important centre for market-gardening, “120 trucks of produce leaving Potton daily during the season for London, in addition to fifty trucks which pass over the Great Northern line from Sandy station, together with much more from sidings and other stations.” This is the more interesting as within a short distance from this animated centre “thousands of acres are quite or very nearly derelict, and the farmhouses, buildings, and cottages are slowly rotting down.” The worst is that “all this land was cultivated, and grew crops up to the ‘eighties.”124
Another oasis of market-gardening is offered by the county of Bedfordshire. “Being a county of natural small-holdings, carved out before the passing of the 1907 Act,” it is rapidly becoming — we are told by Mr. F. E. Green — “a county of market-gardens.” The fertility of its soil, the fact that it can easily be worked at any time of the year, and that a race of skilled gardeners has developed there long since, have contributed to that growth; but, of course, the whole is hampered by the heavy rents,