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Hops at Brede High Woods
Today hops are used in the production of artisan beers, but
brewers tend to choose hops grown abroad due to their
alleged superior flavour.
Hop growing at Brede
A hop garden after the hops have been harvested
History of hops
Hops are the female flowers of the hop plant, Humulus
lupulus. This plant is in the same family as the cannabis
plant and originates from Southeast Asia. Hops have been
used as a preservative in beer-making for the last 10,000
years. In Europe they have been used since the ninth century.
The cultivation of hops was probably introduced from
Flanders to England in the late 15th Century. Until then
un-hopped ale was drunk, which was sometimes flavoured
with herbs such as wormwood. Brewers started to import
dried Flemish hops to preserve the flavour of ale (which
then took on the new name of beer), but soon the plants
were cultivated at home.
By the 17th century ale (un-hopped beer) was no longer
popular and beer (made using hops) became the drink of
choice. The traditional method of growing hops involved
training the plants to climb up poles in a wigwam-shaped
structure. As the preference for English beer gained
momentum, so the hop-growing industry continued
to grow.
This trend sustained a demand for sweet chestnut as
it was the favoured wood for the poles. As the industry
peaked at the end of the 19th century, an acre of hops
typically required 4,320 poles and up to 500 replacements
per year. Given that an acre of coppice only provided 3,000
per 14 years, the business of hops became an expensive one
to maintain.
However, tastes changed and a new demand for a
lighter beer known as Indian ale or pale ale evolved. The
demand for hops lessened further after the discovery of
pasteurisation in the 1870s, and again with the growing
popularity of lager beer.
Tithe maps c. 1840s show several areas of hop growing
in or adjacent to Brede High Woods. The former hammer
ponds which provided water to Brede Furnace became
silted up in the late 18th and early 19th century and were
reverted to farm land. Upper Pond was growing hops in
1840, as was the small orchard between Thorp’s Wood
and Greenden. At Austford, east of Greenden, a small field
called Boggy Field was also under hops, together with a
field called Brook Hop Garden.
At Brede High Farm itself, farmed by William Reed, Hove
Field and Stooe Field (totalling nine acres) to the south of
the farm were under hops in 1840. The familiar picture of
hop gardens today is of hop bines growing up strings, which
were strung from wire frames supported by wooden poles
– a trellis work of timber, wire and string, first devised by a
Scotsman in c.1770 in order to reduce the cost of the poles.
Prior to this, and before the new system was introduced,
hops were planted on a small mound of earth called a ‘hill’,
around which three or four poles were erected to form a
wigwam structure. These were erected at the beginning
of each growing season and taken down at the end of the
harvest. So, at Brede High Farm, for example, for the nine
acres under hops, approximately 38,880 poles would have
been required for the plants. At an annual replacement
of 500 poles per acre, 4,500 new poles would have been
required each year from approximately one and half acres
of active coppice. It has been estimated from the accounts
of a hop farm near Tonbridge that over 11% of the total
expenditure on an acre of hops went on the poles alone.
Some tithe maps and old estate maps often use a symbol
for a wigwam of poles to indicate a hop garden.
Although different species such as alder and ash were used
as poles, sweet chestnut became the favoured species
because it grew tall straight poles, grows on poor ground
relatively quickly, and once dipped in bitumen (which was
heated in tar tanks that can still be found near old orchards
today), the ends of the poles did not rot off in the ground so
quickly. The large areas of sweet chestnut coppice found in
the south-east today were planted during the height of the
hop industry in the early 19th and 20th centuries, replacing
the traditional oak, hornbeam, ash and hazel woods.
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The 1930 OS map of the area shows a collection of four
huts between Thorps Wood and Streetfield Wood, close to
Austford Farm, suggesting the presence of a hop-pickers’
camp there. Seasonal workers from London came to pick
hops at Austford Farm each year in the late summer,
staying in a hop-pickers’ camp.
Hop poles stacked for drying
Although hops (Humulus lupulus) are prone to virus attack
and mildew, they are tolerant of frosts, which is why hop
gardens were often located in valleys. Hop plants can live
for up to 20 years, dying back to the ground each winter.
Oast houses
During the height of hop demand hop-growing was
widespread in the Brede Valley, and even today many
oast houses are still found in the area. Oast houses are
buildings used to dry the green, newly picked hops and
prepare them for use in brewing beer. The hops were spread
out on a woven horsehair-covered slatted floor in a square
or round kiln, which was fuelled by charcoal.
Conditions for the workers were often squalid as they
typically adopted nothing more than a corner of a barn
or animal shed to rest in. In 1924 Edwin Henry Chambers,
of Austford Farm, was fined £23 10s for housing 27 hop
pickers in a single stock shed, with only straw to sleep
on. A local newspaper reported workers were ‘treated like
pigs’. Attempts were made to improve the conditions for
these workers – including the establishment of the Society
for conveyance and improved lodgings of hop pickers,
which demanded a minimum of 16 square feet per person
and constructed huts to accommodate whole families
comfortably.
In May 2012, with the help of local archaeologists, more
than 25 volunteers took part in The Big Dig. While the huts
no longer exist, The Big Dig team found artefacts from the
1920s and 1930s scattered across the area, which may
have come from employees of the farm staying in the huts.
Once the hops were dried and cooled, shovels called
scuppets were used to scoop them through a circular hole
in the floor into a hessian ‘pocket’. The pocket was pressed
and sewn up, and then numbered and marked with the
name of the farm, ready for despatch for onward sale to a
brewery.
Many hops never left the farm, but were used instead for
home-brewing, which used to be an important part of a
farm worker’s pay.
Hop Pickers’ Camp at Brede High Woods
Hops were grown in almost every region of Britain, but
because large numbers of workers were needed to handpick the crop, production became concentrated near the
industrial areas of London, South Wales and the West
Midlands where working-class families spent their annual
holidays picking hops in the countryside.
Excavating the oast house at Brede May 2012
In addition, the team found remains of the 17th-century
farmhouse and farm buildings, which existed at Brede High
Farm until their demolition in 1930s. A wall and floor of the
farmhouse were uncovered, along with remains of other
buildings including pigsties and an oast house.
Hops can still be found growing in several places around the
woods today, including opposite Brede High Farm where
they grow up a solitary larch tree next to the ride.
The Woodland Trust, Kempton Way, Grantham, Lincolnshire NG31 6LL.
The Woodland Trust is a charity registered in England and Wales no.
294344 and in Scotland no. SC038885. A non-profit making company
limited by guarantee. Registered in England no. 1982873. The Woodland
Trust logo is a registered trademark. 6341 10/14