Plotlands Revisited

A couple of years back Five Leaves reprinted Arcadia for All, Dennis Hardy and Colin Ward's fascinating look at the plotlands of South East England and I picked up a copy at the Anarchist Book Fair.  The expression "plotlands" refers to the shanty towns that sprung up during the first half of the 20th century and especially in the inter-war period. An agricultural slump and the fall in land prices resulted in farmland being divided up into small plots and sold off for as little as a £1 down payment. The absence of any real planning legislation and the desire of working-class families from London to create weekend retreats where the kids could run around and get a bit of fresh air for a change resulted in a wonderful DIY landscape of shacks, shanties, ex-army bell tents, old railway carriages and colonial style corrugated iron bungalows. Many families moved onto to their plot during the blitz. Some stayed on after the war. Others moved down upon retirement and gradually the areas became permanent settlements.

Me and plotlands go back a bit. When I was five we moved into a wooden bungalow on Canvey Island. The unmade roads turned to a quagmire during the winter. There was no main drainage and the chemical toilet was emptied into a pit in the garden; a source of great interest to any small boy. I remember walking the sea wall that surrounded the island and we would often bump into one old gent who would sell Dad a copy of the Daily Worker and let us look through his binoculars at the Chapman Lighthouse, the coast of North Kent and the ships working up Sea Reach on the tide.

I think I liked Canvey. My mother was probably less enamoured and the 1953 floods must have been the last straw. The sea wall was breached and we were all evacuated but not before fifty eight people lost their lives. Shortly afterwards we left Canvey for good. Retreated to higher ground. Decamped to the broad sunlit uplands of Leyton.

I did return to Canvey many years later when I took my daughter there for a day trip. The roads were made up and all the old shacks replaced by modern brick buildings. I think that she was a bit disappointed really. Having been brought up on tales of how I used to live on an island below sea level I think that she was expecting something a bit more like Atlantis than the Wates type development that Canvey had become.