Village life was fairly quiet in the 19th century. But the annual invasion of the London hop pickers tended to liven things up. Monty Parkin looks back on a village tradition.
In the late 19th century local village life was fairly quiet with most people working on the land and the pattern of life dictated by the farming year – everything in its season. As one Kemsing man put it ‘the most exciting thing to happen all year was a horse bolting’.
But the annual invasion of the London hop pickers tended to liven things up. The photograph shows the hop pickers at Heaverham in the 1890s. They are picking the hops directly from the poles, you’ll notice, which was the old way of doing it.
Many of the Londoners would travel down on the ‘hoppers’ special’ train. As the London children were small, poorly fed and growing up in slums, sometimes their mothers smuggled them on to the train hidden in sacks, to avoid paying the fare, and they would spill out when they got to the countryside.
Villages tended to be dominated by a local ‘squire’, the major landowner and usually a village benefactor. The squire growing the hops here was a wealthy brewer called Barclay Field and if he visited the hop gardens the men were expected to doff their caps and the women expected to curtsey. Close to this hop garden was the oast house where the hops were dried. But this was also where, every November, all of the workers on the Barclay Field estate, over a hundred of them, would sit down to enjoy a harvest supper – described as a ‘sumptuous spread’ – and they would toast their worthy squire, Mr Barclay Field. So this local squire was quite a popular one.
Hop pickers in Heaverham in the 1890s. They are picking hops directly from the poles, which was the old way of doing it. The men were great drinkers, so a lot of what they earned from picking went straight back into the brewers’ pockets.
Although they worked hard, standing for hours picking hops into a hessian bin, the London hop pickers were quite keen on ‘jollification’ themselves. They would sing their songs around their camp fires or in the local pubs – some sentimental, others described as ‘not so fit for the ears’. The men were great drinkers, so a lot of what they earned from picking the hops went straight back into the brewers’ pockets.
They often celebrated the end of the hop harvest with a party round a huge camp fire. Later, in the early 20th century, people remember them having their final party in the square at Heaverham with music provided by a wind-up gramophone.
Today, a reminder of the days of the hoppers can be seen in the hedgerows each September with the hops growing wild beside the road. They appear by the Heaverham Road near Crowdleham Oast. In fact they can be seen in many hedges in the area next to the old hop gardens.
