Allotments

There have been allotments in Milford for 220 years – some of the oldest in the country. The picture below, from Bank Buildings before when the co-op (now velo Bavarian) was built (pre 1920’s) shows the allotments were even more extensive back then, and spilled over to the west of the A6 as well as the current east, into much of the land that’s now Little Fallows Image©Belper Historical Society/Adrian Farmer

Bridge View Allotments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Bridge View Allotments cover an extensive area. There are 43 allotments in all, flowing down the hill from Bridge View, past East Terrace and West Terrace, above the former Holy Trinity Church and then down to the A6, occupying most of the land between the church and the Children’s Play Area. The Milford Community Greenspace (see website here) has taken the 4 allotments above the Holy Trinity Church.

Now open for anyone living within a 5 mile radius of the Bridge View Allotments to rent, they are run by Bridge View Allotments Limited, a co-operative of which all current allotment holders are members, and whose purpose is to ensure the land is used as allotments for local people in perpetuity. Others who work on a plot but are not plot holders can become associate members with equal voting rights. Regular meetings of the co-operative are arranged, including an AGM in March where the holders of posts on the association are voted in. Currently (2026) the chair is Maureen Kingman, treasurer Jackie Hudson and secretary David Moreton. We also have a membership secretary, Fiona Lennox, and events secretary Simon Hudson.

Rents for the following January are agreed at another meeting of the co-operative in November. They are at present (2026) £25 a year for a full allotment and £13 for a half allotment. In addition, membership of the co-op is £7 a year for members (compulsory for plot holders) including a one-off share cost of £1 and £7 for associate members including a one-off share cost of £1. If you are interested in joining the waiting list for allotments at Bridge View, please contact Fiona Lennox by e-mail on fionarowe13@googlemail.com including your address and contact details. Please note when thinking of taking on an allotment that their upkeep takes time. If you do not have 3 – 5 hours a week to spare on your allotment it could rapidly get on top of you and become overwhelming.

For historical tours of Bridge View Allotments and to see them today, please come to our Open Day on 12th July 2026, details here.

History

Reputed to be some of the earliest allotments in England, the land was bought in 1832 by The Strutts and converted to allotments for their workers in Milford. Part of it was already allotments, as can be seen in the plan below from 1805 (courtesy of the Derby Records Office), owned by Mrs Martha Cock, before it was bought by The Strutts. So there have been allotments on some of the site for 220 years.

Here are a couple of photos from Bridge View Allotment’s Strutt heyday at the turn of the last century Images©Belper Historical Society/Adrian Farmer.

By the 1960’s The Strutts had decided they wanted to sell the allotments for housing and for 15 years they were uncultivated and allowed to become overgrown. Several planning applications were made for housing, including extending East Terrace, and although most came to nothing, the land for the newer houses on Grangewood Drive was sold off during this period. In 1976 Mick Smith and a group of fellow residents approached The Strutts and asked if Mick and friends could convert them back to allotments and The Strutts agreed. The allotments came back into cultivation and Mick managed them for The Strutts for 46 years, before handing the reins over to Carol Hawley and Maureen Kingman in 2022.

In October 2023 The Strutts offered to gift the land to the Bridge View Allotment Association and after extensive consultation and research to understand what the Association’s liabilities would be if they accepted The Strutts offer, the Association voted to accept the offer in an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) in February 2024. At the same EGM it was agreed that the Association become a co-op, and in April 2024 we became a registered co-operative, Bridge View Allotments Limited, whose purpose is to ensure the land is used as allotments for local people in perpetuity. At present the transfer of the land from the Strutts to Bridge View Allotments Ltd. is underway and in the hands of both parties solicitors. It is hoped that the transfer will be completed in July 2026.

For historical tours of Bridge View Allotments and to see them today, please come to our Open Day on 12th July 2026, details here.

Raising Funds

Once the land is passed on to us, we will have a great deal to do to renovate the fabric of the site, which has been neglected for many years. Primarily this will be the repair of the large retaining walls on the site, which are needed because the site is very steep, but also tree surgery and repair of paths. This will be expensive, and although we are hoping to apply for grants, we have made great efforts to raise our own funds for this too. In 2024, 2025 & 2026 we had a series of successful plant sales of plants and seedlings raised in our own allotments and gardens in May & June, photos below. We have also had a series of events in The William pub: a Harvest Sale in October 2024 of plants, cakes and homemade preserves and Christmas sales in December 2024 and November 2025 of crafts, cakes and preserves, see here for a more detailed report. We also held a successful Open Day on Milford Community Greenspace in July 2025. In total we earned over £1600 in 2024 and £1200 in 2025 from these events and we’d like to thank the people of Milford for their generous support.

The plant market in Belper Market Square on Sunday 11th May 2025.

If you want to make a direct donation to our cause, please contact Jackie Hudson on jackiehb47@hotmail.com and she’ll send you our account details.

Following a very successful Open Day in July 2025, we are planning to have another Allotments Open Day on 12th July 2026, on The Greenspace. This is part of the Belper 250 celebrations and so the tours this year will have an historical slant, but, like last year, will give a chance for people to see what we’ve achieved and encourage people to join our allotment waiting list. We will also run a refreshments stall to raise funds.

Other Recent Initiatives

Several other new initiatives have been undertaken in the past 3 years.

Water harvesting station

A big disadvantage of the site is that it has no mains water, and so the first initiative in 2023 was to try to rectify this. A grant was obtained from Belper Town Council for Severn Trent to survey the site, who thought there was a pipe running from Bridge View to the end of East Terrace and suggested we try to find it. Fruitless digging of several large holes along the supposed route of the pipe was undertaken but no pipe was found – it turns out it was terminated at the Bridge View end.  Connecting water to the site at the Bridge View end would cost £3000 at least, and looked to be technically very difficult. In consequence in September 2023 the idea was abandoned, in favour of building a large rainwater collection device for all the allotments.

Grants were obtained from the Central England Co-operative Society and from Belper Town Council for the materials and then the allotment holders all worked together over two months to complete the work. As with everything on the allotments, all the materials had to be carried onto the site by hand!

First trenches were dug and a concrete mixer hired and concrete footings laid.

Then the wooden structure was constructed and 4 x 1 cubic metre IBC’s moved into place.

Finally a plastic coated corrugated iron roof was added and the water station was completed April 2024.

The allotments now have the capacity to collect 4000 litres/888 gallons of rainwater for use on the site.

Annual inspections

The second initiative was biannual inspections of allotments. This started in July 2023 and has continued biannually ever since. Following these inspections several holders of uncultivated allotments have been asked to relinquish their plots.

Clearance of overgrown allotments

The third initiative has been the organisation of work parties of allotment holders to clear overgrown allotments once their old tenants had left, to encourage younger/new allotment holders. In some cases larger allotments, once cleared, have been split into two, to make them more manageable. In the first of these clearances, two overgrown allotments were cleared by a 15 strong work party of volunteers over a weekend in February 2023, and again in January 2024, this time clearing allotments that the former tenants relinquished after the July 2023 inspection (detailed article here).

More recently a Work Party of volunteers gathered on the 14th March 2026 to clear the allotment on the A6 next to the former Holy Trinity Church and the very large one above it, adjacent to The Greenspace. The volunteers faced a forest of brambles, nettles and ivy, but set about clearing it with gusto, and by the end of the day had made a big difference. They also moved masses of household junk from the site.

By the end of the day the clearance was very obvious the A6 – you could see right up to the back wall of the top allotment for the first time in years.

Meanwhile, further south along the allotments on the A6, equally impressive clearance had taken place the week before, this time of trees. The area just north of the Children’s Play Area where the public footpath climbs up from the A6, appeared to be wooded, but was in fact allotments abandoned for so long they had become covered in trees. Unfortunately most of the trees were ash, and all had succumbed to Ash Die-Back. One tree had fallen over and was being propped up by one of the lamp posts on the A6! In consequence The Strutt Estate (current owners of the allotment land) and Bridge View Allotments Ltd (the co-op of current allotment holders, soon to be owners of the allotment land) jointly paid for local tree surgeon Jonathan Beard to clear the area of trees. Jonathan took advantage of the closure of the A6 for other tree work (see here for more detail) to do just that.

The result of the clearance is impressive, and adds to the openness of the entire A6 frontage of the allotments. This will also let considerably more light into the existing worked allotments on the A6. The new area cleared of trees will be used for a mixture of allotments and woodland wildflower meadow.

Chris Ring Memorials

A fourth initiative is to create a couple of memorials to  Chris Ring, one of our allotment holders who died in tragic circumstances in June 2024. The first memorial is a new bench about 50 yards south of East Terrace, on the public footpath and opposite Chris’s former allotment.  This was created in July 2025 by Trevor Smelt and Adrian Rochford, with plaque wording by Chris’s family and The Quakers (Chris was a Quaker.)

 

The second memorial is the Chris Ring Community Orchard, which will be open for the whole community to use.

It was decided, in consultation with his friends in Transition Belper, to create the Chris Ring Community Orchard, from 2 allotments already containing small fruit trees, in his honour, and a great deal of volunteer effort has been expended over the past two years to make this happen.  Last year the area was cleared in two large work parties (it was extremely overgrown, with brambles with 2” wide stems) and two apple trees from Chris Ring’s garden added and the area covered in weed matting to supress weeds.

This year a grant was obtained from Belper Town Council to buy 108m² of turf and then two huge work parties organised for September 2025 and May 2026, each with a dozen volunteers, comprising NHS non-medical staff, gathered by Jen Butters of the Milford Community Greenspace, plus some allotment holders.  The proposed orchard was a large area to deal with, so the bottom half was done at the first work party and the top half in the second. In both cases the black plastic was removed, the area dug over and remaining weeds/roots removed, and then the area raked level. In May 2026 a new pear tree and a new plum tree were planted in the upper half, to fill some gaps. The turf was ordered to arrive in two 54m² batches, one for each work party. In each case it then had to be carried by wheelbarrow 400 yards across the site to the orchard. It was then finally laid. A battery electric lawnmower has been donated to the site and the grass is cut regularly by volunteers and on the 6th July a sign was erected, finally completing the orchard.

The fruit on the orchard (apples (eating and cooking), pears, plums and damsons) are free for anyone to pick. The orchard is situated half way along the public footpath between the end of East Terrace and the A6 near to the Children’s Play Area.

For more photos and detail of the work done on this project in the February – September 2025 see article here.

If you’d like to get involved in future work parties please get in touch with David Moreton at davidmoretonchevinbrae@gmail.com.

If you live within 5 miles of the Bridge View Allotments (the former Holy Trinity Church at the bottom of the allotments to be precise), and are interested in joining the waiting list for allotments at Bridge View, please contact Fiona Lennox by e-mail on fionarowe13@googlemail.com including your address and contact details. Please note when thinking of taking on an allotment that their upkeep takes time. If you do not have 3 – 5 hours a week to spare on your allotment, it could rapidly get on top of you and become overwhelming.

Mart’s Meadow

Mart’s Meadow is a smaller and newer set of allotments, situated between the A6 and the River Derwent just south of the bottom end of the riverside path in the Hopping Mill Meadow estate. The allotment area is being expanded to the south as more areas are cleared. See here for a write up of how these allotments were created.

To find out if there are any allotments available to rent on Mart’s Meadow, e-mail helen.franny@btinternet.com