Feeding London: The Market Gardens of Battersea
By Sally Sellers
Until the railways and industrial development transformed Battersea in the early 19th century, it was predominantly an agricultural community and its inhabitants were engaged in the production of food for themselves but also for the people of London a few miles away.
Battersea Fields
In 1639 Battersea’s gardeners and other parishioners asked for legal redress when Sir Thomas Southwell and a Mrs. Peel set up posts which obstructed a route used ‘for conveyance of dung etc., from the waterside’. Boats taking fruit and vegetables to market were returning with urban manure. It was the abundance of horse manure from the London streets , ‘the gold dust of high cultivation market gardens’, as well as ‘night soil’ from domestic cess pits which made Battersea Fields so productive. Before Bazalgette’s vast sewer system, market gardens not only provisioned London’s expanding urban population, but also helped in the recycling of the increasing organic waste it generated.
A Healthy Harvest
Battersea Bundles
Asparagus became the parish’s proverbial crop, renowned for its size. The heads of the ‘Battersea bundles’ elicited fisherman-style boasting, some it was claimed weighing in at more than 32 pounds. Other parishes vied for primacy in cultivating this summer delicacy, which according to one newspaper in 1794 could earn the right ground £2,000-4,000 a year. But a character in Samuel Foote’s The Mayor of Garratt (1763) made it clear that in the ‘manufacturing of sparagrass: Battersea I own, gentlemen, bears at present the belle.’ Battersea’s speciality crop is still celebrated with the naming of the modern pub, The Asparagus, which stands at the junction of Falcon Road and Battersea Park Road.