Oast House in Kent
Oil on Canvas. 12" x 16"
Oast Houses were specially designed buildings for drying hops, which were used in the process of making beer. My home county of Kent is in South East England, and the region is perfect for hop farming.
Once upon a time, it was a big industry there, and Oast Houses were everywhere in the Kent countryside. What a beautiful sight they were, and they still are, for those that remain standing to this day.
Hops would be picked in the fields by whole armies of seasonal labourers. Once collected the hops would be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons bound for the local Oast House. At the Oast, the hops would be raised to the upper floor and raked out over a fine mesh inside the conical roofs.
There, a ground level drying-kiln would warm the hops from below. As the air passed upwards, it would gently extract the moisture from the hops. The moist air would continue up into the top of the conical towers and escape though the open vents. The vents are the white cowlings at the very top. They would swivel with the prevailing wind.
The cowlings were equipped with vanes to catch the wind and draw the moist air upwards inside the building. The white vanes can be seen in the painting, projecting from the cowling vents.
When the hops were fully dry, they would be raked out and forced by a screw-press into long canvas bags. These specially designed bags were suspended from the upper floor, and hung down into the room below, hence the upper floor would have some holes in it, with the screw presses mounted directly above them. Once stuffed full of tightly-packed hops, the bags would be drawn closed and dropped into the room below. A wagon laden with these long bags full of hops would drive off to local auction.
Once at auction, the brewery reps would fight it out in the bidding, and off the hops would go to the breweries.
The breweries used the hops to help preserve the beer, but it also gave the beer an unmistakeably distinctive essence and flavour.
All that is a bygone now. The mighty days of the Kentish hop farms are over. The armies of city factory workers and their families who would spend their summer holidays on paid working excursions in the hop fields of Kent are but a distant memory.
Mechanised processes took over, and the huge temporary communities of hop-pickers from the cities were no longer needed. Beer-drinking habits changed over the years, and the traditional hop industry of southern England collapsed.
The Oast Houses were abandoned where they stood on the farms, went to rack and ruin - hundreds and hundreds of them. Then, an idea took hold and it was realised Oast Houses make fabulous homes. The ones that were left were largely saved and converted into residential dwellings. They now stand proud and beautiful in testament to that great era in English history.
When I am unimaginably rich, I shall live in one. Till then, I'm just dreaming.
The grand era of the Kent Oast Houses is wonderfully illustrated and explained on Wikipedia.org. There, you will find some gorgeous Oast House architecture to admire: