Page 38 - ALG Issue 2 2025

EAST MIDLANDS
KEGUTH GROWS
ITS OWN
Have you ever considered researching
your own allotment site or the village
allotment’s history? Well, NAS member
James McKay did just that for his home
village of Kegworth in Leicestershire.
Using records held by the county records
office, the parish council and reports in old
newspapers, James was able to discover
that the village had some of the earliest
‘gardens’ to be let by a parish, from 1815,
and that by 1826 the parish owned two
such sites. He discovered that in 1839 a
Victorian clergyman made land available for
‘small gardens for the benefit of the poor’; a
site which is still allotments today.
James learnt that the site on which his
own allotments are located was, until 1863,
the site of a row of parish cottages and that
in 1920 the Agricultural Organisation Society,
a forerunner of the NAS, helped a village
allotment holder’s society to secure their
site. That society and its plots are still with us.
The two world wars saw a rise in
allotment numbers in the country as a
whole and he was able to chart the rapid
increase in plots in Kegworth during those
times of conflict. In the local heritage
centre collection he found a wonderful
photograph of Kegworth school children
cultivating land for the war effort in WWI.
He discovered how Kegworth did its bit for
the Dig for Victory campaign in WWII and
that an allotment at ‘Kegworth Camp’ had
even contributed to the German war effort
by allowing soil from a POW escape tunnel
to be concealed by allotment gardening.
James also looked into the competitive
side of vegetable growing and found
that horticultural shows had been held
in the village from as early as 1834. One
Kegworth grower, in 1844, had a potato
weighing ‘upwards of three and a half
pounds’ and another ‘in the open air and
with seed from a penny packet’ had grown
a marrow weighing 36lbs.
James has written up his findings in an
illustrated 44 page booklet, ‘Keguth Grows
Its Own’, which is being sold to raise funds
for the village’s community library. If you are
in the area pop in to the library on High
Street and buy one; it’s not just allotment
sites that are at risk from the bean counters.
New fence at
Northfield Avenue, Kettering
Many thanks to Kettering Town Council for the super new fence that has been built
for Northfield Avenue. This fence replaces an insecure and weak wooden fence that
was decaying and a potential hazard. The funds for this project (£6000) were kindly
provided by the Town Council. We are very grateful for the continued support of the
Council for allotments in Kettering. We are so lucky in Kettering; other nearby towns'
allotments do not get this kind of support.
38 | Issue 2 2025 | Allotment and Leisure Gardener