A Talk By Patricia Cullimore

The Abington Land Settlement Association estate was created in the 1930s to give unemployed industrial workers a new start as smallholders. Around 60 smallholdings were built, each with a cottage, outbuildings and glasshouses for intensive market gardening. Families worked their own plots but bought supplies and sold produce cooperatively through the LSA. During the war, the focus shifted to skilled horticultural workers to boost food production. The scheme continued after 1945 but was wound up in the early 1980s, when the estate was sold into private ownership. Its distinctive layout still shapes Abington today.