What's On - Borough of Culture 2020

The Romsey Allotment Holders Association welcome you to our plots in an Open Afternoon. Our entry gates are off Knatchbull Close (SO51 8AF) and Southampton Road opposite the Rapids Health Club, and the gates are linked by a gravel road. Seasonal produce will be available at the Knatchbull Close entrance for a donation to the allotment funds.

Allotments are of increasing interest throughout the country, with all the advantages and choices they bring: organic, locally grown, heirloom varieties, exercise in the outdoors in good company, promoting biodiversity and helping to arrest the decline in insect pollinators. All these different interests are expressed in our allotments.

We have plot holders who grow plants for dyeing wool, who strive to grow the biggest and best, who follow no-dig soil cultivation, who create wildlife habitat, who have immaculate plots, and those who grow vegetables in a cottage-garden medley. We welcome you to wander among our plots, enjoying the diversity and beauty of growing plants, and the various structures in place for utility and art.

We are proud to be the only allotment site in Hampshire (and one of about four in the UK) to be part of the British Butterfly Conservation survey, and our results contribute to their national database. In the long term, our data will provide valuable evidence of trends of these beautiful but threatened creatures. Come and see the plants our butterflies and moths rely on.

We even have a cultural history - In Victorian times, our plot of land was used as a rubbish tip, and Victorian rubbish is occasionally still dug up; however, allotments have been on this site for the past 120 years. The present Association was formed in 1942 to protect against the land from a proposed housing development, an ever-present threat, and Lord Mountbatten of Burma was elected the first President of the Association. We still rent our site from the Broadlands Estate.

Ticket Prices: Free

Time

(Sunday) 11:00 am - 5:00 pm

Location

Romsey Allotments

Southampton Road / Knatchbull Close, Romsey, Hants.

Organizer

Romsey Allotment Holders Association01794 514155 , info@romseyallotments.org.uk

Calendar GoogleCal

12jul7:30 pm9:30 pmSecret Spitfires

Event Details

Film followed by Q& A session with historian and secret factory engineer Norman Parker. Secret Spitfires is the remarkable story of how WWII Spitfire fighter aircraft were built in secret right in the heart of Southern England. It has taken 75 years for this story to come to light. It tells of how hundreds of girls, boys, women, elderly men and a handful engineers built the iconic fighter plane the Spitfire, in secret, hidden in sheds, depots, garages, barns and even a hotel. So hidden, Hitler's spies couldn’t find them and have them bombed. The story starts with Hitler’s determination to destroy Spitfire production and to achieve air superiority as a prelude to invasion. What he and his generals didn’t know was that as they were destroying the main Spitfire factories in Southampton, manufacturing was being moved to secret factories in rural cities, small towns and villages, including nearby Chattis Hill, Salisbury and Winchester. The secret was so well kept, even the family and friends of the workers never knew what they did and where they worked. This documentary demanded to be made to get it on record before no one was left to tell the story first hand. Tickets: £5.00 available online from 1 June 2020 via our website