Programmes — Allotments for Labouring Poor

Programme 01 · Tenancies

Plot Tenancies

Plot tenancies are the heart of the trust. We let 136 working plots across two sites in the ancient parish of Mansfield. Of these, 84 are at our main site at Carr Bank and 52 at the smaller Pelham Street site behind the old library. Plots are issued in three sizes — quarter, half, and full — and rents for 2026 are set at £18, £24, and £32 a year respectively. Rents are paid annually, in cash or by transfer, with a hand-written receipt where one is asked for.

Plots are allocated in strict order from the waiting list, which the trustees keep on lined paper at the parish-hall office and review at every quarterly meeting. The average wait, taken across the last five years, is just under eighteen months. Tenants sign a single-side tenancy agreement that runs from 1 April to 31 March and is renewable annually.

Beneficiary types: working-age and retired residents of the ancient parish of Mansfield, with priority given to those without garden space at home and to families on lower incomes. Geographical scope: the ancient parish of Mansfield, in line with the 1970 scheme.

A path between allotment plots at Carr Bank in early May with painted plot stakes and beanpole wigwams.

Programme 02 · Sharing

The Common Plot

The Common Plot is a single full-size plot at Carr Bank, given over each year to growing produce that goes back into the parish rather than into a tenant's own kitchen. The plot is worked by a Saturday volunteer team and the produce is delivered each Friday to the Beacon Project foodbank in Mansfield town centre between July and the first frosts.

In the 2025 season we harvested 612 kg of vegetables and flowers from the Common Plot: courgettes, runner beans, beetroot, chard, kale, dahlias for the foodbank's "something fresh on the table" delivery. We aim, in 2026, for 750 kg — and to extend the season at both ends with overwintering brassicas and a small polytunnel.

Beneficiary types: foodbank clients and the wider Mansfield community served by the Beacon Project. Geographical scope: the ancient parish of Mansfield, with deliveries to the foodbank's central distribution point on Stockwell Gate.

Volunteers harvesting late summer produce on the Common Plot at Carr Bank.

Programme 03 · Teaching

Schools & Sowing

Schools & Sowing began in 2019 with one school visit and a packet of broad bean seeds. In the 2025–26 school year we hosted Year 4 classes from six Mansfield primary schools, reaching 184 children in total. The programme runs across April and early May; a class visit lasts ninety minutes and includes a path-side talk, hands-on sowing into pots and into a raised bed, and a take-home seedling for each child to grow on.

We deliver the programme entirely with trustee volunteers and a small cohort of plot-holder volunteers. We do not charge schools. We provide laminated worksheets, take-home seed packets, and a class follow-up letter at harvest time. The programme is run by Priya Ramesh, a trustee-volunteer who has built the curriculum with two retired primary teachers from the parish.

Beneficiary types: Year 4 children attending primary schools in the ancient parish of Mansfield. Geographical scope: primary schools within walking or short-coach distance of the Carr Bank site.

Year 4 schoolchildren sat on a wool blanket on the path as a volunteer explains how to thin out beetroot.

Programme 04 · Sharing tools

The Tool Library

The Tool Library is a single weather-boarded shed at the Carr Bank site, kept stocked with 42 numbered hand tools — long-handled spades, breast spades, dutch hoes, stirrup hoes, hand-forks, secateurs, loppers, a brace of scythes, a turf-iron, a wooden mallet for hedge stakes. Any tenant may borrow free of charge, signing the clipboard on the back of the door on the way out and signing back in on the way home.

The programme is run by Stuart Wakelin, a retired joiner who volunteers on Saturday mornings and runs an occasional sharpening workshop. Last year tenants signed out tools 432 times. We lost two — a hand-fork that fell into a compost bay and a pair of secateurs that emigrated to Skegness in the back of a holiday car. Both have since been replaced from the spring sundries budget.

Beneficiary types: any current plot-holder at either of the two sites. Geographical scope: tools are not lent off-site beyond the boundary of the Carr Bank fence.

The tool-share shed at Carr Bank, walls hung with rakes, hoes and forks.

Programme 05 · Habitat

Hedgerow & Habitat

Hedgerow & Habitat began in 2021 when the long western boundary of the Carr Bank site had become a leggy line of overgrown blackthorn and bramble. We held our first winter laying day on a frosty Saturday in January 2021, with twelve volunteers and a teaching pair from the Sherwood Forest Trust. Since then we have re-laid 240 metres of hedge, planted in three blackthorn, hazel, hawthorn and field-maple. A bird-ringing pair from Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust now visit twice a year and have ringed 17 species new to our records, including a single ring-ousel passing through in October 2024.

Laying days run two Saturdays a winter, in January and February. We provide stakes, binders, mallets and gloves; volunteers bring waterproofs, sturdy boots, and a flask if they have one.

Beneficiary types: the parish at large, and the wild population of the hedge itself. Geographical scope: the western and southern boundaries of the Carr Bank site, totalling 410 metres of which 240 are now re-laid.

Two hedge-layers work a stake into a freshly pleached blackthorn hedge on a frosty January morning.

Programme 06 · Infrastructure

Water & Infrastructure

The unglamorous half of an allotment trust, and the half we spend the largest single share of our budget on. Water and infrastructure cover standpipes, rainwater-harvesting tanks, slate-roofed sheds, the central tool store, paths, gates, and the long replacement of the perimeter fencing. In 2025 we installed our first new mains standpipe at Carr Bank as the first phase of a three-standpipe programme. A 2,500-litre rainwater tank against the south wall of the storage shed, paid for jointly with Mansfield Building Society, came online in May 2025 and supplies the upper twelve plots in dry summers.

The work is overseen by John Carter as chair, with Stuart Wakelin and a small rotation of trade-trained tenants. Capital spend in 2024–25 totalled £21,802, of which £8,000 came from the open campaign for the standpipe fund, and the balance from reserves and a single anonymous bequest.

Beneficiary types: every plot-holder at both sites. Geographical scope: the two trust-held sites within the ancient parish of Mansfield.

New rainwater-harvesting tank against the south wall of the central storage shed, a tenant fills a watering-can from the brass tap.

Six small undertakings, each one a small extension of the same plot of land.