Dig For Victory

Turf Wars - The Struggle to Cultivate Wanstead Flats

Agriculture, market gardening and horticulture in the area around Wanstead Flats have a long history. The Flats today show no sign of a time when farms, fields and later allotments made the area an important centre for food production. The last vestige of that history disappeared as recently as 1996, when the BSE crisis finally ended a tradition going back hundreds of years, of cattle grazing on the Flats by farmers who held common rights in Epping Forest.

The allotments which border the Flats are now the only reminder of this not very distant past. As farms and fields gave way to housing around Wanstead Flats, allotments became increasingly important to local people to help support themselves. Wartime pressures only increased the significance of local food production and led for periods of both First and Second World Wars to allotments springing up on the Flats themselves.

Not surprisingly, at the end of each of those wars allotment-holders made determined efforts to keep their green spaces while the City of London Corporation, which has overall responsibility for the Flats, fought to return them to their former use for recreation and leisure.

This is the story of that struggle.

Published by Leyton & Leytonstone Historical Society, Wanstead Flats Working Group,