Hastings History: When local people used to go hop picking

He writes: Until the late 1950s, early September was the annual hop picking season, when thousands of working class families, mainly women and children, went on their hopping ‘holiday’ in East Sussex and Kent.

Hops were used in making beer, and picking them was labour intensive, employing about 200 pickers an acre for about three weeks, until mechanisation started around 1960.

Many of the families came from the East End of London, and farmers housed them in rudimentary huts and sheds around the hop gardens. Families from the less well-off areas of Hastings, like Clive Vale, went on day trips, being picked up by coaches supplied by the farmers. The mothers often took in turn to accompany their and their neighbours’ kids on the coach, with stay-behind mums having a day’s holiday at home, rather than in the hop gardens.

The Wealden areas of East Sussex and Kent had a good supply of wood for the poles holding up the hops, and for charcoal used in drying the hops. The biggest hop farms in the Hastings area, and together possibly the largest in England, were those owned the brewers Guinness. In the early 1950s, the farms comprised about 700 acres of hops stretching along the Rother Valley from Robertsbridge to Northiam.

The Observer reported at the end of August 1953 that about 4,000 people had just arrived at the Guinness farms on innumerable lorries and coaches, and on a special train to Bodiam Station. “All aspects of the hopper’s existence are catered for. A chain of provision stores have a depot at Ockham Farm [close to the station] which distributes to four shops in the fields all the visitors’ possible requirements, while at Udiam Farm [next to the B2244] there is a hospital for serious casualties, each field having its own nursing hut with skilled nurses on the spot to deal with minor injuries.”

The Observer in early September 1890 said that some of the hoppers in the Rother area who were from East London were “unsavoury hordes”. But nevertheless: “There is no healthier occupation than hop picking – no more blithesome and joyous party to be found on the face of the Earth.”

The pictures here were all taken by famous Hastings photographer George Wood in the 1890s. Many of his Hastings photos are on display in the Hastings Fishermen’s Museum.