Category: Agriculture: Smallholders and Smallholdings

Smallholdings
A stimulus in this field came from an Act passed in 1919 which gave ex-servicemen the right to have smallholdings. By 1924 Wiltshire had expanded its estate to 16,616 acres, farmed by 682 tenants. The purchase of the land and the provision of buildings cost £886,000 between 1920 and 1935, though not all from the rates. Some 35 per cent was from government grant, and, of course, the holdings produced a substantial income to set off against the capital expenditure.

Despite the acreage having been reduced to just over 12,000, the Council’s smallholdings estate is nevertheless in 1989 the country’s seventh largest.

For a period the council’s other functions connected with farming – diseases of animals, fertilizers and feeding stuffs, dairies, cowsheds and milkshops, and agricultural education – were united under the care of a single agricultural committee, but this was abandoned in 1926.

– From Wiltshire County Council 100, The First Hundred Years 1889-1989.

The County Council appointed an Allotment Committee in 1890 and a Smallholding Committee in 1892, but their activities seem to have been limited to supervising the work of parish councils in this field until the Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1907 empowered county councils to provide smallholdings and to satisfy the demand for allotments in urban and rural areas. Wiltshire accepted the former of these duties with enthusiasm; a land agent was appointed and by 1911 2,759 acres of land had been purchased and were let to 115 tenants.

– From Wiltshire County Council 100, The First Hundred Years 1889-1989.