Although the above picture, taken from the internet, is of an allotment site near Middlesbrough allotment sites in Hull and Barton are well-used and, generally, well looked after.
Each allotment site has its own organising committee and doubles some are members of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners. Allotment sites are also supported by the Open Spaces Society. To the best of my knowledge all local allotment sites are owned by the local authority although nationally, and certainly in the past, allotment land may/might have been donated by private landowners or the Church.
Leisure Gardens is a term more commonly used on the continent where there is more of a tradition of some allotments being more like second homes. Seemingly the earliest allotments so defined were in Denmark in the late 18th century with other European countries mostly picking-up the idea in the 19th century. An incentive to do so was the industrialisation and urbanisation of the First Industrial Revolution, in Germany, for example, allotment sites were promoted in towns as ‘gardens for poor’ and play areas where children could re-commune with Nature. In pre-revolutionary Russia they were perceived more as ‘places of resort’ for the wealthy. The impact of the two World Wars resulted in a huge increase in allotment provision within combatting countries, this tending to tail-off after each conflict with increasing demand for land for other purposes in the urban environment.
This tailing-off of interest has been met by a policy of letting allotment units in smaller, more manageable, less time-consuming sizes. Many allotment tenants invest in sheds and other fixed assets although security can be a big problem. Most sites in Hull are security fenced with locked access gates (presumably tenants have keys or maybe the sites are just open for parts of the week.
(To be continued).