Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 325

This book on the buildings of the hop-growing industry is based on a study which the author carried out in 1960. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Patrick Grattan realized that much of what he had recorded then had largely disappeared as a result of a steady decline in the growing of hops in England, resulting in the related traditional buildings becoming disused across the country. In writing the book, Grattan has given due recognition to the differences in terminology between the hop-growing regions of England, with oasts (or oast houses) and hop gardens in Kent and Sussex, and hop kilns and hop yards in Hampshire and Surrey, and in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Whilst the latter two counties were not included in his original research, he has drawn on the work of well-respected experts on vernacular farm buildings in these areas, to present a fully rounded account of his subject.

In his introduction, he outlines the development of hop cultivation in England and the use of hops in the brewing of beer, as opposed to the customary ale consumed in medieval times, with peak production occurring in the 1870s. The picking of hops is briefly examined in chapter 2 before the associated processes of drying (chapter 3) and bagging ready for despatch (chapter 4) are described, these being the activities which take place in the hop kilns and oasts. Regarding the use of sulphur in the drying process, the author notes that its use was more widespread in Kent than Hampshire, but he is silent about Herefordshire or Worcestershire in this regard. The topics of hop picking, and hops and brewing are summarized in brief appendices.

Having presented a typology of oasts and hop kilns in chapter 5, enabling their placement within one of five types, the next five chapters examine the existence of each type and the development from one to the next, albeit that multiple types could, and can still, be found adjacent to each other on the same site. With the buildings classified by type, the characteristic features of oasts and hop kilns as vernacular buildings in each of the three main hop-growing areas are then presented.

In chapter 13, the zenith of English hop production is considered, taking account of the impact of the development of the railway network in the 1800s, as well as the improvements made in ventilation and heating systems for the drying of hops. The development of hop buildings on a grand scale on various landed estates are also described. The implications of taxes including tithes, markets, the profits to be made (or not depending on the weather) and the politics behind hop production are all assessed in chapter 14, before a wider view is briefly taken of hop drying and the associated built environment in Europe and the United States.

In the final chapter, Grattan presents the current position as influenced by the impact of both changing demands for hops and international competition, along with the introduction of mechanized picking, fan-assisted blown-air heating and drying and the integration of the hop-drying and -processing operations within industrial units of modern construction. The outcome of the latter has meant that many of the traditional buildings have been subject to either decay or adaptive re-use as domestic or other accommodation. His final image is of the building which won the 2018 RIBA House of the Year award, its design inspired by the tall hop kilns of the Kent countryside where it is located, with a view of traditional oasts in the background.

This book is superbly illustrated with a plethora of colour photographs, sketches of the author’s research in 1960 and a number of drawings and cross-sections to illustrate both production processes and building. There are very few typographical errors, and the only omission occurs at the end of chapter 1, where the weights and measures used in the hop industry are described, in which there is no mention of hop acres as used in the western counties. One hop acre is the ground covered by 1,000 hop plants, and in the 1890s there were 1,500 to 1,600 plants to the statute acre. Many growers kept records using hop acres, necessitating the Ministry of Agriculture to instruct growers to use statute acres, not hop acres, in their annual agricultural returns.

Overall, this book presents an excellent historical analysis of the traditional buildings associated with the hop industry, set within the background of the cultivation, processing and marketing of English hops.