rural coops

A fascinating piece of social history – showing how rural England helped give some suffering economic hardship a new start. Rural Coops still offer real potential including for the redesign of public services…

The lives of unemployed miners and shipbuilders who moved from the north-east of England to Sussex during the industrial depression of the 1930s are the focus of a new exhibition.

The move south came when, in 1934, the Land Settlement Association established 20 sites where jobless families were given smallholdings.

Families of 120 men relocated to the largest of the farms at Sidlesham.

Their story is being retold at Chichester’s Novium museum.

The creation of the smallholdings was to alleviate mass unemployment which had hit the North East.

Each tenant was given a house, piggery, chicken battery, access to a glasshouse and four acres of land, with the smallholdings run as a cooperative.