Allotment sites I am familiar with are; Dam Rd., Barton, Clough Rd., Hull, Hotham Rd., Hull, southern side of Beverley south of Keldgate (a site under imminent threat of being sold for building some years ago but saved by local action), Ferriby Rd., Hessle, at northern approach to Paull village and doubtless others I cannot bring to mind at the moment. Recently noticed a large allotment site near the River Ouse at Selby (from the trans-Pennine train window), there appeared to be a lot of neglected plots a situation that encourages developers or local authorities (or both hand-in-glove) to press that the land could be put to ‘better’ use (by generating an income for both). Incidentally it is also a situation which frustrates the enthusiastic allotment tenants as their plots are seeded by neglected neighbouring plots, a situation that may result in the productive tenant giving-up the struggle (a situation that echoes one of the main criticisms of the open-field system of parish land allocation and which was given as a benefit of Enclosure by Arthur Young, Secretary to the Board of Agriculture in the early 19th century.
In Barton the allotment situation is particularly interesting. The current, well used, site is west of the A15 and beside a part of Dam Rd., a post-Enclosure lane. However certainly up to the 1930s (and probably the Second World War) Ordnance Survey map evidence shows this not to have then been an allotment site. However, the 1908 Ordnance Survey 25 inch map of Barton and its surroundings shows allotment plots on a 24 acre post-Enclosure field on rising land outside the town and immediately east of Caistor Rd., this area now the location of the Caistor Road estate built in the 1960s and’70s. Barton’s Enclosure Award of the 1790s shows no evidence that the land was then allocated for allotments although the 1888 25 inch Ordnance Survey map (First Edition) shows the land as such by then.
(To be continued).