Oast House Boast

As it was the first official day of my brother's Jubilee holiday (Thursday and Friday were bank holidays) we were going to head to the seaside but we were again thwarted by the weather - it was gloomy, with dark scudding clouds and heavy rain showers.
We therefore decided to head back to The Oak On The Green at Bearsted for a pub lunch. To test how good the food is at a pub we always try the burger first - as a rule of thumb if the burger is good the rest of the menu will be too. Thankfully the burger was great, served with chips, onion rings and a spicy dip. Washed down with a pint it really cheered us up after having to postpone our seaside escapade.
Today's shot was taken from the pub car park across to the roofscape of these oast houses (and yes the weather was that gloomy!) - not many villages can boast four, two round kilned oast houses. These particular examples finished drying hops in the 1950's and were converted to dwellings in the 1970's.

Some oast house info for you (whether you want it or not!):
Oast Houses were used to dry fresh hops before they were sent to the brewers, to be used as flavouring for beer. Beer was not produced within the oast itself, but some malthouses (breweries) did incorporate drying kilns for drying barley for malt.
The typical oast house consisted of the 'oast' and the 'stowage".
 The oast was a kiln, with a plenum chamber at ground floor level with the drying floor directly above. The steep pitched roof channelled hot air through the hops to the top. A cowl at the top of the roof allowed the hot air ('reek') to be drawn up through the kiln in a vacuum effect. The cowl pivoted to control the air extraction and stop the rain getting in.
The stowage, which was the barn section, had a cooling floor and press at first floor level and a storage area on the ground floor. The dried hops were taken from the drying floor to cool and be packed using a hop press. The press packed the hops in a large sack called a 'pocket' suspended on the ground floor, where they were stored to await collection.