ground around it. Before the war that ground would not have fetched five hundred pounds.

Yet, also in the south of England, there is land lying totally unused that could accommodate two hundred and fifty thousand houses. This unused land is allotment land. For most of this century allotments have been an important element in the English workingman’s pattern of life.

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Colm Brogan

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Building land in the south of England has now become so scarce that there are some public authorities who have almost given up building houses because they can find no ground to put them on. In a London suburb I know well, a Victorian house with a fairsized garden was sold for a high price. The price was paid not for the house but for the garden in which there are now six bungalows, standing together as close as a group of garages. A workingman’s club near Reading was paid fifty thousand pounds for the clubhouse and the ground around it. Before the war that ground would not have fetched five hundred pounds.

Yet, also in the south of England, there is land lying totally unused that could accommodate two hundred and fifty thousand houses. This unused land is allotment land. For most of this century allotments have been an important element in the English workingman’s pattern of life.