History

Enclosure
During the 18th century up to seven million acres of land was enclosed through a series of private acts of enclosure. This culminated in the General Enclosure Act of 1845. Enclosure was part of a general drive towards the elimination of small tenants and common lands, with a corresponding increase in the wealth and power of major landowners. This lead to the high numbers of dispossessed tenant farmers and labourers and increasing concerns about vagrancy, tackled mainly through increasingly savage Poor Laws.

W. Cobbett
Social reformers such as William Cobbett had been calling for the poor to be given a portion of land, and in 1815 the Labourer’s Friend Society was formed. The LFS promoted the idea of allotment grounds as they became known, and gave practical advice on forming committees and drawing up tenancy agreements.

By 1830 the idea had taken hold and allotment grounds increased in number. The 1845 Enclosure Act stipulated that provision be made for the landless poor in the form of ‘field gardens’ limited to a quarter of an acre and by 1875 there were nearly a quarter of a million allotment grounds in Britain.

The Littleover Lane Allotments Association
The First World War prompted renewed interest in allotments, and by the end of the war there were up to 1.5 million sites. This could be one reason why the Littleover site was started, as it was in 1920 that a group of like-minded local householders purchased the 11 acres of land near their homes. They formed the Littleover Lane Allotments Association Limited (LLAA) in order to protect the land from development. The site was divided into 170 plots, and local residents were invited to become members of the association.

New members were required to purchase shares at the rate of 21 shares per standard plot, each share costing ten shillings, a total of £10/10/-. In 1920 this was a considerable investment, the average wage for a tradesman being between ten shillings and two pounds per week.

The Littleover Lane Site
The large scale Ordnance Survey maps at Derby Local Studies Library show that in 1883, three fields alongside Littleover Lane exactly match the outline of the current site, with a brickworks present on the Northern side of Littleover Lane. By 1901 the field divisions have gone and the municipal cemetery has appeared in the centre of the site.

The 1938 map shows allotments extending far beyond the LLAA site, with ‘allotment gardens’ marked out further down the hill to what is now Sunny Dale Avenue and between Glen Avenue and Dale Avenue. It is probable that these additional plots were council owned. These residential streets and property boundaries are already marked out in 1938, and by 1947 housing development is appearing along them, although much of the area is still marked as ‘allotment gardens’.

By 1968 most of the area is residential housing, with just a handful of the old allotments remaining. A more in-depth study of the Borough ‘Cemeteries, Parks and Allotment Gardens’ sub-committee minutes, also available at the library, may shed more light on who the property owners were and the exact sequence of events.

Today, the original site is still owned by LLAA; plot holders are tenants of the association and pay an annual rent for their plots. There are currently 171 plots, although the plot numbers run to the mid 180’s as some plots have been used for other purposes over the years.