Hones Yard, Farnham, Surrey

This weekend is Heritage Open Dayd weekend and Surrey has some of the best places ans sheer number in the UK. Usually I have been visiting normally locked churches that are open as part of this annual event, but this year I decided to go to Farnham and look at other buildings and places of interest in the town. As a result, I spent my day there and looked at one church that was at Seale, four miles to the east.

Farnham has a role in my story, so that was another reason for going and so was the subject of this picture - a hop kiln. Ever since childhood I have been fascinated by Oasthouses and this still continues. In the UK, hops were grown in Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex (specifically Harting, Coolham, Ashington and Lindfield that I know of), Surrey, Eastern Hampshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire. In the last four counties, Oasthouses were called generally hopkilns. Hones Yard has a 19th Century brick hopkiln with a 17th Century stone barn or stowage as it is called.

Briefly, a hopkiln or Oast House was used to dry hops that were used to flavour and particularly to bitter beer. I believe that hops also help to keep beer as well. The Oast works briefly like this... The roundel as it is called houses the actual kiln. This is fired by coke or other suitable fuels and once running has to be maintained round the clock. The ground floor houses the heat source. This produces hot air that is channelled up a flue known as a Plenum Chamber. The warm air rises through the slatted floor above, that was traditionally covered with horse hair. The hops were spread across this floor to dry. The conical tiled roof above allowed the warm air to be drawn up through the kiln via a cowl which rotated in the wind and kept the air continually drawing up and out. Some hopkilns in the Farnham and East Hampshire area had louvred ventilators. The man in charge knew instinctively by rubbing the dried hops when they were ready. When they were dry, they would be spread onto the floor of the adjoining stowage through the door of the kiln, using a special shovel called a Scuppet. The hops were left to cool. Then they were moved with the Scuppet to the Press which compressed the hops into a big sack nown as a Pocket suspended from the ceiling below the Press and then sent to market. Farnham and East Hampshire hops fetched the highest prices and were of very high quality. They went to Weyhill Fair near Andover, whilst Kent hops went to Borough Market at Southwark. Hopefully my facts are all correct as the foregoing has come entirely from my head!

I spent a very good day out and also visited a gallery where I bought at a single figure price a unique piece of ceramics by a Japanese Artist. This will be the subject of a future Blip.