General Chat

Does it mean anything to anybody on here?

A scheme that sprang from the Great Depression in the thirties whereby the long-term unemployed from the North and from Wales were put into smallholdings in the south and midlands.

There is a man in the village who has not long moved here and he is doing a bit research project about it, none of us would have thought to because it was just part of life here and he is busy collecting information from people all over the place who have been associated with it in any way.

I am very carefully not getting involved but have his number and e-mail if anybody on here has any interest.

When we lived in Abbotts Ann, we were about 2 miles from the village itself, down a long track.
At the bottom of the track were about a dozen prefabs, we lived in one. This place was called Little Park Farm. Our neighbours were from the North, and had been part of the Land Settlement Scheme, as had everyone who originally lived in the prefabs. The neighbours had bricked the outside of their house, also their 'garden' contained a barn and outbuildings. We were on the edge, and the land from our place had been absorbed into a nearby field.
It's all been built up now.

I've got a feeling that, when the original inhabitants died, the houses were used by the council as social housing, as I know our place - and quite a few of the other prefabs - were owned by the council, but leased to Sparsholt College (who ex and I both worked for).
Our neighbours had bought their house under the 'right to buy' scheme.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbotts_Ann

He has been to Abbotts Ann recently and I have been there a couple of times,purely for a snout but never found any LSA places.

I know that one of our local smallholders had been at Abbotts Ann originally.

There was an estate at Coalville in Nottinghamshire I believe and one in Gloucestershire, Newent possibly.

There were others but, as there is eight years worth of research languishing in boxes and files quietly becoming ten years worth because it has not been written up, I am deliberately not getting very interested.

I'm not sure the place would be recognisable now - though on Google maps it is!
To get there, turn off the A303 on to Monxton road, left on to Red Post Lane, then first left on to Farm Road.
Farm Road is a dead end with a dead end 'dog leg' going off to the left. Those houses were the Settlement area.

If you google map sp11 7ds and go up a bit, find farm road and put the map on satellite view, you can see the prefabs spread out along the road.

I don't think they were pre-fabs Maggie, unless you know otherwise.

Ours were all properly built houses and I thought the same company built those. I don't know though so I can't disagree with you and I won't be led into looking any deeper into it!

The ones at Abbotts Ann were definitely prefabs - exactly like the one my gran lived in, in Ashley near New Milton, from 1944 until 1980! :-D

There were others on the outskirts of the village, in Cattle Lane. My friends lived in one in that had been extended and 'bricked', it was unrecognisable as the original prefab - until you went inside.

Got it wrong again!

If you want to tell the bloke about it I can give you his e-mail.

It's funny. Stuff we never really thought about but just always knew, he is really interested in.

We just all grew up around the packing shed when the mothers were in there working in the summer holidays until the time when we were in there as well.

You just didn't question that that was how it was.

I never knew about the Land Settlement until I moved into one of the buildings, and wondered why the neighbours had a huge garden with agricultural buildings in it, and we had enough room for a shed and a couple of cars. I also thought it odd to have prefabs stuck out in the middle of nowhere!!
Children loved it though. We had a huge field in the front, and would see Hares 'fighting'. When the straw had been bailed, the children - 6 of them (only 2 were mine) had great fun playing in the stacked bales (I know H&S), but they were only stacked 2 high, and Henry, the farm labourer, would arrange them like a fort for the children :-D

It was a long trek to school and nursery though, so we'd cycle, and occasionally walk down the 'cart track' (a grassy and muddy track in the winter) to or from school.

Looking further in to this, in some areas, the menfolk in the Land Settlement scheme were housed in already established farms, and given some land. I presume their families followed when they had built accommodation.
The one at Abbotts Ann appears to have been a 'from scratch' project - hence the prefabs.

Just spoken to OH as I knew a friend of his had a smallholding in Anna Valley/Abbots Ann.

His father had come down from the north in the thirties and he was given a plot of land large enough to run as a smallholding, fertilizer etc and the materials with which to build a dwelling.

The tradesmen amongst them, others acting as labourers built some houses and I have been in the one I am referring to. It was a brick built bungalow and the land was still being run as a smallholding in the late eighties, sold strawberrys, eggs, tomatoes, various veg and raised pigs.

The deal was that they had to build a solid dwelling - if not they forfeited the land.

Just been on Google street view. It doesn't go all the way down Farm Road to Little Park Farm, but on the 'main' road (Red Post Lane), just past the Farm Road turning, on the right, you can see more ex LSA buildings - a pair of semi detached prefabs! :-D

I should imagine prefabs were the cheapest and quickest way of getting a dwelling.