Great
Dodford was the fifth and final land colony to be settled by Chartist members
of the National Land Company.
But it was
also the settlement with the longest record of success. Despite a difficult
start, descendants of the original tenants were still making a good living as
late as the first world war, growing the strawberries used to make Robertson's
jams for soldiers at the front.
I was
delighted to see that a groundbreaking study of the long post-Chartist
afterlife of the Great Dodford land colony is freely available on the British Agricultural History Society
website, along with dozens of other articles published by the Agricultural
History Review between 1953 and 2003.
Great
Dodford and the Later History of the Chartist Land Scheme (PDF format, 1Mb), by Peter Searby was published
in 1968, at a time when interest in the land scheme was growing. Alice Mary
Hadfield published her book on the Chartist Land Company two years later.
But what is
particularly interesting about Searby's study is the use of detailed reports by
researchers who visited Great Dodford at the end of the 19th century
to show how it had developed from poverty to relative prosperity in the
post-Chartist period.
In addition
to the strawberry crop, smallholders grew gillyflowers between the rows for
sale at local markets. They also supplemented their earnings with early peas,
beans, shallots and even garlic – which was sold to Lea and Perrins as an ingredient
in Worcester sauce.
So successful
were the smallholders that they influenced the new allotment movement.
Unfortunately,
this proved to be the beginning of the end. Allotment holders at nearby
Catshill enjoyed an earlier crop, undercutting the price of the Great Dodford
growers, and a decline in the domestic nail-making industry removed the
smallholders' casual workforce of pickers.
The end
came as
Read more
about
* the Chartist Land Plan and those allocated land
* the Chartist Land Company and its subscribers
* the Chartist cottages at Great Dodford
There is also a pub walk which takes you past Rosedene, one of the last surviving Chartist cottages at Great Dodford.
