From ideals to reality: The women's smallholding colony at Lingfield, 1920-39

Meredith, A. (2006) From ideals to reality: The women's smallholding colony at Lingfield, 1920-39. Agricultural History Review, 54. pp. 105-121. ISSN 0002-1490

Abstract/Summary

The immediate impetus for the colony at Lingfield in Surrey was the desire by the Women's Farm and Garden Association to enable women who had worked on the land during the First World War to be able to farm on their own account. However the motivation for the colony can also be traced back to late nineteenth-century ideals. The colony soon ran into problems which were exacerbated by the adverse agricultural conditions of the early 1920s. The association responded constructively but the colony was wound down from 1929. At one level the colony could be seen as a failure, yet this article argues that the 19 colony provided a rural community where single women lived in a mutually supportive environment.