About Us

The allotments were created at the start of the 1980s. Originally managed by the Camberwell Gardens Guild, they are now under the management of the Lettsom Allotments Association, a charity created and run by members of the allotment.

We have strong links with the local community. Grove Primary School has a plot on the allotment and the Southwark Day Care Centre for Asylum Seekers also have a well-used plot where asylum seekers grow food for use at the local centre in Peckham.

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John Coakley Lettsom

The site is named after John Coakley Lettsom, an 18th century scientist, physician and horticulturalist who lived on the site cultivating many plants that he used in his practice. He also introduced Mangel Wurzel to the British Isles. 

He founded the oldest medical society in the United Kingdom, the Medical Society of London. 

Dr Lettsom was also a committed abolitionist, and friend of many notable people of the time including Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin who wrote;

"Lettsom was an ardent believer in the benefits of useful knowledge, medical advice, and moral exhortation, and a tireless writer on such topics; he produced books and pamphlets against drunkenness, for example, and on the evils of tea drinking. In The natural history of the tea tree with observations on its medical qualities, and effects of tea-drinking (1772) he argued that the habit made society enervated and effeminate.."