Holidays with pay in the Kentish hop gardens

These pictures from the archive recall an almost forgotten chapter of hop pickers in sleeveless blouses and silk stockings, busily stripping vines.

Many are children, for whom both the countryside and the presence of a photographer would have been a novelty.

They didn’t earn much – they had to pay their own way there and back and they might make nine shillings a week if they were lucky – but the job had its compensations in the abundant fresh country air and a hearty picnic at lunchtime.

For many youngsters, who joined the annual trail of 40,000 to Kent in charabancs, covered wagons, London taxis or on the backs of lorries every July in the years before and after the war, the break lasted not just a week but the entire duration of the school holidays.

The picking itself in the pre-mechanised age was back-breaking work, especially for the adults. Each family had a bin – actually a large sack held up by poles – in which to place the hops as they worked their way around their allocated rows, in a regimented order.

When the bin was full, the “tally man” was summoned to scoop the hops into a large measuring basket and a record made, before the process began again until the field was stripped bare.

When the day was done, the pickers were put up in huts, often with corrugated irons roofs, which were best described as part camp site, part slum. Not only washing but also cooking facilities were shared, with a single cookhouse serving each row of huts.

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James Mitchinson