Most hop gardens round here are now arable fields, pasture or modern-style orchards like these...
Attachment 1942
… and the oasthouses are generally now just houses like this attractive conversion...
Attachment 1943
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Most hop gardens round here are now arable fields, pasture or modern-style orchards like these...
Attachment 1942
… and the oasthouses are generally now just houses like this attractive conversion...
Attachment 1943
Oasts come in all shapes and sizes, but mostly as single or multiple square or roundel kilns (but sometimes a mixed layout around a central stowage floor that has been added to over time). These two conversions are of the late-Victorian / early 20th-century type, both in brick with large single square kilns, clay tiles on the roofs and the ubiquitous white cowls.
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Here are a couple of larger oasts - one with an evolutionary arrangement of three square kilns but the second nearby has a pleasingly symmetrical layout with one on each corner.
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I remember as a kid we'd always holiday in Herefordshire and all the oasts were square. Many years later, I had a girlfriend from Kent and we'd go and stay with her mother and she pointed out all the oasts which down there all seem to be round - largely converted to residential use, she told me that occupants had problems fitting them out as furniture isn't curved.
In the mid-19th century, when many Kent oasts were built, there was a theory (largely later debunked) that round kilns were better because you got even drying all around rather than having cooler spots in the corners, so the trend reverted back to square... and these were indeed cheaper to construct too.
Most of the old oasts by us are round,the newer ones square, and the working ones not really recognisable.On our Boris walk today , we passed a ruinous 3 roundel oast, the kilns of brick, while the barn/cooling floor section was, (or the walls upto first floor level), built of beautifully worked sandstone. Such a shame.
This is off-topic I know, but I came across a curved bench in this pub the other week (sorry, no photos).
Talking of which, here are two examples of slightly older oasts with a pair or round (roundel) kilns, the first one a fine symmetrical example but the second having windows inserted into the conical pitched roofs (which really should be classed as a heritage misdemeanour...).
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Here are two unusual buildings, or the remains of one in the first instance, which was once a tin shed with a stove that was used for heating pitch, tar or whatever black borderline carcinogen they could get hold of to dip the end of hop poles, etc. into to act as a preservative treatment. The second is much more recent, and appears to be used by seasonal fruit pickers for rest, recreation and no doubt various forms of inebriation / intoxication after the end of each week's hard work.
Attachment 1973 Attachment 1974