It's a machine used by rugby teams to practise scrums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_machine
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It's a machine used by rugby teams to practise scrums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_machine
This is an odd one - the remains of an oast with two roundels, unusually set in a remote location surrounded by orchards on the slopes above the former hop gardens on the lower-lying ground, rather than in the farmstead or beside a main road for ease of access.
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However, the really strange thing is not its location but the attached single-storey building. A stowage normally has at least two storeys, with the cooling floor and hop press beside the drying floor at first-floor level above the kilns, so what happened here (and why)?
Do you think there might have been fire damage in the past? My grandfather, who wasn't a hop grower allowed a third party to store some apples in the Oast.Surprisingly enough they caught fire. To salvage the situation the cooling floor and kilns were roofed,resulting in a sort of barn/oast hybrid. A subsequent owner converted it to a dwelling, reinstating the roundels to their former glory.
This one is an unusual oast, with a slightly offset arrangement of two square kilns at each end of a surprisingly large stowage building, perhaps allowing for further expansion?
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Indeed, this seems to have happened with the addition of the (presumably later) roundel on one side, but it all looks a bit odd (especially because you would expect the original kilns to be round and the later square in an oast of this age)?
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It also has a noticeably large (and partly covered) 'greenstage' at the back, used for unloading pokes (rough sacks) of green hops from carts bringing them in from the hop gardens and then loading sealed pockets (finer sealed sacks, stamped with the producer's name) of dried hops onto wagons taking them to markets such as the Hop Exchange in Southwark. But why at the back of the building rather than the front?
It's a bit difficult to make out, but there is a disused hop garden in the field beyond, with the wirework still supported on poles but the plants removed and replaced by grass.
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Although hop growing could theoretically be reinstated after a rest without major capital investment, this garden will almost certainly end up as pasture like the field in the foreground.
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In turn, that means that the hop poles will be taken down in due course, but as useful timber these tend to be kept in what might be called 'stooks' for cutting up and use as fenceposts, etc.
This oast is unusually located at the top of quite a steep hill, close by The Bull Inn at Linton which has a spectacular view over an 'amphitheatre' of orchards from its rear beer garden.
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I assumed that the oast would also have a similar view, although it was almost hidden at first, but looking back from distance confirms it has (with the pub located just out of the frame to the left of the church).
Do you ever come across newly set up gardens in your travels? I found one yesterday when following a diversion in the back lanes between Biddenden and St Michaels. The young plants were climbing up substantial canes,while the poles and wirework were work-in-progress.