“I remember being shown hairy hopdogs (caterpillars about 5cms long) crawling on the hop leaves,” she says. Sometimes we’d miss school, but no one said much about it because we were earning money and people understood.” “We didn’t get up to mischief because we didn’t want the farmer to ban us from coming again – it was our holiday after all. “Dad would come up at weekends and mum and him would go to the pub, while us kids would go fishing, scrumping or walking,” says Colin. Indeed, despite the stories of primitive conditions, and the hard work involved, many pickers look back on this time with fondness. With six children, she needed to be a strong woman, but in 1946 with the war over, they had everything to live for,” she says. “Mum used to make a lot in her spare time and did all the washing by hand. Local girl Jean Brown, who lived at Nash Cottage in Marden, recalls her mum making all their clothes. With upwards of 80,000 people needed to pick the harvest, “home pickers” were also employed. It was harder to get warm water because you’d have to light a fire.” “At 5pm we’d come back from the fields and have a cold wash. “The huts were 9ft square, and we had two beds, one for the three girls and mum and then one for me and my three brothers,” says Colin, whose family would pick for up to five weeks at a stretch. When these migratory families reached the hop farms, conditions were far from what you’d expect from a “holiday”. They brought all their household goods with them – even the kitchen sink!” “Trainloads came on ‘Hopper Specials’ from the East End, and it’s said that some of the growers even walked (some 60 miles from London to Canterbury) to get to the fields. “When beer became an essential commodity of the Empire, a big labour force was needed to pick hops,” says Peter. “Having the right field structure – rich soils and a microclimate with cold winds from the North Sea – it was perfect for hops, so they stayed,” says hop breeder and researcher Dr Peter Darby.īy the 1800s, hops were making their mark on the social history of the country too. Kent became the focus of the hop industry thanks to protestant refugees from Flanders who came to the area and began growing hops. Coupled with greater demand for ‘hoppy’ ales and a growth in microbreweries, the British hop industry is finding a new and emerging market for this ancient crop. Under threat from foreign producers, it has moved away from its traditional roots and begun innovating with dwarf hop varieties that make harvesting easier and the introduction of new, flavoursome varieties.
While Colin, and the thousands like him, may never see a return to the hop picking days of old, over the last decade the industry itself has enjoyed something of a renaissance. “In 1982 I moved to Kent permanently because I had such very happy childhood memories here,” says Colin.
Fruit gradually replaced hops and machines replaced the pickers. Where once there were 46,000 acres of hops – providing the bitter tang to British beers – only 1,000 now survive. Sixty-five years later, Colin is still working at the Beltring farm (once owned by Whitbread’s) that he came to as a youth, but today he’s the on-site historian showing tourists around what has become a relic of a bygone era. Until the 1960s, some 10,000 people – often, whole streets of families – would leave the stench of the city for the sweet aroma of Kent’s ‘hop gardens’ each September. Sixty-seven year old Colin Felton’s memories of journeying from the East End for his hop picking “holiday” in the Kent countryside are not unique. We all had to pick, it didn’t matter about our age.” I was only a babe in arms but as soon as I could walk properly, I would scrape hops off the floor and collect them in an umbrella. We’d be up at 7am, and mum would make us sandwiches for the three-mile walk to the hop fields. “While Dad worked at the docks in London, mum would take us kids up to Kent over the summer.
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