COLONISING CROWN LANDS 83 



John's Bank. This land consists of 957 acres 

 let by the Crown to the Lincolnshire and Nor- 

 folk Small Holdings Association. Fortunately 

 for the small holders, the Crown advanced the 

 capital to build these very substantial houses 

 and farm buildings. 



Indeed, it is at Walpole that you come 

 immediately upon the best-equipped pair ol 

 small holdings to be found in the whole of 

 England. This pair of semi - detached six- 

 roomed houses with their farm buildings cost, 

 I am told, £1000, and each stands in its forty 

 or fifty acres of land. The houses may not be 

 much better than the other houses built on 

 these Crown lands ; it is on the farm buildings 

 where much of the extra money has been spent. 

 No iron with its hideous corrugations, no 

 tarred felt half-torn and flapping in the breeze, 

 no dishevelled pigsties are to be seen here. 

 All buildings are of solid brick with sound 

 heavy timber supporting roofs heavily tiled, 

 and every floor is concreted. Cart-sheds, 

 bullock-sheds, stables, cow-stalls, loose-box, 

 granary, are all under one roof, and the yard 

 is substantially fenced. 



JNIost of these holdings extending over this 

 flat fenland to the Wash are of forty or fifty 



