Land Occupations:

London:
 

Current actions on the issue of Land & Housing with a TLIO-bent

• Grow Heathrow  Grow Heathrow is a land project occupying formerly disused glasshouses, demonstrating growing techniques and low-impact technology. It is part of Transition Heathrow – a grassroots action group working to build resilient Heathrow communities, capable of collectively coping with the injustices and threats of climate change and peak oil.

Directions:

There is a map on the Grow Heathrow website www.transitionheathrow.com

Public Transport:

from Central London: Go to Paddington Railway station (on the Circle tube line) and take a 20 minute train journey to West Drayton. From West Drayton either take the 222 bus towards Hounslow and get off in Sipson Village or follow the cycle path towards Sipson.  OR get train to Hayes and Harlington Station. From train exit onto street (Station Rd, Hayes), find bus-stop on same side of road as station exit and get 140 bus travelling towards Heathrow. Get off in Harlington High St 2 busstops after road crosses over M4 motorway. Walk down Sipson Lane – 25 min walk to Sipson village (village just past bridge over motorway).

The site is a 1 minute walk from the King William Pub which is in the middle of town.

By car:

Our address is Grow Heathrow, Vineries Close, Sipson, West Drayton, UB7 0JG

Contact: 0044 7890751568 (Site phone)

email: info@transitionheathrow.com

www.transitionheathrow.com

 

Tameside, Greater Manchester:

Members of Ashton Allotment Action in Ashton Moss, Tameside have occupied a site of old allotments taken out of use next to the M60. The land was given by Tameside Council to a local estate agent in 1996. The group, inspired by the diggers, moved onto the site on the 23rd April 2011 and started to dig and cultivate the land.

 

Former land occupations:

Yorkley Court Community Farm, Forest-of-Dean, Gloucestershire:
A group of activists from Reclaim the Fields occupied land on an abandoned farm in the Forest-of-Dean in early 2012. Yorkley Court was unregistered land that appeared to have no owner. Ownership had not been proven for many years, despite a legal firm collecting rent from tenant farmers and contractors in recent years. A Community Land Trust was set up by activists in cooperation with local people, for the benefit of local people. Lineal descendants of the last known owners of Yorkley Court Farm – Samuel and Elizabeth Cholditch, were found by a local genealogist employed by Yorkley Court Community Farm, and they approved of the conduct and management of the land by the land occupiers.

In the mid nineties the then tenant farmers had tried to purchase the farm. It was at this time that the current trustees / executors of the farm confirmed that beneficiaries had been found. This was supported by the Crown Treasury Solicitor in 1997 who provided names of some of those who would have entitlement. However for reasons unknown the beneficiaries were never contacted and the sale could not take place.

The plot thickened in 2010 when the trustee /executor Michael Barnard was investigated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and declared himself bankrupt.

By 2012, it appeared that the deeds and trust documents no longer existed having been lost whilst in the care of the solicitors firm Barnard and Co. Despite notifying the trustee Richard Tolson of the existence of the beneficiaries, he sold the farm to multimillionaire property developer Brian Bennett.

In 2014 the land occupiers resisted eviction by a group of bailiffs, security men and hired muscle from ‘The Strip’, a few derelict hectares of that land, converting the wasteland into productive use. It hit the headlines again in 2015 when history was repeated. However, between the 10th and 12th of March 2016, they were evicted by baliffs, with workers hired by Brian Bennett devastating the environment of Yorkley Court Community Farm, and unlawfully destroyed pre-existing buildings which they did not have permission to destroy. Ref: https://yorkleycourt.wordpress.com/page/2/

London:

• Diggers2012 – were camped in a woodland on Coopers Hill, Runnymede

The group  occupied this land (owned by Royal Holloway University) to highlight the right of people around the world to shelter and grow food on disused land, having moved to this site near the location where the Magna Carta was signed having been prevented via an injunction to settle on a disused field on the Crown Estate near Windsor Great Park the week after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Read more about this here. Also, go to: Diggers2012 WordPress site

• Land & Freedom Camp, Clapham Common – Sat 17th Sept -to- Sun 25th Sept 2011.

• Kew Bridge Ecovillage, West London:

On June 6th 2009, nearly a hundred activists converged on a piece of derelict land at Kew Bridge in south west London to create an eco-village community based entirely on sustainable technology and construction techniques. Info: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=88020757939

 

Ongoing Projects:

Bristol:

Various land-based and housing action activities occurring in ‘Bristle’:

• Bristol Garden Share: http://www.sustainableredland.org.uk/bristol-gardenshare/
• Community Farm:  http://www.sustainableredland.org.uk/community-farm-2/
• Bristol Housing Action Movement: http://www.public-interest.co.uk/bham/

 

London:

Organic Lea – a worker’s cooperative growing food on London’s edge in the Lea Valley: http://www.organiclea.org.uk/

Hawkwood Plant Nursery – Organiclea’s food growing and plant production site: http://www.organiclea.org.uk/what-we-do/we-grow-food/hawkwood/

 

 

See all UK Direct-Action activity linked from this site here