Hops

Hops were once the most important and famous crop grown in Kent. Every year an army of pickers seeking respite from the squalour of the London East End, augmented by itinerant workers including Romany Gypsies and Travellers, would descend on the numerous Hop Farms for the relatively short harvesting season to hand pick the vines for the brewing industry. At its peak, there were 77,000 acres of hop fields in Kent, with 250,000 pickers, but with the advent of mechanical pickers, this "working holiday"  died out by the 1960's.

While hops are still grown in Kent, this example was found "in the wild", growing along a small stretch of canal in Gravesend, virtually all that currently remains of the Thames and Medway Canal, an almost 7mile long waterway  between Gravesend and Strood.