About Tatnam Farm Allotment Association

1933

Tatnam Farm was acquired by the local authority in relation to this asset, either for the allotments themselves or access to them in

12 June

Title P128627 Acquired

16th October 1948

Title P83744 acquired

17th November 1948

Title DT3356 acquired

24th January 1966

Title P79776 acquired

23rd May 1972

Title DT25667 acquired

April 1991

The Tatnam farm Allotment Association was formed by Ken Gibbs, with Dave James as Treasurer and Broadstone Allotment join as Associate Members. The reason for forming the association was down to the council wanting to take away a large section of the allotments to build a school, which eventually went ahead in 1997.

1997

Oakdale junior school was built on part of the allotments, losing between 60/80 plots and an entrance from Well Lane.

2013

Dave James carried on running the association until 2013. It was then that Julia palmer took over running the association as Secretary until 2024. In Julia's time, she managed with the committee to achieve funding for our compost toilet on site, raising £10,500 for this project. The toilet was built in May 2019 by John Clarke and, me, Terry Dugdale. (Well, I did some work on it, but mostly John!)

2018

I became a committee member, and then in 2019, I became Chairman of the association. My plan was to look at how we can improve our allotment site going forward for the future of our site and members, to make it secure for years to come.

Well I went to two Bournemouth sites that are self-managed, and the seed was planted right away! This must be the way forward for our site as well. The facilities they had were amazing, so the first thing I had to do was put the idea to the committee and see what their thoughts were regarding self-management and the plot holders on their thoughts as well.

2023

Fast forward to a meeting on the 11th December 2023,  it was decided by a majority to go self-managed, and believe me, I could not have achieved this without the fantastic support from the committee and plot holders. All the hard work being done and ongoing by the committee in achieving our goal of becoming self-managed, I really can't thank them all enough.

We shall hopefully sign a lease in January 2025.
 

Hopefully, all plot holders at some point will get behind this project and help out when needed. After all, the allotments will be ours to look after for future plots holders in years to come!

​

Author - Terry Dugdale, Committee Chairman