A newsreel that was released by British Pathé in the summer of 1932 paints an idyllic scene. The black-and-white film pans across men in flat caps and braces and women in long skirts toiling in the Kent hop fields, diligently stripping the bines of their precious seed cones. Children play hide-and-seek, their grinning faces full of summer-holiday excitement. No wonder the title card reads, “East-Enders ‘profit & pleasure’ holiday is now in full swing in the hop fields.”
Until the 1800s local villagers, migrant workers and Romany Gypsies provided seasonal labour, but as the 19th century progressed and the demand for hops grew, a new type of picker emerged – the ‘holiday hopper’. A hop-picking holiday was the ideal way for our urban ancestors to escape the slums, soak up the sun and earn a few shillings.
Every summer thousands invaded the countryside of such counties as Hampshire, Herefordshire, Sussex and Worcestershire to help bring in the harvest. A large supply of willing hands was crucial for the success of the crop, especially in Kent where it was not unusual for more than 3,000 pickers to be employed in each garden (a historic name for what was really a large field). They came from London (particularly the East End), Portsmouth, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Manchester and even Wales. “A strange crowd they are indeed!” announced the English Illustrated Magazine in 1886, describing “ragged tramps”, “smart servant girls” and “weatherworn mothers of the neighbourhood with the whole family at their heels”.
The railways made travel to the countryside easier, and most pickers used the ‘Hopping Special’ trains. Some of the railway companies even used cattle trucks to carry extra passengers.
With so many additional workers in the fields – many of them staying up to a month – hop farmers needed to provide somewhere for them to sleep at the end of an arduous day. Initially, living conditions were extremely poor, perhaps just a piece of canvas slung over some sheep hurdles for shelter, although the 1750 agricultural text Modern Husbandry describes one Kentish farmer who generously provided huts with straw bedding. But conditions had barely improved a century later. The situation reached crisis point in 1866 when London pickers introduced a cholera outbreak to the hop-growing districts of Kent, which was exacerbated by the unsanitary living conditions. The Morning Post reported that “the provision made for the reception of these poor people by the hop-growers is of the most wretched character. Hovels without windows or sleeping accommodation, into which the rain readily enters, or old Crimean tents, are the only places for their shelter.” The resultant outcry, and the Victorians’ propensity for charitable schemes, made change inevitable.
The Society for the Employment and Improved Lodging of Hop Pickers was formed in 1866. The society encouraged growers to provide suitable lodgings for their workers and by the mid-1880s things had improved so much that ‘Hoppers’ Houses’ were being erected, described by the Montgomery Express in 1883 as “long rows of single storey dwellings, one room numbered to each squad of up to 12, according to size, sexes separate. Scripture readers and other good people attend upon them, and there is much more order and decorum.”
Hoppers worked hard. In the 19th century, hops were grown on upright wooden poles so that the bines (shoots) could be trained to grow upwards. The hop cones grew high on the bine, so the bines were cut near the base of the pole and the entire pole uprooted and laid across a bin or basket on a wooden frame. In the 20th century a system of stringing and wirework became the preferred method, and a sharp tool called a ‘binman’s hook’ was used to pull down the bines at the top to release them from the string. A picker would then lay the bine across their lap and pluck each hop cone individually. The pickers were supervised by an overseer, whose job it was to measure the quantity of picked hops twice a day. They also made sure that each bin or ‘bushel basket’, large enough to hold eight gallons, was properly filled. The hops were then taken to the oast house for drying. Despite the laborious nature of the job, pickers would return year on year – often to the exact same hop fields.
Payment was via a medal or token depending on the quantity of bushels picked, which was exchanged for cash at the end of the picking season. Tokens were often accepted by local inns and shopkeepers, who would then settle with the hop farmer later. A holiday picker could earn £2–£4 at the end of the 19th century, rising to £10–15 in the late 1930s.
By the 1890s late-Victorian sentimentalism had kicked in and the hop-picking holiday was seen as a tranquil, rural break from smog-choked cities. As the writer John B Marsh observed in his book Hops and Hopping, “The hop-garden is the promised land of the eastender’s life… what the banks of the Riviera are to the children of the aristocracy, the banks of the Medway and the Stour are to the children of the poor.”
However, with so many incoming strangers, tensions with the local population were inevitable. Petty crime was common, but situations could escalate quickly. In October 1866 an inquest was held in the Kent village of Ide Hill, following a fatal fight between a party of pickers and some locals. “It appears that some ill-feeling existed between the resident labourers and non-resident hop pickers,” reported the Sussex Advertiser, “which only needed a favourable opportunity to bring the parties to blows… some 30 residents engaged about eight or 10 hoppers in a fight, and the injuries inflicted show a pretty free use of sticks and knives.”
After the First World War, concerns began to be raised about the impact of hop-picking holidays on school attendance. The hop-picking season enabled pupils to experience life in the countryside, and they were also an extra pair of hands to help fill the bushels. Some areas such as the Black Country experimented with school closures for three or four weeks starting in the last week of August. London County Council, which in 1930 estimated that approximately 20,000 children were leaving the city to go hopping, trialled holidays where schools were given the option to close over the picking season, rather than the traditional summer break starting in July.
During the Second World War the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries recruited a hop-picking army via appeals in the press, requesting that “all regular hop-pickers not engaged on full-time work of national importance to get into touch with farms on which they have worked before” (Daily Mirror, June 1941). The work involved unexpected risks: one report during the Battle of Britain described how “hop pickers were sprayed with flying bullets” when a squadron of German bombers passed over Kent on their way to London.
By the early 1950s manual hop picking was dying out, to be replaced by mechanisation. “Some of last year’s crop,” wrote the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News in September 1951, “was left to blow away because there was not the labour for picking. Fewer and fewer families spend a picking holiday in the hopfields.” The same year a machine was demonstrated at the Royal Agricultural Society of England’s annual Royal Show that was said to harvest 1,000 bushels in a day, equivalent to the work of 80 pickers. The hopping holiday, an experience that had meant so much to the weary inhabitants of towns and cities for generations, would be much missed.