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A bit unusual, and the very odd?
This unusual oast is currently under conversion (albeit paused by the current plague...), with a pair of former kilns featuring 'modern' (as in mid-20th century) longitudinal ridge vents. Old maps and 1949 aerial photographs also show a roundel at the back, but that seems to be long gone, and whatever the final result looks like, it certainly won't be of the picture postcard variety.
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So, a bit unusual, but nothing like as odd as what can be found further back and off to one side of the same site…
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This very undistinguished 1950s(?) concrete portal frame building, stripped right back to the basic structural elements, is also under conversion to residential use, but what was it? The answer is the hop-picking machine shed, but one wonders what the future owner would make of its humble origins, having paid a £zillion for the privilege?
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Hop pickers' accommodation
We have had hop pickers' huts before (see post 131), but how have things changed over time?
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The ones shown in (1) and (2) are of the most basic tin shed variety - it seems incredible now that a whole family would share each section of these for a few weeks every September, even until relatively recently in some places.
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Some farms had huts at least partly built of brick or block, such as the lighter ones shown in (3), and remarkably still used by families of former hop pickers as annual holiday accommodation until a couple of years ago (long after the associated hop gardens had disappeared). However, despite appearances, those shown in (4) are actually tin sheds, albeit with brick frontages added in the 1970s to smarten them up a bit. On the other hand, the brick building shown behind the trees in (5) is much older, being a Grade II hop-pickers' kitchen dating back to Victorian times. So what about today?
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These contemporary 'mobile' homes shown in (5) are still used by hop pickers at harvest time... so progress?
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Abraham Darby look away now...
Ponds like these abound in the higher ground along the Kent / East Sussex border, wherever you walk through the orchards (and mostly former) hop gardens.
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They are typically found on sandstone outcrops, mined for ironstone, and together with the (then) ample supply of timber for making charcoal and wooden carriages, plus plenty of streams for the hammer mills, this area was renown for making cannons for the Royal Navy from Tudor times.
So the High Weald was the first beating heart of industrial Britain - sorry Coalbrookdale!