Hop Picking

[kiwi]

London invaders of the Kent hop-fields arriving in force at Marden station.

[kiwi]

Farming Hop Pickers. Mr & Mrs Broadhurst, from Bermondsey, who has been hopping all her 52 years of life, with her daughters & granddaughters.

[kiwi]

This picture brings back some memories. We lived about 15 minutes from this location after moving out of London (1968). On a nice day the wife and I and the two children would go for long walks along this path, it’s nice to look at the picture and know where every path takes you. You can just see the trees and the woods in the background where we would collect Horse Chest Nuts and roast them when we got home. Also, in the wood was the hoppers dumping ground, nothing nasty, old pots, jam jars, old clocks, oil lamps and crockery and even old records, things like that. When we first came across this hopping had finished on this farm years before and to me it was like coming across a treasure chest of memories. The wife and children would collect the Chestnuts and I would dig around in the dump, yes, the wife did call me Steptoe, I still have some of the things I found.

Hop pickers use stilts on a farm at Wateringbury in Kent,1928.
I think this was called Rock Farm?

Hop tokens were used as an on-the-job currency for the hop-pickers. For each bushel picked the farmer would pay with tokens which were exchanged for cash at the end of the hop-picking season.

Hop Pickers Token, not the farm in the picture above.

Vinson Farm hop picking with the use of a horse and cart, in Kent, c1910.

[micky2horses]

Some pictures of my family at Hopping I went for a couple of years but very young so dont remember anything

[kiwi]

Hi micky2horses. Great pictures, brings back a lot of memories.

[kiwi]

Goudhurst station. The station was on the now closed Hawkhurst Branch from Paddock Wood in Kent. 1954. Many Hop-pickers passed through here over the years.

Goudhurst Railway Station Site was sold at auction on Friday 7 July 1967. A house now stands on the site.

[kiwi]

Hop Pickers waiting at Goudhurst Station.

HORSEMONDEN STATION. >>>>>>>

[kiwi]

We went hopping at this farm in the late 1940s.

Hopper Huts, temporary housing for hop pickers, line the field at Trigg's Farm on Cranbrook Road, Goudhurst

[kiwi]

Trigg Farm hop-pickers' camp near Goudhurst, Kent, in 1949

[kiwi]

Another tradition that I remember is when a coach (charabanc) arrived at the Hop-field's the Ladies would be expected to pay the traditional “foot-shoes’ or dues. In exchange they could step in, or have their shoes rubbed with hops before entering the fields, they would then be invited to that evening’s celebration.

Hopping Tradition