Stukeley Allotmenteers raise the roof for new Cabin
- 04.04.2016
Residents of Great and Little Stukeley celebrated the opening of the new Cabin which sits at the centre of their innovative community allotment scheme this week.
The Cabin will provide a communal storage area, to encourage meeting up, sharing of tips and tools and to reinforce a sense of community across allotment holders. The approach was also key to the allotment holders aspiration to keep the appearance of the allotments attractive to the wider community. Sue Parkin, Chairman of the Stukeleys Parish Council, said: “These allotments have been a real community and partnership effort: from the first approach by residents, to creating the allotment association; working with Urban&Civic to secure the land and develop and implement the scheme; being guided by the landscape architect Simon Watkins, who came up with the site’s innovative honeycomb design - to ensure all allotmenteers have plenty of neighbours; and all the hard work of Trevor Marks to put in place the design and watering systems.
“Today marks the culmination of all of those efforts, with the opening of the cabin to complete the allotments. The Cabin would not have been possible without the support and technical advice from local company Breheny and the commitment of Parish Councillors Paul Vincent and Karl Gasson.
“We are so grateful for all of the hard work, shared skills and energy all our councillors, partners and allotmenteers have put in over the last few years to make this possible.”
Steve Dighton, from Breheny, said: “We were pleased to be able to help the Stukeleys to secure the right base for the Cabin and ensure it can provide a great communal facility for allotmenteers for many years to come.”
Background on the Allotments project:
The project has been a collaboration between the Stukeleys Parish Council, the newly formed Stukeleys Allotment Society and landowners Urban&Civic, starting in 2012 and has created 17 allotments for local residents of the two Huntingdonshire villages. The design was developed with allotments radiating from a central hub in an innovative octagon-square pattern naturally dividing the plots into full and half size and giving all plot holders easy access to communal facilities and water. The allotments have a rainwater store to be as sustainable as possible, and local contractor Trevor Marks who constructed the project designed a pump system which uses the rain collection pipe network to also provide water stations at a number of locations on the allotments – so that no-one has to walk too far to get water. The Stukeleys Allotments are for residents of Little and Great Stukeley and are situated at the top of Owl End in Great Stukeley. They are managed by the Stukeleys Allotment Society on behalf of Stukeleys Parish Council on land leased on a peppercorn rent from Urban&Civic, the developers of Alconbury Weald. Anyone interested in taking an allotment should contact the Parish Council clerk on 01480 464817 or by emailing clerk@thestukeleys-pc.gov.uk.