“An excellent account” of Britain’s tradition of parceling out land for the public to grow food on, and the colorful history behind it (The Independent). This lively book tells the story of the private garden plots known as allotments—from their origin in the seventeenth century, when new enclosures that deprived the peasantry of access to common lands were fiercely protested, to the victory gardens of the world wars, and into the present day, when they serve less as a means of survival than as a respite from the modern world. While delving into the effects of the Napoleonic Wars, the Corn Laws, and the utopian dissenters known as the Diggers, the author reveals the multiple roles of allotments—and champions their history in the hope of protecting them for the future. “Foley’s book reminds us that the right to share the earth has always been an asymmetric struggle.” —The Guardian “Fascinating and handsomely illustrated.” —Daily Mail “Well-told . . . . [a] gallop through the history of useful rather than ornamental crops.” —Spectator Australia

The living standards of the rural poor suffered a severe decline in the first half of the nineteenth century as a result of high population growth, changing agricultural practices, enclosure and the decline of rural industries. Allotment provision was the most important counterweight to the pressures. This book offers the first systematic analysis of the early nineteenth-century allotment movement, providing new data on the chronology of the movement and on the number, geographical distribution, size, rents, cultivation yields and effect on living standards of allotments, showing how the movement brought the culture of the rural labouring poor more closely into line with the mainstream values of respectable mid-Victorian England. This book casts new light on central aspects of early and mid-nineteenth-century social and economic history, agriculture and rural society. JEREMY BURCHARDT is lecturer in Rural History, University of Reading.