SPALDING AT WAR: South Holland schools urged to grow food supplies

Schools were encouraged to make the most of their land by growing food to help the war effort.

The president of the Board of Agriculture, a Mr Prothero issued an appeal to headmasters, headmistresses and teachers to help in the general scheme of increased food production.

The Holland education committee had given little support to schools’ kitchen gardens, but Mr Prothero pointed out that there are around 3,200 school gardens and asked that teachers make each one - ‘every foot of it’ - a prize kitchen garden.

Although the actual addition each child can make to the national food supply is small, he added, added together it may come to something substantial and every child will be think that he or she is doing national work.

The Board of Education allowed the garden work to be done in school hours and suggested that teachers should extend their work to the allotments and gardens of those who are with the Forces or absent on other national services, distributing seed potatoes and preparing the children to be useful on the farms during the holidays.

The Lincolnshire Free Press commented that the Holland Education Authority, in the light of current needs, might “very well modify its attitude on the matter”.

Spaldonian railwaymen also made the most of the allotment space which was let out in small plots on Hancock’s Field, Pinchbeck Road by the GN Railway Company to assist food production.

The sites were No fewer than 49 people were seen on Good Friday working on the plots, growing crops to boost the vegetables available to everyone.

It was said that ‘this spoke well for the energy and industry of Spaldonians’in what was described as ‘a wartime spectacle’.