Page 69 - ALG Issue 2 2021

London
London
Welcome to our new members...
Lettsom Allotments Association
Morden Allotment Society
Sutton Lane Allotment A
Whetstone Stray Allottees Association Ltd
7 Individuals
REPRESENTATIVE
Vacant
TBC
MENTOR
Grant Smith
London
0845 478 6351 grantsmith.nas@gmail.com
Prospect Walk Allotments: a brief history
The existence of an allotment site
in urban Bethnal Green in the 21st century is due to random historical events and the sheer determination
of local people. Contemporary east London is an exciting place, but the situation in the late 1970s when this allotment was established was very different. In fact, it was in a rather bleak context of inner-city decline that the Prospect Walk allotments site came into being; it was a result of the efforts of dedicated Bethnal Green residents who lobbied the Greater London Council to repurpose a then derelict piece of ground as allotments.
Having secured permission to use the site in January 1979, the allotment pioneers set to work laying out 22 individual plots, laboriously clearing – by hand – the entire site, removing great quantities of demolition rubble and detritus. Prospect Walk has been used for allotments continuously since then.
For a few years prior to the creation of the allotments, the area had been fenced off following the removal, in about 1974, of the last survivor of 13
prefabricated homes that had stood at Prospect Walk since 1945. Officials from the GLC visited the site in April 1977 and reported a dismal scene of neglect and vandalism; it is no wonder that people living nearby were determined to make use of this opportunity for grass-roots regeneration.
The prefabs had replaced houses at Prospect Walk that were wartime casualties, damaged beyond repair by
a 50kg bomb that hit adjacent Meath Gardens on the night of 20th September 1940. Bethnal Green saw many ‘instant allotments’ appear on bomb sites during the war, but Prospect Walk was not among them and the site remained derelict throughout the rest of the war. However, in January 1945, facing an escalating housing crisis, the London County Council took legal control of Prospect Walk under the 1944 Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act. The LCC later bought up the site piecemeal by purchasing ownership from the freeholders between 1948 and 1954. The 13 prefabs were erected between December 1945 and April 1946 – they were among the 7,865 installed by the
Map detail showing the 13 prefabs at Prospect Walk erected in 1945–46. Source: London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/RA/ D2G/04/055
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the GLC visited the site in April 1977 and reported a dismal scene of neglect and vandalism
Ministry of Works on sites in London by the end of June 1949.
The houses on the south side of Prospect Walk that had been fatally damaged in September 1940 had been built by a property speculator named Charles Lacy at the start of the 20th century. Prior to that, the land had long been used as a ropewalk; it is recorded as such in 1801, the owner possibly being one Richard Bullard,
a mercer, who seems to have owned other parcels of land in the immediate area. Much later a rope, line and twine manufacturer named John Lovejoy ran a small rope-making factory here until his death in 1895. Charles Lacy quickly acquired the land and built the houses that stood for the next 40-odd years.
Prospect Walk Allotments, June 2019 (photograph courtesy of Kate Poland)
Prospect Terrace and the ropewalk circa 1870. Source: OS Sheet XXVIII 1870–76, published 1876. (The name Prospect Terrace was changed to Prospect Walk in 1938.)
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