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Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 14:21
Britain's current economic crisis – and chronic global food shortage – is prompting people to go back to the land. The allotment gardening pastime is no longer the domain of cloth-capped men in tweeds but a necessary endeavour to feed ourselves.
Gardening is now seen to be 'cool' and attracting people, young and old, in a bid to return to healthy living and cutting the cost of supermarket shopping.
A project in Larkhall, dubbed Food For Thought and associated with St Mark's C of E School, is a harking back to the time of the celebrated Kitchen Front, when housewives were encouraged by the Government to Grow More Food in an effort to feed a population of 45-million.
Allotments, of course, are nothing new to Bath and the first began to appear at the end of the 19th century and the Ordnance Survey map of 1903 shows at least ten sites.
Five years later the Bath City Council formed a Small Holdings & Allotments Committee in accordance with national legislation.
Two world wars saw further Government policies aimed at sustaining the population.
At the outset of hostilities in 1939, the food situation in Britain was becoming critical. After nearly two years of waiting, Britain entered the Second World War largely unprepared for the massive problems of feeding her population.
Food rationing was a drastic but necessary wartime measure but things weren't quite as bad as they first appeared. Certainly there were severe food restrictions and a wide range of food products vanished from the shelves of a country once described by Napoleon as 'a nation of shopkeepers'.
Indeed, Britain boasted some 700,000 shopkeepers by the end of the 1930s, but within a few years their numbers had been savagely reduced by Hitler's bombs.
The Ministry of Food, headed by the amiable Lord Woolton, saw to it that what food was available was equally and fairly apportioned.
The nation as a whole actually benefited from rationing.
Suddenly Britain, deprived of meat and poultry (hens were needed for egg-laying and far too valuable to kill), discovered the wholesome and beneficial virtues of vegetables.
The potato, carrot and cabbage were immediately dubbed Home Guards of Health by the Ministry of Food.
The allotment boom began in earnest as gardeners throughout the land grew every kind of edible crop imaginable. Parks, playing fields, flower gardens, race-courses, railway embankments and backyards were hastily cultivated in the drive to provide more food.
Allotments existed at Rosehill, South Twerton, Oldfield Park and Newbridge and it is significant to note that the land at Rosehill, part of the Larkhall Athletic Club, became Bath's very first municipal allotment in 1908.
During the First World War more than two million allotments were under cultivation. By 1941 a total of five million allotments and gardens were being used to produce food.
"Every endeavour must be made to grow the greatest volume of food which this fertile island is capable", said Winston Churchill.
Within six months Britain's allotments had increased by a quarter of a million and the grassy sweep fronting Bath's magnificent Royal Crescent was transformed into a patchwork quilt of garden plots.
The Georgian City was no exception when it came to digging for victory and producing edible crops for immediate consumption or preserving.
Wartime cookery and gardening books poured from the printing presses offering advice on what to grow and how to prepare nourishing meals.
Housewives were encouraged to scour the hedgerows for edible berries, leaves and nuts – and waste nothing.
What goes around, comes around, as they say and countless thousands of people are now re-discovering – or finding out for the first time – the benefits of growing their own produce.
The war showed that, with an enormous combined effort, Britain could become almost totally self-sufficient.
It was food without frills but the frugal, carefully thought out wartime diet really did improve the nation's health.
Death from tuberculosis and the infant mortality rate both dropped considerably and much of it was down to the Government's advice of 'drink a little more milk, eat a little more cheese, and much more green food and fruit – it's easy, it's cheap, and it's pleasant'.
Larkhall's Food For Thought project, dreamed up by three local residents, Sandra Gane, Vicky Sander and Dave Laming, with enthusiastic support from head teacher, Cherril Pope, is a return to the old ways of growing produce.
Its working slogan is aimed at educating children and adults alike in the basic skills of edible crop growing but extending beyond the Second World War range of produce to include garlic, capsicums, chilli peppers and figs.
This time, however, food rationing is self-imposed and not a direct result of a Government intervening during wartime.
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