GRANDPARENTS’
For many East-enders, Septembers spent in the hop fields of Kent really were the heydays. Busy streets and smog were replaced by sunny, open fields and though the work itself may have been tough, with long hours and cramped living conditions, the campfire
There are hop-pickers on both sides of my family - with my late nan and pops, Patricia and Roy Lyons, pictured at a farm in Faversham as youngsters, my nan with a tea-filled beer bottle in hand. They were both from Custom House and travelled down with my nan’s mum, Ellaline Radbourne, sisters, Peggy, Bet and Flo, and brother, Charlie.
And on my dad’s side, my great grandmother, Maggie Tuffin, held onto her hop hut until she died in the 1970s.
Sadly, all but one of my grandparents have now died, with my nan, Joan Tuffin, baring few faint memories of her only hop picking trip, when she was just three.
But my grandfather, Anthony Tuffin, used to go ‘opping every year throughout his childhood, travelling from his home in Downham, south-east London, to Cronks Farm in Yalding, run by Bill and Percy Moffat, my nan tells me.
He had nine siblings, although with substantial age gaps between them, meaning it was rare they all went hopping together.
A few months before embarking on the trip, the family would get a letter from the farmer, confirming they were invited back once again in September for between four and six weeks. Most families would travel from the city on “hoppers’ special” trains, their wooden hopping boxes filled to the brim with saucepans, plates and other essentials. Once they had reached their destination, wagons would take them to the farms.
Grandad’s beloved dog joined him in the hop fields every year, until one time when he was told he was no longer allowed. My nan isn’t sure of the reason but says he had to give him away and was heartbroken.
The hop huts were pretty basic and far from what today’s regulations would allow, with parents and siblings all sleeping in the one, tiny room together, in little makeshift beds.
“It was like laying on an iron rod. I couldn’t sleep at all,” my nan recalls.
Grandad’s hut was made of concrete with a corrugated iron roof and was a sort of rainbow shape, a bit like an air raid shelter.
However, people still took great pride in their holiday homes, with my great grandmother re-papering the walls every year.
“It was a comical idea really but people would always use wallpaper back then - they didn’t reckon paint.
There were also loads of things hanging outside the huts too, like bowls. They looked really interesting,” my nan added. My great grandmother also used to collect old clothes in the run up to the trip, to be worn while hopping, as the crops would create dark stains, impossible to wash out.
Their hut was in a prime spot, nestled within an apple orchard, overlooking the trees.
“Even after the hop picking had all finished, we would still go and pick the apples - some of them were eating and others cooking,” she remembers. Some families bought caravans which were pitched up on the farms, my great uncle Len being one of them.
Due to the time of the harvest, children who attended would
miss several weeks of school, which you would expect them to be overjoyed by. But my nan says grandad was a bit “freaked out” by the idea once he had started secondary school - I suppose teachers were pretty scary back then.
But he still adored his time in Kent.
He would get up at the crack of
dawn and spend most of the day doing tough, manual work, but the evenings and days off definitely made up for it.
After a 10-hour shift, the pickers’ sore, cracked hands would finally get a rest and families gathered in communal cooking areas, or around a pot over a fire, to prepare dinner.
My great grandma would
make whole roasts in a little tin oven.
After supper, they would often sit around a campfire and sing songs, making up tunes about hopping.
And on their days off, youngsters ran free with their friends, exploring and making mischief. Washing and toilet facilities were pretty basic, with the lavatory
in a little metal shed - just a wooden bench with a hole in - a portal to the pit below.
“They stank like hell. I think the farmers were supposed to put lime down them to help with the smell,” my nan recalls. Most men stayed in London during the week, as they had permanent jobs, but would often come down for the weekends, like my great grandad, Albert, who was a docker.
After spending Saturday in the fields working alongside their wives and children, the men would venture to nearby pubs but the locals didn’t make them feel too welcome.
“There was definitely friction between the locals and ‘foreigners’. They were seen as rowdy. But I suppose in general the country people did have quieter lives. All the shops used to be on guard. Funny thing is though, lots of them did nick stuff - the stereotypes did sometimes ring true,” my nan said.
Families would usually be paid at the end of the picking season, with the amount dependent on how many hops had been collected.
As each family would return to the same hut every year, it was free to use, even outside hopping season, so my family would often spend Easter in Yalding. To add to my hop-picking roots, I now live with my parents in an oast house, my bedroom at the top of a kiln which was once used to dry hops - perhaps the very same ones which
were picked by my ancestors less than 10 miles away.
Now all converted into homes or offices, there are dozens of oasts dotted all over Kent, as it was once the most successful hop-growing county in the whole of the UK, with half of the nation’s hops produced here. The county’s rich, fertile soil, wealthy farmers and perfect location to bring workers in from London led to this success. At its peak, there were 77,000 acres of hop fields in Kent, with 250,000 pickers - East Enders,
travellers and locals or “home dwellers”.
The need for pickers began to dwindle in the 1960s, with machines replacing them.
And so the new technology marked the end to an era of exciting summers in the countryside, singing around the campfire and squeezing into tin-roofed huts.
But the memories of these magical times live on in photographs, reels of vintage, speckled footage and stories passed down through generations.*