TOTLEY ALLOTMENTS

By Jennie Street

If anyone knows a thing or two about Totley, it's Danny Reynolds. If you want to hear something about Totley of old, drop in to Danny and you can be guaranteed a wealth of detail and snippets of scurrilous information about the goings-on in the Totley of his youth.

So it was to Danny's house I went to learn about the history of Totley allotments.

Now 94, Danny, who was born in Shrewsbury Cottages (Terrace), and remembers the beginnings of Totley Allotments at Francis Field, on the Baslow Road behind the War Memorial.

Totley allotments were started about 1916 on the present site, as part of a larger piece of land, which is now the playing fields of Totley All Saints School. According to Danny the top and bottom allotment holders did not have much to do with each other!

This would have been a later start than many allotment sites, as the first plots let in Sheffield were in 1887 for the new steel industry workers who came to the
towns when the enclosure act took common land away from farm labourers. But in 1917 Totley was still a village in Derbyshire, in the parish of Dronfield, and did not come into the Sheffield boundary until 1935.

In those early days the land was in the living of the Vicar of Dore, and the allotment-holders paid their annual rent to the church. It has not been possible to find out when Sheffield City Council took the land. It seems likely that it was sometime after 1937.

There is also some debate as to whether the allotment site is known as Francis Fields or Harecroft. In the Enclosure Act of 1842, Brian Edwards reports that the land the allotments are on now is labelled as Upper Hare Croft, and were probably originally part of the common land which ran from the village (the centre of which was the cross roads by the Fleur pub) almost to Owler Bar. However, nowadays people refer to the site as Francis Fields, because this is what is written on the bill for their annual rent which allotment holders receive from the Council. Does anyone have the definitive answer? Brian Edwards suggests that the 'Francis' may refer to Francis, fifth Earl of Shrewsbury, local landowner.

On the old photo reproduced here from Brian Edwards' book "Totley District in Old Photographs" a group of boys from Totley All Saints School appear to be working on the allotments. It is not dated, but could be around the time that the allotments were first opened in 1916. Note how smart they are in their white collars!

I casually asked Danny if he remembered any of the men who had allotments at that time, and going back more than 80 years he reeled off most of their names together with the addresses of some of them. "On the right were Jack Slack from Totley Rise, Moorhouse who lived on Lane Head, Putterill, then me dad, then Hibberds, then George Pearson, Jim Marsh, the local bobby 'Straightback' Bagshaw, and Jack Wortley. On the left were Bill Proctor, Fred Bishop, Mr Mottram from Main Avenue , Andrew from Totley Bents, Horatio Taylor from Summer Lane cottages, Mr Copes, then Mr Cook from Lemont Road . There were no women allotment holders- it was very much a man's world."

"My dad, Tommy Reynolds, had an allotment right up to World War Two. He mostly grew potatoes, beans, onions, carrots, parsnips, beetroot and celery. He never grew radishes or lettuces."

In those days no-one had a shed on their allotment, because they weren't allowed to. They just carried their tools up with them when they went to work there. But Jim Marsh built an underground shed in the slope under the road bank. The walls were turf with a window and the top was corrugated iron.

Thieving was never a problem in the early days, but it became so later. Danny remembers a woman being accused of pinching a cabbage.

There was also no piped water on site in the early days, except the water which came from the spring on the other side of Baslow Road . No-one had any barrels and a big hole was dug to collect the water, but men had to get there early when the weather was hot as the water would run dry.

It is difficult to find out when piped water was laid on, but it was probably in the 60s or 70s.

Manure was always delivered by horse and cart from different farmers like Fred Creswick, Jack Unwin or Tommy Andrews.

By the early twenties there was a Totley Show centred around the allotments. The allotment men competed fiercely for the prizes. The Show was held on the field which is now the site of Totley Primary School . "In those days," Danny recalls, "the prizes were genuine silver, because business people who lived in the area were involved. There was a silversmith and one chap who lived near the Crown made razors and gave them as prizes. Mr Swift who had a grocery business in town gave a silver tray, which had palm trees on it."

But the rivalry of the competition led to some dirty tricks. Danny remembers one Bill Wragg who didn't have an allotment and so wasn't allowed by the allotment men to enter his vegetables in the Totley Show. "He gave his veg to me dad, who won all the prizes with them. When nosy old Horatio Taylor said "Tha never grew them onions," my dad said to him "I'll chop thee in two with this spade". Mr Wragg told my dad that those same veg were going into the Daily Mail show in his name the next week!"

In 1934 Francis Fields had 48 plots that went right down to the school, and the school had a plot too. During the war, four air-raid shelters were built behind the school, and in her "History of Totley All Saints School," Joan Stratford writes that some children remember the air raid sirens going off and walking across the allotments to the air raid shelters. In the photo of the air raid shelters, taken in 1945, it does not look as if the allotments have been tended for some time. After the war, the bottom field of allotments was taken back by the school for playing fields. Previously the school had used the field behind the Cricket Inn for sports.

Today the Totley Allotments are owned by Sheffield City Council, and there are just 17 allotments, now very much in demand with a waiting list of 26 people. Keeping up the tradition, Aaron Atherton has won prizes at Totley and Dore Shows each year for several years, Trevor Dickinson's immaculate allotment has been part of Totley Open Gardens for the last 2 years, and Danny himself is still keen on gardening and has also opened his garden, just opposite the allotments, for the last three years.

If anyone has any more information or memories about Totley Allotments, please contact Jennie Street on 236-2302, or email at: jennie@hadish.f9.co.uk