Hop picking holidays of the past were happy times

The migration was a long-held tradition in the south from late August through September and those arduous but active days, filled with the strong smell of hops, were remembered with affection.

Payment was small and whole families would work hard for long hours to earn enough to buy clothing and footwear for the winter. Before machine stripping of the bines, hop picking by hand was highly labour intensive and ‘outcomers’ were vital to the operation.

A farm in Cocking was a popular destination, with pickers catching the train to Midhurst carrying bundles of blankets and pots and pans. Families would work all day to fill the bushel baskets and then sleep on hurdles.

Children found it all great fun – a holiday in the countryside, and if they worked hard enough in the morning, they were given the afternoon off.

As many as 300 pickers would be employed in gangs and village policemen kept an eye on nightly merrymaking. Some families would stay for a whole fortnight.

There were hop picking songs which everyone joined in and there was usually a happy atmosphere.

After pole-pullers had been busy bringing the bines down, pickers filled their baskets with fresh hops, getting their hands blackened with the sticky contents of the lupulin gland of the female hop flowers.

The tallyman would check the quantities and baskets were emptied into the pokes – loosely woven bags about 6ft high and 8ft across. The contents were kept loose so they did not overheat and were taken by wagon to the hop kilns.

When the pokes arrived at the kilns, they were emptied on to the top floor and raked across a hair canvas mesh for drying. They were then dropped down to the next floor and fed through a hole into strong bags below before being mechanically pressed into solid pockets measuring 8ft long. These were taken to London to sell to hop factors and on to brewers.