Trouble is afoot in south-west London. Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland, wants to build six blocks of flats on his land in Isleworth. The project would supply 80 homes, 40% of them affordable, with 30 units reserved for key workers at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Rents from the properties are earmarked for the maintenance of Syon House, a grand 16th-century residence owned by the duke, which sits a brief stroll from the proposed flats. So far, so sensible. Our capital city does not have enough homes, and the duke wants to build some. Profits will be used to preserve a beautiful piece of Britain’s historical inheritance. It’s enough to make any Yimby’s heart sing.
Yet London’s density of people has led to a density of competing interests. Northumberland Estates, the duke’s development company, were refused planning permission for the flats in October 2021. A subsequent appeal is ongoing and has attracted media interest. All this because the proposed location is currently the site of Park Road Allotments.
Park Road Allotments have existed since 1917, when the 7th Duke leased a parcel of land to the local authority. The plots were primarily used by soldiers returning from the battlefields of the First World War. However, Hounslow Council did not refuse planning permission because of this evocative history. Their reasoning was far less romantic. The council’s main objection to the flats was due to the loss of what is known, in the comatose lingo of government, as “Local Open Space”, not the loss of the allotments. But there is no doubt that the attention lavished on the case by various media outlets is precisely because plots are at risk. They make for emotive copy, especially when a wealthy duke is involved.
When I first got wind of the story, my sympathies automatically aligned with the plotholders. My grandfather spent summers nurturing marrows on his plot. In early September, he would deliver a colossal green shell casing, which had the heft of a wet sandbag and tasted faintly of methane. Grandad would suggest stuffing it with mince (people who grow marrows always suggest stuffing them with mince). I used to wonder why such a practical and thoughtful man would raise a Herculean fruit only to put 90% of its mass straight on the compost heap. Now I understand that consumption was never his chief concern. The growing was all.
I briefly tended an allotment as a teenager, though I never bothered with marrows. Most of my time was spent digging up couch grass and then squatting to remove each fleshy white root from the heavy clay. “I’d spray that off if I were you,” the old gent on the neighbouring plot advised. “Never get on top of it otherwise.” He was right, I never did get on top of it. But I cleared enough earth to cultivate rows of garlic, broad beans and leeks. I ridged up the soil and planted potato sets (Pink Fir Apple, Charlotte). Best of all, I erected a tiny plastic greenhouse to shelter my tomatoes. The brawny, pubescent stink of leaping growth stays with me.
Odours aside, my lasting impression of allotment life was the work required to bring even the smallest piece of neglected land into cultivation. Digging up weeds, digging in manure, removing stones and potsherds. And that’s before you plant anything. A plot must be visited every day in the growing season. There are always vegetables to be watered, pests to control, and yet more weeds to pull up. You spend so much time with your face in the muck that it becomes a kind of acquaintance. I suppose this feeling is the dimmest echo of what it must be like to spend a whole life on the same patch of ground. Humans imprint on the land they work. To take that land away from its custodians means the loss of much more than outdoor space. For many, it is the severing of a relationship.
As well as imprinting on that land, we inhabit it. Every allotment has its old shed. Mine was a slouching grandee of impossible antiquity. It was filled with — and possibly supported by — 50 years of detritus. Sticky tins of bitumen lurked behind rolls of rotting carpet, broken tool handles were packed into every crevice. There was a genuine stratigraphy to all that crap. I discovered cigarette cartons belonging to brands long deceased, and I dated some sodden lumps of newspaper to the early Eighties. There was a history in that shed, the small leavings of other lives.
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SubscribeI don’t know about the merits of the Duke vs. the gardeners, but I enjoyed this article for the insight into UK “allotment” culture.
The author’s growing & harvesting experience is not typical of all plotholders; the allotments where my plot is, feed families all year round and that is especially important at this time of inflated food prices. The allotment, like the kitchen garden engenders a level of agency & independence to those who toil and plant. The jams & liqueurs I make tick gift boxes for birthdays & Christmas too; no ultra-processed produce here. It’s not all about London; spoilt b*****d that it is.
Come harsh times the scallies and gypsies will help themselves to your abundance. I hope you’re prepared to defend it.
True. I ate people’s strawberries as a child.
“Although allotments are not unique to the United Kingdom, they do seem to exert a special tug in this country”. This is not actually true. The German Kleingartenkolonien form a more important part of cultural life over there than allotments do here. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleingarten, which lists 264,000 Kleingarten in the major cities alone. There are estimated to be 900,000 Kleingarten in the country as a whole, which compares with an estimated 330,000 allotments. They are very different from allotments however, far smarter & ornamental rather than utilitarian – places to have barbecues when weather permits, or just lounge around in at weekends. Plus you will never find a scruffy hut filled with old paint pots, rotting rolls of carpet and the like on a German Kleingarten. Anybody failing to keep their plot spick and span would soon be out on their ear.
Last year, a German man put me up for a night in the “shed” on his allotment in Erfurt. It was the lap of luxury!
“Best of all, I erected a tiny plastic greenhouse to shelter my tomatoes. The brawny, pubescent stink of leaping growth stays with me.”
Steady, Alex! Don’t let enthusiasm tip over into something worse!
They’ll be lost like everything of our more gentler past. New builds hardly have gardens and the young have little interest in gardens beyond BBQs, football and dog toilets. There’s little economic benefit from allotments. By the time you’ve defeated the caterpillars, slugs and snails and fed the birds, driven back and forth with water, you may as well have driven to the supermarket and had a pint on the way home. There’ll be no dig for victory next time.
Amusingly droll.
I have read hundreds of articles at Unherd, most I finish, some I don’t and very occasionally I scroll back to the top to see who this writer is who writes so well. This was one of the latter.
Back in the day in Birmingham, there were many allotments in the vicinity of our Yardley Wood home. On train journeys you’d see allotments as you entered towns and cities, with their little sheds and greenhouses, their trellises for beans and peas and the verdant crowns of spuds and cabbages.
We were fortunate enough to half a large backyard in which my father, from rural Ireland, would raise all manner of winter vegetables. Such is the way life works out, I now live on a rural acreage and my city-born wife cultivates a large and productive veggie garden – when we are not in drought or flood (which is all too often these days)
It’s lovely to hear that a teenager would be bothered cultivating vegetables in an allotment, it must have taught you patience and the value of food. Well done.
I wouldn’t like to have to decide on this one.