The Hop Bin E-Book

Fran Doel

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

For 400 years Kent and East Sussex were vividly and visibly associated with the cultivation of hops. Fran and Geoff Doel have evoked this bygone world of hopping by gathering together a wide range of social and literary accounts, poems and songs from the Tudor period to the present day, each with a contextual introduction. The selection illustrates both the 'rose-tinted' image and the harsher reality of a distinctive aspect of rural life in the south east.

Leseprobe

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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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 Ransom’s letter with her account of the Hartlake Bridge Disaster.

For permission to quote the extracts from George Orwell’s 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-West’s Country Notes are ‘Copyright Vita Sackville-West’.

The extract from H.E. Bates’s 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 here.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

Anne Hughes:

‘The Early Years of Hop Growing in Kent’ (2002)

Chapter One

The Tudor Hoppe

Andrew Boorde (Borde):

A Dyetry of Health (1542)

Thomas Tusser:

Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1557)

William Harrison:

Description of England (1577)

Reynolde Scot:

A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden (1574)

Chapter Two

The Seventeenth-century Hop

Gervase Markham:

The English Husbandman (1613)

Nicholas Culpeper:

The Complete Herbal (1653)

Celia Fiennes:

Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary (c.1690)

Chapter Three

The Georgian Hop

Daniel Defoe:

A Tour through the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (1724–27)

Song:

‘The Jovial Man of Kent (When Autumn Skies are Blue)’

Christopher Smart:

The Hop Garden (1752)

Thomas Turner:

Diary for the Years1754–65

Eighteenth-century Cookbook:

To Choose Hops

Eighteenth-century Cookbook:

To Restore Musty Beer

Song:

‘Hops’: A New Song for the Year 1776

William Cobbett:

Rural Rides (1822–26)

Chapter Four

The Victorian Hop

William Moy Thomas:

‘Hops’ from Household Words (1852)

Fran & Geoff Doel:

Transport, Accommodation & Traditions

John B. Marsh:

From Hops & Hopping (1892)

The Drowning at Hartlake Bridge:

Account from the London Illustrated News (1853)

John B. Marsh:

‘The Hartlake Bridge Disaster’ from Hops and Hopping (1892)

Song:

‘Hartlake Bridge’ (Traditional Song from the Traveller Tradition)

Alice Ransom:

Letter on the Hartlake Bridge Disaster of 1853 (Written 1984) Addressed to Mrs Anne Hughes

Anne Hughes:

The Hop-Pickers’ Memorial Service, 19 October 2003, St Mary’s Church, Hadlow

Song:

‘The Irish Hop Pole Puller’ (Traditional Folk Song from the Singing of George ‘Pop’ Maynard of Copthorne (1872–1962))

Chapter Five

The Twentieth-century Hop

Jack London:

‘Hops and Hoppers’ from The People of the Abyss (1903)

Rudyard Kipling:

‘Dymchurch Flit’ from Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906)

Edmund Blunden:

‘The Midnight Skaters’ from the Collection Poems of Many Years (1957)

Sheila Kaye-Smith:

‘The Shepherd of Lattenden’ from Sussex Saints (1926)

Rules to Pickers

From the Beltring Whitbread Hop Farm (1930s)

George Orwell:

From ‘Hop Picking’ (1931)

Miles Sargent:

‘The Day’s Work’ from St Francis of the Hop-Fields (1933)

Vita Sackville-West:

‘The Hop-Picking Season’ and ‘The Garden and the Oast’ from Country Notes (1939)

Ken Thompson:

Running a Hop Farm

H.E. Bates:

From The Blossoming World (1971)

Bob Kenward:

Songs About Hop-Picking

Chapter Six

The Continuing Hop

John Lander (Hop Consultant):

Hops – Past, Present & Future (1992 & 2013)

Gael Nash:

Living on a Hop Farm (2013)

Colored Plates

Mono Plates

Copyright

PREFACE

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 1440s 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.

In the seventeenth century, hop cultivation in Kent had become so widespread and commercial and beer production had become so successful that the new breweries in Canterbury, Birchington, Dover, Deal, Hythe, Maidstone and Chatham were supplying overseas markets as well as local. And although hops were now grown in thirteen other counties, it was Kent that supplied one-third of all hop crops. The Long Parliament, then waging war against their king and desperate for revenue, capitalised on their success by imposing a beer tax in 1643 which initially also affected domestic brewers though the despised levy on domestic brewing was lifted in 1651. Ale houses as well as many of the wealthier households at this time were building their own brew houses so that they could produce their own beer.

The eighteenth century has a prolific amount of literary material on hopping which relates to the fact that beer had now firmly replaced ale in England as the most general drink for all classes and that the crop was now therefore both important economically and lucrative for the farmer; it also tells us that many farmers were literate and could afford to buy printed books on farm management. By the end of the century thousands of acres of farmland in Kent were dedicated to hop production, creating a distinctive landscape of fields in which lines of geometrically placed high poles sustained growing or trailing bines, the whole protected by windbreaks of trees and dotted by picturesque oast houses which housed the kilns to dry the hops.

In the Victorian period, journalists observed and wrote magazine articles about the Kentish hop gardens and their pickers for an interested middle-class public and these, as well as hopping songs and poems, give us an insight today into how the harvesting of the hop generated its own rituals and superstitions during this period. A number of scholars have pointed out that ‘part of the mystique of the hop gardens’ was that from Tudor times onwards hopping had a special language partly derived from its specialised tools including the ‘hop dog’, the ‘hop peddler’ and the ‘hop spud’. Later in the Victorian period there would be other new words – the ‘furiners’ arriving in ‘Hopping Specials’, and the specially built ‘Hoppers’ Huts’. In addition to this the red neckchiefs adopted by the men gave them a jaunty European look and the exotic stilts worn by the Kentish men as they took giant strides through the hop garden must have generated some excitement, as did the arrival of the gaily painted Gypsy caravans in the early period. In the first half of the century the late Georgian and then the Victorian conscience was pricked by accounts of the yearly mass exodus by thousands of London’s poorest ‘in a ragged procession’ as they made their way often on foot along the Old Kent Road to the hop fields of Kent. The union workhouses could supply some with overnight accommodation en route but there was little else provided for them when they arrived and it was often unhygienic, with farmers often proffering accommodation normally reserved for their animals – stables, cattle sheds, barns, even pigsties – to house the hopping families. Washing and toilet facilities were equally primitive at this time. Eventually farmers were inspired to provide shelter for them under canvas – early photos seem to indicate they used surplus ex-army tents made for some long-forgotten war. Purpose-built huts came last of all.

Bob Brown and family hop picking in the 1950s. (Courtesy of the late Bob Brown)

Machine picking began to displace hand picking during the 1950s and by the 1960s the ‘furiners’ workforce was simply no longer needed. And so, not with a bang but a whimper, ended the great exodus of East Enders from London to the hop fields along with the Gypsy and Irish ‘tinkers’ that joined them – all very much a thing of the past. The landscape itself changed as the hop fields and their hop poles disappeared one by one leaving oast houses isolated in the midst of great empty green fields. Nostalgia set in and the twentieth century saw, transcribed from taped interviews, lively accounts from farmers and pickers about their experiences in the hop gardens, now considered important socio-historical records. In folk clubs the old hopping songs were remembered, sung and recorded. New museums were created, often in old oast houses, celebrating the golden age of ‘Hopping Down in Kent’, when work in the hop gardens provided ‘a happy and healthy working holiday’ for London city dwellers. Quite forgotten were the signs of ‘no dogs, gypsies or pickers’ that had been too often displayed in Kent pubs. What does remain? Oast houses reused as dwellings plus the hops themselves, new varieties as well as great old varieties that are still used in beer production today. The most popular hops in Kent used in the twentieth century included Golding, a variety of the Canterbury hop which was developed by Mr Golding of East Malling, and Fuggles, said to have developed from a seed thrown from a hop-picking dinner basket on the farm of George Stace of Horsmonden in 1861 and commercially developed by Richard Fuggle of Brenchley about 1880. Earlier the Colgate variety, propagated from a plant found in a hedge in Chevening by Mr Colegate, was widely grown in the Weald. Wye College developed the Wye Target variety which was disease resistant.

So the farming and harvesting of the hop in Kent has been recorded in every kind of literary text – poems, practical farming manuals, songs, medical remedies and recipes for beer to name but a few. Starting in the twentieth century it was used more imaginatively in novels and plays in which the hop garden featured as an atmospheric backdrop to the fictional action. Today, the hop gardens are all but gone, the hoppers’ huts have either been dismantled, are gently disintegrating or are being used to house migrant European farm workers, and the oast houses have become private dwellings. So within living memory much has been lost from the Kent and Sussex countryside. Yet the story of the hop has not yet ended.

This book is a personal selection from the massive amount of material available on the history, heritage and social context of hop farming in Kent and, to a lesser extent, Sussex.

Fran & Geoff Doel, 2014

Anne Hughes

‘The Early Years of Hop Growing in Kent’ (2002)

Anne and Bill Hughes moved to Paddock Wood in 1958 when hop picking was still part of the local scene, later relocating to Hadlow in 1969 when hops were still grown in the area. Anne fulfilled a long-held ambition by studying for a BA in History awarded in 2002, at the University of Kent Centre Tonbridge. The course included the Theory and Practice of Local History in a Diploma in Kentish History. The essay ‘The Early Years of Hop Growing in Kent’ was written at this time. Sadly, there is only one farm in the parish currently growing hops.

Turkeys Carp, Hops, Pickerel and Beer,

came to England all in one Year.

This old rhyme, dating from 1424, has several variations, another being, ‘Hops, Reformation, Bays and Beer’, but all include hops. J.M. Russell in his History of Maidstone states that in 1424 information was laid against a person for ‘putting into beer an unwholesome weed called a hoppe.’ This would probably have been the wild hop, humulus lupulus, generally considered to have been brought to England by the Romans. The Roman naturalist Pliny told of hops growing in garden culpes as a weed and the Romans used the young shoots as a vegetable – a practice carried on by country people until recent times, one Hadlow lady likening it to asparagus. A 1440 dictionary promptorium includes ‘Hoppe, sede for beeyre’. Culpeper’s Herbal (1653) states that: ‘The wild hop growth up as the other doth … but it giveth small heads in far less plenty.’ He recommends its use in the form of a decoction of the tops, the tops and the flowers, powdered seed or a syrup of the juice against a wide variety of ailment including obstructions of the liver and spleen, to cure scabs, itch tetters, ringworm, spreading sores, the morphewe and all discolourings of the skin. Culpeper writes that ‘both the wild and the manured are of one property, and alike affective…’ but makes no mention of their use in beer. Perhaps he assumed his readers would be aware of this. Gerard’s Herbal (1616) states ‘the manifold virtues of Hops do manifestly argue the wholesomeness of beer above ale for the hops rather make it a physical drink to keep the body in health, than an ordinary drink for the quenching of our thirst.’

Until the mid-sixteenth century the common brew of Britain was ale, often seasoned with the spices clove and cinnamon, or plants such as wormwood and ground ivy. The Flemish weavers brought to England, particularly Kent by Edward III during the fourteenth century, were accustomed to lighter beer made with hops. It would seem likely that they would have imported their beer from the Continent, or perhaps the hops, eventually teaching local farmers to grow hops to enable them to brew beer to their own taste. This development must have gained in popularity, although not with the herbalists who saw their trade threatened. The records of Henry VIII’s household at Eltham contain a 1530 instruction to the brewer not to put hops or brimstone in the ale as it was thought to ‘dry up the body and increase melancholy’. The accounts of a wealthy household at Lestranges in Norfolk include several purchases of ‘hoppys’ in 1530. In spite of opposition, hop growing increased and Dr Joan Thirsk suggests that the government encouraged home-grown crops to replace imports.

No records remain to identify the site where the first hops were grown commercially, but tradition puts the first hop gardens in the parish of Westbere in 1520 or at Great Chart where grapes were replaced by hops during Henry VIII’s reign. Dr Thirsk likens the early growers to ‘pioneers’. Daniel Defoe in 1717 visited Maidstone and said: ‘Here, likewise, and in the county adjacent, are great quantities of hops planted and this is called the Mother of Hop Grounds in England, being the first place in England where hops were planted in any quantity, and long before they were planted in Canterbury.’

William Harrison wrote in his ‘Description of England’ (1577):

Of late years we have found and taken up a great trade in planting of hops, whereof our more hitherto and unprofitable grounds do yield such plenty and increase that there are few farmers of occupiers in the country which have not gardens and hops growing of their own, and those far better than do come from Flanders unto us.

Kent’s enclosed system of field farming, rather than the traditional system of open fields elsewhere, was easily adapted to the hops. Hedges surrounding the fields provided protection from the wind and the climate was generally favourable. There was plenty of wood for the poles and for fuel for drying the crop, and workers both local and from London to supply the seasonal labour needed. London also provided a market for surplus hops, with the River Medway useful as a means of transport. The farmers in Kent were also in a better position than others to fund the initial outlay for poles, etc. to plant up a hop garden. In a good year, hops could be a profitable crop; John Worlidge of Hampshire suggested that in 1669 an acre or two of ground-growing hops would yield more profit than 50 acres of arable land, with less time, cost and expense needed.

During the reign of James I an Act was passed for ‘avoyding of deceitfull selinge, buyinge or spenging corrupte and unwholesom Hoppes.’ Hops found to be mixed with leaves, soil etc. to increase the weight would be forfeited. From 1710 only British hops could be imported into Ireland. In 1711 excise duty was a penny a pound, and customs duty threepence a pound. By 1734 excise duty of one penny a pound had been imposed. The grower also had to furnish details of his ground, oast and storage or give a penalty of forty shillings an acre. A £10 fine was to be imposed for re-bagging foreign hops into English pockets. A penalty of £40 was incurred for using more than one pocket bearing the mark of an excise officer.

There is little early evidence of individual hop gardens. Like grass and fruit, hops on the bine were not legally needed to be included in inventories, although the mention of hop poles and other items would indicate hop growing. A 1710 inventory in Leigh in Kent for John Wicking of Pauls Farm includes 3 acres of hop poles and two oasthairs. Although there is also a brewhouse and equipment, any hops grown could well have been for the family’s personal use. William Walter of Tonbridge in 1713 had hop poles and other utensils worth £24, plus eleven bags of hops and three pockets weighing 27cwts worth £912s6d. The inventory of James Taylor of Aylesford (1689) includes:

In the Oasthouse Chamber

Item one pocket of hopps, one oastheare and some other small things 01.03.00

Item eight bags of hopps 50.00.00

In the Barne

Item a stock of hoppoles for five acres and one yard of hopground 31.10.00

Farmers were not short of advice on hop growing. While Thomas Tusser made no mention of hops in his 1557 book One Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, by the time the sequel Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry was published in 1573 he advised that ‘hops hateth the land with gravel and sand’. The following year Reynolde (Reginald) Scot published A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden which was to be the standard work on hop cultivation for 200 years. Scot came from Smeeth near Ashford and had learned about hop growing through working with them. The book is well illustrated with woodcuts showing the various stages of cultivation, presumably for those less skilled in reading. He advised growing the plants on a small mound of earth, erecting three or four poles when the shoots appeared above the ground. The hops were to be tied to the poles with rushes or woollen material. The 3ft-high mounds of earth, flattened on the top, were to beat weeds. It was suggested that alders be planted to the north and east for shelter and to supply poles. Scot advised, ‘Grow as much and no more than you can dispose of and do not be lured by the desire for profit to cultivate hops to excess.’ He suggested that an acre of ground and the third part of a man’s labour, plus small additional cost, would yield forty marks yearly to those that ‘ordereth well’ for the plants to climb up. Gervas Markham’s Inrichment of the Weald of Kent (1631) also gave advice. Professor R. Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge University, suggested in his book Riches of a Hop-GardenExplained (published 1725): ‘Wherein such Rules are laid down for the Management of the Hop, as may improve the most barren ground, from one Shilling to thirty or forty Pounds an Acre per Annum.’ He also gave practical advice on preparing the ground and harvesting.

Many visitors to England referred to the hops, including Celia Fiennes who in 1697 commented:

We pass by great Hopyards on both sides of the road (between Sittingbourne and Canterbury) and this year was great quantityes of that fruite here in Kent.

Thence to Rochester 8 mils, I came by a great many fine hopp-yards where they were at work puling the hopps.

The Swede Peter Kalm, in July 1748, showed a much more scientific interest. He wrote:

Hop-gardens

Most of them are at Canterbury, and then comes Maidstone. On 6 July I saw a man going into the Hopfield and tearing away all the lowest leaves from the hop – up to two ells from the ground – in order to stem the hop’s growth. The cost of hop-gardens here in Kent is such that when all the expenses incurred by growing hops are added up for one year it comes to twenty-four or twenty-five pounds sterling or more, from seven or eight acres, after allowing for all expenses. But the management of hops is an uncertain trade. Often, when hops are at their greenest and most splendid one night can destroy them, so that the next day they are black. Often when the hops are completely ready to be taken down to be picked, one night can completely spoil the flowers, so that hardly any use can be made of them. This is thought to be caused by some sort of dew. As far as anyone knows, chalk has never been used to fertilise hops, but the fertiliser which they use most is burnt horse manure mixed with the dirt which collects on the roads, and this is reckoned to be the best. A hop-garden demands very rich earth. When it has once been fertilised it can stand three or four years before it needs doing again. The hop-gardens here were formed of tripods; one tripod was made from three sticks put into a triangle, with the tops of the triangles sticking out. There were about ten quarters between each tripod. In the string the tripods are taken down and the hopfields made flat; at this time the whole of the field is dug and hoed in order to get rid of the weeds, and after that the soil is heaped together for the three sticks, and the tripod is made. Between Gravesend and Rochester we saw a lot of hop-gardens, particularly around Rochester. Mostly they were planted on the south-east side of a chalk slope, and mostly on such slopes as were not very steep. They were in tripod, and usually two ells between each and the sticks came from all sorts of leaf trees. Because these fields were still unweeded the soil around the tripods was no higher than in the surrounding field. The tripods were arranged not ordine quincunciali but in squares … the hops were already much longer than the sticks and no flowers were yet in bloom. Some hop-gardens had been weeded so well that the soil between the tripods was like the tidiest garden plot.