Hopping Mad

 For Times of Tunbridge Wells

Hopping Mad       

By Kent Barker

            I can just remember hop pickers in their huts in the next field. Or at least I think I can. It could be a false memory implanted by my grandparents’ subsequent conversations about the annual ‘invasion’. There’s no doubt that the poor East Enders, down in the hop gardens of Kent for working holidays instilled fear and trepidation throughout the locale. But, by the early 1950s, hop-picking machines were taking over and I may never actually have seen the families at work or living in the breeze-block huts with their corrugated iron roofs.

            This accommodation, provided by the growers, was about nine foot square, with an earth privy and communal cooking facilities nearby.  There are records of generations of individual families working the same farm. Wages in the ‘50s amounted to about £3 per week per family, but expenses were low, with the farm providing food and essentials. What they didn’t generally offer was beer, and it was the hoppers’ sessions in the local pub that made residents like my grandparents so anxious.

For almost a century it was an extraordinary social phenomenon. At its peak, more than 80,000 pickers poured into Kent in late August or early September. The nearest station to me, Hawkhurst, laid on almost 60 ‘Hopper Specials’. These trains brought 4,000 families to our area alone. Indeed, the branch line became uneconomic and closed once the annual migration ended. 

Mechanical picking also coincided with faster transport, so the hops didn’t have to be dried in an oast house in the immediate vicinity of the hop field.  It meant a huge number of local oasts became redundant. Now they’re mostly converted into homes. But I’ve often wondered at the economics of an industry that needed to construct substantial brick kilns and barns which were used for just a month or six weeks each year. There are five or six large oasts within a half mile of here and it seems extraordinary that they couldn’t have combined their operations and reduced costs. 

The point of all this nostalgia is that I spent part of the recent Bank Holiday weekend stringing up my hops. Which was a new experience. Even after the hopper huts vanished, hop gardens remained. But they have been declining year by year, recently often replaced by grape vines. Nevertheless I do like a hop bine or two over the fireplace. They look decorative and smell wonderful. But, being a bit of a skinflint, I rather resent paying between £5 and £10 each. So I thought I’d cultivate my own. After all how difficult could it be? Some even grow wild round here in the hedgerows.

            Wild, weed-like plants though were not what I wanted. So, last autumn, I consulted my local nurseryman and he fixed me up with—well nothing really—just three flowerpots with a dead-looking twig in each. Somewhat despondent, I left these outside the back door all winter and, without much hope, planted them by a south facing wall a couple of months ago.

            To my considerable surprise, and some delight, green shoots appeared and started winding their way round the bamboo stake. It was time to consult Mr Google and get out the string. Neither project turned out to be that simple.  There were plenty of pictures online of men on stilts tying string to overhead wires, or people with long poles somehow managing the same thing from the ground. But they were doing this on an industrial scale over huge fields. A simple diagrammatic explanation of how to string three plants next to a barn wall seemed entirely missing.

           Eventually, I suspended some wire between two brackets along the eaves and, from that, trailed lengths of twine which I’d cut in advance. Up the ladder I went, grabbed an end of string, tugged gently, only to find it was inextricably tangled with all the others. After a mere hour or so, I had three strings descending from the wire to a skewer embedded, somewhat insecurely, next to each plant.

            I remembered the 1950s’ British Pathé film I’d seen on-line with men competing against each other to string entire hop gardens. A complete row of plants took them just seconds. And, extraordinarily, the men on stilts never seemed to get their much more numerous pre-cut lengths of string tangled at all.

            But, I reflected later, sipping coffee and gazing on the fruits of my labours, at least I was helping to reverse the decline in British hop growing. It had reached a peak of 71,000 hectares in 1878,  but we now grow just 1,600. And that’s less even than North Korea. It may, however, take a while to overtake the current world leaders, Germany, with their 34,000 hectares under cultivation. I feel my three plants, though, have made a definite start.