All houses, I suppose, in those days had a garden. Gardens seemed to be of a regular size. Most of them were a chain long and a pole wide. That’s 22 yards long, which is the length of a cricket pitch, and five and a half yards wide which was quite a decent sized garden. Most of the houses had a lawn where the family sat in summer but the bulk of the garden was cultivated, and that was the husband’s job, very often helped by his wife unless they had a family. The family had to set to and help him too.
Not all husbands were good gardeners but most got the hang of it and when one thing came out then something else went in. The husband’s job was to keep the family supplied with spuds. Until spuds came again they provided the wife with cabbages, carrots, onions and parsnips. And she received them fresh out of the garden and into the kitchen.
When the family increased, quite often, they rented an allotment. In those days there must have been hundreds of allotments. So many families rented an allotment close to where they lived, and they were always kept in apple-pie order because of the competition. Even if you weren’t a very good gardener you did your best.
These allotments produced nearly all the vegetables that a family needed throughout the year. There were six grocers and six butchers in Wokingham but only two greengrocers because everyone grew their own stuff.
There was a chap named Scragg in Denmark Street or end of the Market Place. He sold such things that people didn’t grow in their gardens, for example, tomatoes and cucumbers. If you were unfortunate not to have potatoes in your garden, you could get them from him, but it wasn’t the general rule.