Fran Doel - The Hop Bin: An Anthology of Hop Picking in Kent and East Sussex

To Anne Hughes in grateful acknowledgement of
her inspirational articles in this book and of her
extensive contributions to Kent local history.

We are indebted to Anne Hughes who has generously allowed us to use substantial parts of her academic essay The Early Years of Hop Growing in Kent, her account of the hop pickers memorial service in Hadlow in 2003 and for the use of Alice Ransoms letter with her account of the Hartlake Bridge Disaster.

For permission to quote the extracts from George Orwells accounts of his hop-picking experiences we acknowledge the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.

Direct quotations from Vita Sackville-Wests Country Notes are Copyright Vita Sackville-West.

The extract from H.E. Batess The Blossoming World is reproduced by kind permission of Laurence Pollinger Ltd.

We should also like to thank the following for their help and contributions: Gael and Oliver Nash, John Lander, Bob Brown, Bob Kenward and Ken Thompson, and also our publishing team at The History Press: Nicola Guy, Declan Flynn, Emily Locke and Lucy Simpkin for the illustration .

Today the words beer and ale are often used interchangeably but historically they are not the same beverage. Until the thirteenth century the predominant drink of Northern Europe and for all classes was spiced ale, brewed with malt. Brewed on a domestic scale, ale was cloudy, sweet and nutritious, but did not keep and did not travel well without spoiling. The addition of an extra ingredient into ale the hop not only changed the taste, making it bitter, it helped to preserve the concoction much longer and stabilised it. By 1400 this new flavoursome drink, now labelled bier and later anglicised as beer, was being made on a commercial scale abroad and being imported into England, and proved so popular that by the 1440 s surveyors of ale brewers in London were replaced by surveyors of beer brewers. It seems that skilled Flemings and the Dutch made the good-quality beer, but that some London brewers were attempting to brew hop beer (though not always successfully) and were consequently being fined for the results.

We are fortunate today that the Internet gives us ready access to archivist material as some of our earliest English accounts on the cultivation and management of the hop garden in Kent date to the Tudor period. By the late Tudor period very large tracts of farmland in Kent had been successfully converted into hop gardens, the Kentish soil being peculiarly suited to the cultivation of hops. These manuals tell us that what a hop farm also required was plenty of combustibles (initially wood later charcoal) needed to fire the kilns which would dry the hops, as well as designated areas of land dedicated to the growth of ash or alder wood which would be used for the supporting hop-poles. The hops were initially trained by the mound method, that is planted in a small earth mound in which were inserted three small poles to each hill. The cost of setting up a new hop garden was considerable, particularly as the farmer needed to employ a large labour force to harvest the hops in his hop fields during the short picking season. However, many of the Kent farmers could apparently afford the high initial outlay and, with good husbandry, were able apparently to make their fortune.

Initially the harvesting of the hop was done by a local workforce later supplemented by workers from outside the area. The picking season in Kent started in early September and the harvesting could continue over a six-week period. Rain was a disaster as no money could be earned and the crop lost. From the beginning, farmers encouraged married women to be an important part of the labour force, permitting them to bring their children into the fields and to help with the picking.