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Allotments in England and Wales. [june, 



THE ALLOTMENT MOVEMENT IN 

 ENGLAND AND WALES. 



Sir Daniel Hall, K.C.B., F.R.S., has recently delivered a 

 series of three Chadwick Lectures at the Royal Sanitary 

 Institute on the Nation's Food Supply, with special reference 

 to the allotment movement. An abstract of the first lecture, 

 entitled " Our National Food Supply : the Limits of Self 

 Support," was published in the issue of this Journal for last 

 month, p. 133. The two subsequent lectures dealt with the 

 possibilities of allotments in this country, both from the 

 economic and the social point of view. The following is the 

 substance of Sir Daniel Hall's remarks in his second and third 

 lectures : — 



In the second lecture Sir Daniel Hall discussed the practical 

 working of allotments. He opened with a brief history of this 

 branch of land cultivation, which goes back to a very early 

 date. Statutes of the time of Henry III. seem to indicate 

 that wherever changes in land occupation tended to make 

 labourers landless, measures were afterwards taken to assist 

 them to obtain control over a small portion of cultivated ground. 

 The gross eftect, however, was never great, and it is estimated 

 that in the early years of last century less than 1,000 

 rural allotments existed in the countj^ of Oxford. During the 

 last century the movement spread steadily, stimulated for a 

 time by the wages agitation of the 'seventies, but beneath the 

 advancing wave of agricultural depression the effort died away. 

 Two classes of allotments were discussed ; the comparatively 

 small allotment, really a detached garden, worked by the 

 wage- earner in towns and villages, and the larger parcel of land 

 by which the rural labourer has attempted to eke out his 

 indifferent earnings. As a rule the occupier of the first class 

 of allotment consumes all the produce, whereas the occupier of 

 the second class aims at having some surplus to sell. 



In the last return of land occupied as allotments under the 

 Small Holdings and Allotments Act, the average size of the 

 holdings was one- sixth of an acre, which shows that many of 

 the allotments are on the large side. During the War, on the 

 other hand, the 273,000 allotments created by local Authorities 

 under the Defence of the Realm Regulations worked out at 

 about 14 to the acre, or about 11 1 rods each. The larger type 

 enabled the labourer to feed his family during the period 

 of lowest wages, but at a great expense of personal labour. 

 Such allotments, although they rendered low wages possible, 

 were no help to agriculture as a whole. For the last 80 years 

 the labourer has been trying to better his position, and an 



