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Sadly Dave Woodward our long standing club Treasurer died on Wednesday 3rd December after a heart attack. There were a dozen or so Welwyn Wheelers at the funeral at the Baptist Church in Ampthill. It was a full house - standing room only. Three Welwyn Wheelers turned out in club kit, and along with a half-dozen Beds Road riders, they formed the guard-of-honour for the cortege.
The service was a Celebration of Dave's life, with Vicky, three of Dave's children, and our own John Norris speaking of their memories of Dave, and of the contributions he made, which went far beyond the sphere of Cycling. One story in particular - of the Great Codicote Allotment Riot - seemed to reflect the nature of the man - see below for details!
And for those of you wilting at the end of a long Audax or Sportive: remember as a student Dave used to cycle from home (Essex) to University (Exeter), in one day, with all luggage for the term in his panniers. And that was before he became a cyclist. You might also be interested in the obituary written by his son, Christopher, that appeared in The Guardians "Other Lives" on April 20th : http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/apr/20/otherlives-obituaries
The appearance of commercial garden centres through the 1970s was to change the way we develop, plant and furnish our gardens. But for one small Hertfordshire community, the transition of a small local nursery into a mass-appeal garden centre was to threaten one of the mainstays of the community: the village allotments. David Woodward unfolds the story.
The Story of a Village Allotment by David Woodward
The typical approach to any village up to the 1960s included the sprawl of unsightly black tin sheds, strewn throughout the local allotment site. On closer inspection, through both winter and summer, irregular rows of windblown, half rotten bean poles could also be seen lined out on almost every plot. Such was the approach to our small Hertfordshire village.
On the far side of the allotments were barley fields. A nearby farmer used to win prizes for his barley, which grew well in the stony, free-draining soil because, he said, ‘it likes to keep its feet dry’. On the village side of the allotments was a commercial nursery, owned by a man who had grown plants all his life, and had now started a retail plant and garden centre business on the site. In fact, he still grows plants, but nowadays can be found in the old walled garden of a country house 5 miles away.
After moving onto a new estate in the village, my neighbour and I decided to apply for allotments, as many seemed vacant. I think that we were the only two on the waiting list and in fact were possibly the only two applicants for the previous 15 years. However, with rents at £1 a year, and stories going round about allotment holders making fortunes from property developers, it wasn’t until someone died that an allotment became available. I had to wait about three years, until about 1973, before the agent came round and I was directed to my plot, complete with its large and very smelly corrugated iron sheds, which had clearly been used to keep chickens and rabbits in the past.
We now stray into the realms of demography. Car sales had taken off in the 1950s with vehicles purchased by more prosperous, slightly older householders. By 1973, these family car-boomers had started to retire, and as more and more pensioners owned cars, they needed somewhere to drive to, with free parking spaces. The newly emerging garden centres admirably fitted this remit, and our local nurseryman, keen to be a player in the Hertfordshire Garden Centre Circuit, wanted to expand his car park and attract more paying customers.
He knew, although we did not, that the new Lord Brocket owned the freehold of our allotments, and he was persuaded by the nurseryman to sell the land. Eviction Notices were duly sent out to the allotment holders.
They arrived just at the time I went to work. I remember all the front doors opening, and worried and confused old men coming out onto the pavements. After my fury had died down I spent my lunch hour in the County Library and mugged up on the law of allotments. I soon found out that it was the duty of local councils to provide allotments, and I also discovered that the letters we had received gave us insufficient notice and were thus invalid.
The impact of the Notices was devastating on some individuals, and there were some unexpected repercussions. Soon after I returned home that evening for example, I received a visit from Neil Heffron, the local solicitor. He lived nearby and explained that his cleaning lady had not been able to work that day having been called away to comfort her husband who, following receipt of his Notice, had left his own place of work in tears. Worse still, as cleaner at Codicote Engineering, he had failed to clean up all the swarf and as the skilled craftsmen refused to do it, the factory had been forced to close down for the day.
I suppose that today people would say a ‘strategy’ was planned from that point, although in those days nobody would have realised that ‘strategies’ were an essential part of managing everything down to the local cycling club. A simple letter persuaded the agent to agree that the eviction notices were invalid, so we gained a year’s grace. During that year, events intervened in the form of severe heat waves and drought, the price of potatoes rocketed, and our mini-approach to the Parish Council became a mass movement. By the time we assembled in the car park of The Bell, our waiting list had expanded from one (my neighbour, still waiting for his plot) to 63.
Led by our spokesman Neil, who was armed with a Brief containing rather more red sealing wax and green tape than was strictly necessary, 45 of us marched on the local school and glared at the Parish Council. We had probably already won by then, and I can’t really remember what Neil said, except that he waved his ‘technicolor’ brief a great deal. But I remember every word of his unscripted addendum. ‘Finally’, he said, ‘although it is not part of our formal submission, the whole community thought that these allotments had been given to the village in perpetuity in recognition of the sacrifice made by our men who went off and fought in the First World War. Now I don’t suppose there is any allotment holder here today who fought in the First World War…….’. At which, Charlie Deadman tottered to his feet and shouted ‘I was in the First World War’- nothing more could be heard over the noise of mass cheering. Charlie died three weeks later.
The result was that an alternative site was found for the allotments, and this was no less than the aforementioned barley field. We were given 64 allotments, but few were cultivated for long due to the fact that the soil that kept the barley’s feet dry was a less hospitable medium for allotment growers. A pick axe was needed to dig the ground, and the stones made the potatoes misshapen. Spades broke and forks bent. One old boy used a JCB and set a record of 53 minutes for digging his plot, although the local ploughing contractor then brought in his five-furrow plough and got it down to 12 minutes.
But the critical factor in the demise of the Codicote allotments? No sheds. What is the point of an allotment if you don’t have a shed? |
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