Read the latest project newsletter

Launched in July 2010, The Last Market Gardener is a major village history project led by Maureen Spinks for the Badsey Society. We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support.

We are delighted to announce that The Badsey Society has been awarded a grant of £21,700 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for our project, The Last Market Gardener. From now until July 2012, we shall be producing a quarterly newsletter for the whole village to keep everyone informed of what is going on. Our first major event will be our market gardening exhibition at Badsey Flower Show, so please come and visit our stand. And if you are descended from a market gardening family and have photos or documents that we have not already seen, we would love to hear from you.

The project focuses on a 140-year period in the history of Badsey and Aldington when market gardening was the main occupation in the parish. The project begins around 1871 when the first market gardener was recorded in the Badsey census and takes us up to the present day when there are very few people left in the village still involved with market gardening.

The idea for this project came from two main directions. The late Tony Jerram, the first Chairman of The Badsey Society, was very involved with the asparagus and plum DVDs which we produced. It was he who came up with the working title of The Last Market Gardener for a third DVD. Unfortunately, Tony's untimely death in 2008 put this on hold, but we now feel that we would like to bring his idea to fruition and, with the skills of Will Dallimore and his team, this should be possible. At the same time, Terry Sparrow has been doing research over the last few years about market gardening in the area and has begun writing a book on the subject.

With the recent publication of the 1911 census, we have been able to see that nearly 80% of households in the village were engaged in market gardening. A major focus of the project will be to look in more detail at who the market gardeners were and where they lived. It was boom-time in Badsey a hundred years ago, when many villagers were able to transform themselves from being an "Ag Lab" to a market gardener who was master of his own destiny; 80 new houses sprung up between 1901 and 1911, reflecting the new-found wealth. And also, with all the knowledge gained about the parish of 200 years ago through our Enclosure Map project, it seemed like a logical extension to study a later period in the parish's history. As Will Dallimore, in Churchillian mode, said at the Enclosure Map End of Project evening, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." We have much still to learn about Badsey's history, and we hope that you will join us on our voyage of discovery. In each quarterly Newsletter we will update you on the project's progress and profile a different market gardening family and a different new housing area.

Useful links

Contact us at history@badsey.net or talk to any member of the Badsey Society Committee.

The Badsey Society

The Heritage Lottery Fund

www.badsey.net
(the historical website)

www.badsey.org.uk (the villages today)

Newsletter 4 - April 2011 (pdf file)

Newsletter 3 - January 2011 (pdf file)

Newsletter 2 - October 2010 (pdf file)

Newsletter 1 - July 2010 (pdf file)

Project launch at the Badsey Flower Show,
24 July 2010

Throughout the afternoon, the Badsey Society stall was a throng of activity. People came to learn about the project, to look at an exhibition of market gardening tools and photographs, and to try their skill at identifying vegetables from their seeds. Visitors bought our publications and joined the society. Of special interest were a series of folders containing profiles of many of the local market gardening families. We were delighted that several people brought along documents and other information which will prove very valuable to the project.


The committee at the launch. Left to right: Terry Sparrow, Neil Thould, Jane Neill, Will Dallimore, Maureen Spinks (project leader), Richard Phillips, Valerie Magan, Ian Gibson and Mike Lovatt. Not pictured: Steve Bucknall. Photo: Tony Spinks. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Badsey Flower Show

 

Aims of the project

  • To produce a book about the rise and fall of market gardening.
  • To produce a DVD with the working title "The Last Market Gardener" in order to capture market gardening on film before it's too late.
  • To transcribe the 1911 census for Badsey and Aldington and place it on the Badsey website.
  • To produce an outside mural at Badsey First School, based on the occupations and land-use in the Parish at the time of the census 100 years ago.
  • To create adequate storage facilities for the growing archive (market gardening tools, photographs, documents) which The Badsey Society is accumulating; to hold annual archive evenings when the contents of the archive will be on display and to allow more accessibility.
  • To hold historical exhibitions at Badsey Flower Show, Evesham Asparagus Festival, Bretforton Fleece Inn Asparagus Auction.
  • To hold a series of walks and talks and readings from some letters written by Badsey schoolchildren in 1933 about living in a market gardening community.

 


Alfred C Sparrow with a hundred of asparagus. Note the hampers with lids, known as flats, specially made for conveying asparagus and, on the right, the bundle of osier twigs used for tying the hundreds. Alfred's grandson, Terry Sparrow, is the author of the book being written on the rise and fall of market gardening.

Our latest book, Digging for a Living, was launched at a special event at Badsey School on 21 May 2011. The author, T C Sparrow, told us why market gardening became such a special part of the Vale of Evesham. Brian Smith read his poem Leaving the Land and Professor Nick Evans looked at some of the future directions for market gardening. Will Dallimore ended the evening by showing some market gardening videos and looking forward to the new video being produced for the Last Market Gardener project.

How you can help

Are you descended from a market gardening family? If so, do you have any relevant photos or documents we can borrow?

Let us know if you know of a possible place for an Archive/Museum.

Let us know if you have any particular skills which may be of relevance to this project.

Join the Badsey Society - only £2 per person.

 
Badsey is a large working village in the Vale of Evesham, Worcestershire, England. Aldington is a smaller village in the same parish. The Badsey Society exists to promote the understanding and study of the villages and the surrounding area. The Badsey Society is grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support. Updated 23 June 2011. Email History@badsey.net.