Hop-Picking.
Down-Oppin', the bermondsey boys in the Garden of England.We would get the train from London Bridge Station to Paddock Wood, Some of our relatives and friends would have gone down before on the back of a lorry with a few sticks of furniture, a chair or two a bit of a cupboard an upturned tea chest or old wooden crate would do as a table and some big old pots.
We stayed on Tent Common in tin huts, the farmer would supply some straw which we stuffed into ticking covers laid on a rough plank structure, these were our beds.Quite comfortable really. There were cooking huts opposite with open fires. The farmer would provide faggots (bundles of twigs- I think they were prunings from the orchards ). No food ever tasted or smelt as good as food cooked on these fires.
In the middle of the field they would dig a big hole, a hop sacking screen would give a bit of privicey. There was a stand pipe in the corner of the field where we would get the water for drinking, washing and cooking. Getting buckets of water from here was the only chore I can remember having to do.
The grownups and older children would pick the Hops into bins made from sacking and held up with crossed wooden posts at each end. The farmer's men would come round and measure the Hops in big wickers baskets, I think they paid about five pennies a bushel, this was the volume of the baskets.
Ladies from the W.R.V.S. or was it the Salvation Army would come round with tea urns and fruit cake. (I thougt it was nice when the Queen Mum was lying in State' the same(?) Ladies were there serving tea and fruit cake from inside marques in the garden by Westminster Hall.- somethings never change).
We played and explored all those long summer days, and had the best time any child could have didn't we Bermondsey Boys, and it cost nothing ( except for many hours Hop-Picking by the gownups).
This picture is of my nan Sarah Denyer in front of a cooking hut, taken in 1937 judging by the shield's with King George and Queen Mary.I think the others are the Lowry's, but not very sure.
I'ts a real Peasouper of a mystery, apart from my brother Anthony and Charly Lowry I seem to be the only Bermondsey boy who went Hop Picking. Did none of you put half penny's on the railway line ( just at the back of Tent Common ) to turn them into penny's, or go scrumping or climb trees, or just love beeing there.
This picture is of Charlie, behind my brother Ant, and me in the front. The picture was taken on Tent Common.
I could chat for hours about 'opping down in Kent,' they were the happiest days of my life. To escape from the grey and grimey back streets of south-east London for three weeks every year was sheer magic. I was a bird let out of a cage.
Scrumping apples, blackberrying, knocking conkers out of the trees, etc. etc. I would spend hours up a tree, just looking out over the beautiful, unchanging Kent countryside. I certainly remember putting coins on the railway line and retrieving the wafer thin strips of copper, which was all that was left after the steam train had ran over them,. And stones, which left just a smear of white powder after being crushed by those trains. We spent hours playing on the level crossing, climbing over the gates and listening for the trains so that we could run on to the track and place those coins and stones on the lines, seconds before the train arrived.
We would make mud pies out of the wet clay in the hop fields and decorate them with acorns and hawthorn berries and pretend to sell them to the pickers for a penny a time. We collected reedmace, which we incorrectly referred to as 'bullrushes,' from the semi-stagnant pond in a corner of one of the hop fields and pretended they were swords, which we would tuck down our belts and then strutt around the hop fields like Robin Hood and his merry men. The hop fields themselves had a character of their own. No two were alike and they each had a name: 'Tar pots,' 'Twelve acre,' 'Over the lines,' 'Whisky hops, ' etc. (Never knew how that last one got its name.)
On Saturday nights the pickers would go, 'up the hill,' to the pub and me and the other kids would be happy just to be outside with our lemonades and packets of crisps. At closing time the pickers would roll back down the hill, arm-in-arm, singing their hopping songs. I've never seen so many shooting stars as I did in my childhood days down hopping, because the hopping nights were pitch black, with no light pollution.
When we got back to the huts we would sit around the camp fire and listen to the old men's stories and sing hopping songs.
"When you go down 'oping, 'opping down in Kent,
you try to earn a couple of bob to pay the bloomin' rent!'
and
"Oh me lousy 'ops, oh me lousy 'ops,
when the measuere comes around,
pick 'em up, pick 'em up off the ground,
When 'e starts a-measurin' 'e never knows when to stop.
Aye, aye get in the bin and take the bloomin' lot!
I never wanted to go to bed and I would struggle to keep my eyes open, until I could fight it no more. My nan would then tuck me in and I would snuggle down into my straw bed and watch the flicker of the parrafin lamp, as it cast its dancing shadows on the wall of the hut. The subtle hint of woodsmoke from the dying faggot fires would be the last thing I sensed before drifting off into a deep, restful sleep. I've never slept so well in my life as I did 'down 'oppin, ' possibly because my nan used to make me a 'hop pillow,' a pillow case stuffed with hops. Many years later I discovered that the hop is a member of the Canabis family. Yes, unknowingly, I was stoned!
My hopping days ended in 1960, when the hop harvesting machine took over and hand pickers were no longer required. Fifty years ago this September to be precise, but it all seems like yesterday. If there's one thing in this life that makes me over-sentimental, its 'oppin' down in Kent.'
You can only understand if you've been there and done it!
Sadly, my generation is the last of those who would have had first-hand experience of that wonderful way of life that was 'Opping down in Kent.'
We must make sure our memories are passed on. I hope I've done my bit.
I'm sure you have done your bit Del in keeping the memories of Opping alive.
I only have one photo of Opping, unfortunatley i'm not in it, but my Bruv. is with some of our neighbours.
I grew up around Hops, as my Dad was an Hop Tester, making sure we had good quality beer.
Every day he would come home from work, you could smell those hops on him (luvley)
My Mum would have to clean his turn ups in his trousers which were full of Hops.
The Picture shows my Dad right at the back.
He would take me to work with him some saturdays, he needed to feed the cat which was a bit wild but good at keeping the mice at bay.
I would run wild climbing over and up on the sacks of hops that were stacked 3 or 4 high. each sack about 8 feet high.
I think the name of the Hop Merchants was Hanbury & Jackson, they were near Leather Market Park.
Bermondseyboy
The hop picking tradition in my family started in 1867, when my great grandfather walked from Walworth down in to Kent looking for work. He stumbled upon May's farm at Pearson's Green near Paddock Wood quite by accident, on the very day the hop picking season of that year began. It was serendipity. He never missed another season. His last hopping was in September 1951. He died in the spring of 1952 at the age of eighty-five. He passed the hopping tradtion down through the generations. My nan, (born in 1896,) first went hopping as a child and then, throughout her adult life, she occupied the same hut on the same farm right up to 1960. I was first taken hopping in September 1947, when I was just six months old. I never missed another season until hopping finished at our particular farm in 1960. My great grandfather was farm foreman in the latter years of his life, and my grandfather was a 'pole puller,' who went arond the hop fileds with a long pole with a hook on the end, pulling down the hops that had snagged on the overhead wires. The stories us kids listened to around the camp fires kept us transfixed for hours. One was about the year when the Battle of Brittain raged overhead as the pickers in the fields watched it all going on. According to legend, two german Messeschmitts were brought down right over the farm and the dead pilots were burried in Brenchley Cemetary. In adult life I began to doubt the authenticity of this story, but after some research I discovered it was true. After the war the German War Graves Commission applied to the Foreign Office for the return of the dead airman and in the spirit of concilliation that abounded at that time the request was granted. The bodies were then exhumed and returned to the Fatherland. If I'm boring you please let me know, otherwise there are more stories where that one came from. (All copyright, of course.)
we carried on hoppin till 70-71 at rolvenden near tenterden because the farmer john an his sisters were to old to bother with machines great days never forget them
we first went hoppin about 1955 none of our family had ever been before me mum kept on to dad to take us so he borrowed a van an took us to wateringbury it was dark when we arrived he dropped the stuff off an said you wanna go hoppin here's ya hoppin seeya me mum cried her eyes out we went all over kent it's hard to remember all the names of the farms but we went to wateringbury. teston.hawkhurst.kilndown.near goudhurst.an rolvenden me an my girlfriend got the sack from rolvenden cos we could'nt get out of bed in the morning there were some great little pubs in them villages when we started it was a shilling a bushel me mum used to pick maybe 2 or 3 bushel per measure the gypsies in the next row used to pick 20 we would be there sometimes 6 weeks so i always missed the beginning of school but it was better than school thats for sure happy days seeya
It's great to read your stories, my first post on hop picking was in December and the first responce was not until April. I was begining to wonder if I was the only lad to go, but now I feel much better,being in the best possible company, other Bermondsey Boy's
I have Just recieved a Link from Patrick Long.
It's all about Hop-Picking in Paddock Wood.
There are a couple Video's, well worth a look.
Check it out (click here)
Well worth a look indeed. Thanks very much.
I thought Eamon Andrew's doing the voice-over on the other link was a strange choice.
Del. When I read your post it was like I had written it myself. I first went hop picking at Marden in Kent in 1952, the year I was born. We went every year until I was 14 when the farm packed up all to gether. We had done a few years of doing the picking in the machine shop as we called it. Then itall finished. It was literally the time of my life, a time I will take with me to the grave. The smell of burning faggots haunts me now and every time I go past a bonfire I'm there again. At age 58 me and my husband still go camping and I think my love of this was started from my hopping years. I lived in Willow Walk just behind Boucher School on the Grange Road. My dad had an old car which was loaded up with hopping stuff and my bike on the back. Whole streets disappeared at hopping time, although my dad had to come home after 2 weeks to go back to work whilst me and mum and the relatives stayed on the farm for 6 weeks. Time of our lives.
Babsy1, you've started me off again!
The sense of smell is surely the most evocative of all the senses. Hopping had more than its fair share of smells. The pungent aroma of crushed hops, when us kids jumped on the wagon taking the pokes to the oast house after measuring. The strangely pleasant mustiness of the hut. The straw bed. The paraffin lamp. Even the distant whiff of the pigsty when the wind was in the right direction. It was all perfume to me. Like you, when I get a whiff of woodsmoke on an Autumn evening from a distant bonfire, I'm transported back fifty yeras.
This must all seem like stuff and nonsense to many people but, as I said before, you can only understand it if you've been there and done it.
Hopping, for me, ended far too soon. I wasn't ready for it. I was thirteen years of age and, naturally, going through all the angst and hormonal changes one would expect in a boy of that age. If hopping had gone on for, say, another couple of years, I would probably have simply outgrown it. Scrumping, climbing trees and running through fields and meadows would have given way to sex and drugs and rock 'n roll. (Only kidding about the drugs.) But, happening when it did, the end of hopping couldn't have come at a worst time. As a result, there remains a tiny part of me that would love to do it all over again. If only just for one more time, to get it out of my system. Sadly, that will never happen. Hopping has gone forever, and forever is a very long time.
I know just what you mean Del. I would have so loved to have given my children and my grand children the same opportunity. Memories like this are like gold dust. Kids these days want too much luxury. People cant understand why you want to live in a tin hut along with the mice and odd rat, on a straw mattress on log bed, washing from a tin bowl, light from a hurricane lamp, cooking from pots dangling over a fire or a buried metal oven, carrying jugs and buckets of water from the water tank on sticks between two people, earth dug w.c.s that you could smell from 50 yds away. I guess it was because our normal living conditions were so basic then. In the 1950s our LCC council house was still supported by shoring from the war. We had an outside w.c., tin bath hanging on the wall outside, a single cold tap in the kitchen and of course no central heating.
You are so right about the smells. The burning faggots and the hops, the straw mattress. I loved the evenings when we would all sit round the fire, singing, talking, drinking beer. One year we kids found a load of spuds growing inbetween a field of hops, probably left over from previous year. We had buckets of them and kept half the pickers in spuds for weeks. Then there was the rabbits caught, the fruit scrumped. Foraging for your own food always made it taste better. We also had a van come round couple times a week selling bread and other food. Then there were the evenings at the pub when the kids were outside with a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps.
One particular instance I still giggle over now. My dad was a tractor driver and he used to ferry the pickers to the fields on a long trailer. There we were, old ladies, babies, kettles of water, lunch boxes, dogs all on the back. Then dad turned a bit sharp into a hop field and as you probably know these were mostly surrounded by a ditch for drainage with a small bridge over the ditch for the tractors. Well you can guess what happened. The trailer tipped sideways and in the ditch we all went. The old dears with their legs in the air showing their bloomers, upturned kettles on our heads, dogs walking all over us. The air turned blue with the swearing at my dad who was nearly wetting himself laughing.
Funny I can remember all this 40 odd years ago and yet I cant remember what I did yesterday!
Hi fellow hop pickers, what a great time we had as Kids there.In the fiftes my Nan used to go to Chartham near Canterbury. We used to go down there in a small lorry that was owned by the Local greengrocer in Abbey Street on the Saturday Morning they would load the lorry up with bits & pieces then off we would go the men in front us kids & Nan in the back. Did not no why the first stop was New Cross, then Swanley & Maidstone, but it was always outside a Pub (no drink Drive laws in them days).
My Nan being a real Bermondsey Girl her speech was a little bit colourful to say the least, She used to say to my cousin & me you little ********are going to pick some hops this time, After ten minutes of more leaves than hops in the basket we were told by Nan to go away in some certain terms but always with a smile on her face. I remember the huts surrounded by cabbage fields, at night around the fire we were told stories by the older kids of the ghosts that used to live in the cabbage fields, the only light being cast by the fire the fields were pitch black so our imaginations were running wild. So we would not want to go to the loo outside the ring of firelight, when we did the older kids would throw an handful of stones against the corrigated iron sides causing us to have accidents. Our kids would throw a fit if they had to live that live.
Found this postcard in Mums possessions after she passed away earlier this year.
That description of the overturned trailer is pure magic. It reminds me of a similar story about my great-grandmother. The farm we picked at was May's farm, at Pearson's Green and our shopping was done at Castle Hill, about 3/4 of a mile away. (Ocasionally at Brenchley, when we would have to catch the bus from the Pearson's Green crossroads.) One Saturday morning my great-gran walked up to the top of Castle Hill to buy the sunday joint and while she was in the queue at the butchers she met an old croney from Walworth who was picking at a farm in Horsemunden. They decided to have a quick drink in the Castle pub before going back to their huts. Several quick drinks later, my old great-gran made her unsteady way back down Castle Hill, only to lose her balance and topple in to the ditch. It had been raining most of the night and the combination of advanced years, wet grass, mud and a belly full of Guinness, made it impossible for her to climb out. Panic she did not. She just sat there, cradling her hock of bacon and serenading it to the strains of, 'You made me love you.' Fortunately it wasn't long before a farmhand came by towing a trailer-load of cooking apples and he was kind enough to heave the old girl out of the ditch, hoist her on to the trailer and give her a lift back to the huts. There was much merryment at the siight of her bestowing a regal wave upon the pickers as the tractor and trailor trundled on to the common.
That's a smashing picture above. There's nothing like the sight of a hop field. (Hop 'garden' if we want to be pedantic, but to us Londoners they were always, 'fields.')
What lovely lovely stories and so evocative of that period. I do hope these are collated into some sort of booklet?
My dad used to go down 'oppin with his mum, 7 bros and 1 sister all by train. Being the smallest, dad said he would hide under his mum's long skirt so she didnt have to pay the fare for him. When he got older he used to cycle all the way from Rotherhithe there and back. I can remember him telling me he got a puncture going home one year and had to stuff the tyre with grass.
By the time my sister and I went 'oppin, it was just for a day's event, visiting family and friends. I can still remember how the bag of crisps we were given would taste bitter where we had been handling the hops. And oh yes, laying in the nets and going to sleep, drugged by the smell.
One thing that always horrified me was using those awful "bucket and chuck it" lavatories - huge flies buzzing round you as you sat on them, lol.
Wonderful days though, we all felt secure and happy amongst our many loved ones, no matter how hard the times - I cant ever imagine that sort of camaraderie and family closeness returning for future generations.
My darling dad asked me to scatter his ashes in two places when he went - one half in the Thames at Rotherhithe and the other at Paddock Wood. It was done, just as he asked :) If anyone goes near the Blue Bell Inn and the Hop Museum - shout "Hello Dickie" wont you :)
What lovely lovely stories and so evocative of that period. I do hope these are collated into some sort of booklet?
My dad used to go down 'oppin with his mum, 7 bros and 1 sister all by train. Being the smallest, dad said he would hide under his mum's long skirt so she didnt have to pay the fare for him. When he got older he used to cycle all the way from Rotherhithe there and back. I can remember him telling me he got a puncture going home one year and had to stuff the tyre with grass.
By the time my sister and I went 'oppin, it was just for a day's event, visiting family and friends. I can still remember how the bag of crisps we were given would taste bitter where we had been handling the hops. And oh yes, laying in the nets and going to sleep, drugged by the smell.
One thing that always horrified me was using those awful "bucket and chuck it" lavatories - huge flies buzzing round you as you sat on them, lol.
Wonderful days though, we all felt secure and happy amongst our many loved ones, no matter how hard the times - I cant ever imagine that sort of camaraderie and family closeness returning for future generations.
My darling dad asked me to scatter his ashes in two places when he went - one half in the Thames at Rotherhithe and the other at Paddock Wood. He died a day after his 91st birthday ( the previous year he had said to us, "I think I'll do 90 and then pack it in") The scattering was done, just as he asked :)If anyone goes near the Blue Bell Inn and the Hop Museum - shout "Hello Dickie" wont you :)
-hethmar
Hi hethmar, a few years ago I sometimes took my mum back to Paddock Wood, where we would have a bite to eat and a drink in the Blue Bell Inn. Next time I'm there I shall remember what you said.
My Grandparents ashes are in the churchyard at Paddock Wood and My Mums and some of her brothers and sisters are in the little memorial garden at St Mary's Church Rotherhith.
Smiths Crisps with the little blue bag of salt, how good they tasted. Regarding the sleep inducing properties of Hop's, I think it was on this site that I first heard that they had some special properties.
Rod.
