Hop Picking {School Holidays 1934}

When hop picking became mechanized a whole way of life disappeared. Our school holidays were always geared to the hop picking season, some hated it I loved it.

There were two kinds of hop pickers, one the local village housewife who would pick to earn money for the family winter clothing, or perhaps to purchase some item of luxury not normally affordable, or maybe even to put a little by for Christmas. What ever the reason in the daytime Barrow Green would be deserted save for the lone figure of old "Gaffer" Huntley standing at the entrance to the alleyway leading to Triggs Row, leaning on his stick and sucking on a plum stone, {when not in use this plum stone would be tucked neatly in the comer of his waistcoat pocket}. With a twinkle in his eye he surveyed what little activity there was plus the occasional passing of horse drawn wagons laden with hop pokes for the oast house.

The second kind of pickers were the visitors from the East End of London. They treated this as their annual holiday and how they enjoyed themselves. The farmer provided accommodation {hop huts} straw for bedding, and wood for their fires. So after a day in the hop fields they sat outside the huts cooking a meal on a roaring fire and chatting to friends like some vast Romany gathering. All this had a strange effect on the local youth, who hurrying home from work partook of a quick tea, and then with an extra slick of Brylcream on their hair and the hint of a shine on their shoes, headed for Buckland, a local Romeo in search of a visiting Juliet!

Some times at the weekend the families were joined by their menfolk when they would visit the local pub. I remember as a boy when I lived at The Crescent, laying in bed on a Saturday night I would hear the merriment spill out onto the forecourt of the Tavern and I would lay and listen as the jollity and singing gradually faded into the night as they made their way back to their temporary homes, the hop huts at Buckland chalkhole.