Month: June 2015

The Hop Harvest

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My hop has climbed into my apple tree and is frankly out of control and not likely to yield any harvest. Having lived in Herefordshire for a time though, the hop harvest has always held a certain fascination for me. Driving into Hereford would mean passing field of hops carefully cultivated over tall frames and so harvestable, unlike mine. The hop harvest was due, like all agricultural events, at set times of the year. In 1891, the months for the harvest were June, August and September, the hay harvest first, with a month’s grace until the corn harvest, and then hopping a fortnight after this. So we are still too early this year at the moment, but the report remarked that hopping was the most important of the harvests in areas where all three were carried out, Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire, partly as there was generally more fine weather in September and partly because it was the last harvest and so also of a celebration. It is odd to think that our weather patterns, or at least the conception of our weather patterns, probably haven’t changed much.

Hopping in Kent has always been known as a way that people living in the East End of London could get out into the countryside for a couple of weeks, the time it took to complete the harvest, and have a working holiday. However, it was noted in 1843, that the ‘London importations’ had then vanished, the farmer using local men and their families. By 1891, Londoners were still going to Kent and Surrey but it was noted that farmers were particular about their labour, only employing people they knew were decent or no outsiders, so maybe this aspect has been over exaggerated for the nineteenth century. It was commented in 1891 that ‘London weaklings’ used to be ordered down for hop picking for medical purposes although this was now out of fashion. Local people still believed in the benefits though.

Green smock frocks were traditionally worn in Kent, and in 1843, a newspaper report noted that the hop harvest was such a rural event that new smocks, new corduroys and new half-boots were purchased to ‘regenerate’ their wardrobe. The thought of being paid good money, around 5 shillings a day in 1891, and the air of celebration presumably meant that new clothes were justified.

hopping

 

The harvest work was divided into pulling and picking, pulling exclusively for men as it needed a certain amount of strength and a good smock frock. Pulling up the poles and extracting the bine, required a specific technique and as the newspaper remarked, ‘Hence the need for a smock, for the bine, bruised by the pressure, stains irretrievably any ordinary clothes’. Although a new smock might have been purchased, they were used very much as working garments, and presumably their green colour was most practical with the ready staining. In 1843, it was remarked that hop flowers stained the hands as much as walnuts did, so a dark colour was seemingly preferable.

Once pulled, the hops could be picked, which was family work, from young to old, working around an oblong basket about three feet high. The celebrations came in the evening around the hop kiln when the hops were dried as quickly as possible to preserve their aroma. Stories, song, drinking and dancing to fiddles, oboes and pan-pipes, then took place after a hard day’s work, especially if a ‘Lucky Bough’ had been found. This was where all the leaves and flowers grew on only one side of the stem, as if twisted into this position. If found it was considered a lucky talisman, both to the finder and the harvest in general, and the ‘hearth over which it hangs’ and ended up dried ‘ is sacred’, a tradition carried on in country pubs today though I haven’t yet checked to see how many of these bines are actually ‘Lucky Boughs’. The hay harvest around here has just started – think I’m off for a pint of beer to await the hop harvest…

The Stage Rustic

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In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the rural audience was important for provincial theatre companies.  Indeed, Roger Kemble, the father of Sarah Siddons, the famous actress at around the turn of the nineteenth century, managed a company of strolling players. They toured the countryside and Roger was said to ‘have gone forth to proclaim the play at the doors of different farmers, accoutred in a smock frock and a grenadiers’ cap, and has been delighted to regale himself with a pint of ale at a hedge-side inn…’

This affinity with the countryside seems to have changed by the 1880s, when the comic character of the rustic seems to have been well-established in popular Victorian theatre.  As we saw with Lily Langtry, the act of wearing a smock frock could immediately suggest certain things about a character to the audience.  For example, simple, uncouth behaviour, being unsophisticated and probably uneducated, a typical country ‘bumpkin’, a term in usage during the nineteenth century and of sixteenth century origin, though the similar term ‘yokel’ was nineteenth century in origin.

This was helpfully summed up in an article entitled ‘The Stage Rustic’ from 1891:

There is the indispensable smock frock as well as the indispensable gaiters upon the melodramatic stage.  The old dodderer has them, and so has the young; so has the benevolent squire; so has his rascally son; so has the supposedly well-to-do (but about to be bankrupt) farmer; so has the gamekeeper, very honest, or very much the reverse, without whom no good rustic play can be concocted.

So along with the smock, the gaiters, which were protective coverings for the lower legs as seen in the photograph below, formed a coherent visual picture for rustic characters.

IMG_4142 B

As the article comments:

The wardrobe of rural drama is, it will be seen, very simple.  It has not many varieties, and it is delightfully cheap, for the same articles can be made to spread over a large period of years, which is good for the actors.  No parts are as easily dressed as those of the rustic school.

Characters were moving outside the vagaries of fashion and wearing similar costumes.  Although the article is slightly tongue in cheek, perhaps fitting with the comedy or farce that could be generated from yokels in smock frocks and gaiters, the simple character of the rustic had become stock for playwrights and for those in variety and music hall.  Its popularity now appeared to chime with audience across the country despite the often mocking caricature.

Roger Turnip was one such parody.  In 1879, a case of theft was reported in a Hastings newspaper, when the portmanteau of Mr J. D. Hunter, a comedian, was stolen.  The report lists the costume that he lost and includes garments for his rustic character ‘Roger Turnip’.  His costume was three pairs of trousers, a velveteen coat, smock frock and leather gaiters, so fitting with the report above.  Hunter had been performing at Margate and left the articles in his dressing room when they were stolen.  They were later found and a man sentenced for their theft.  Hunter himself, remained a comedian, associated in particular with the Pier Pavilion, on the pier at Hastings, where he was the manager as well as a performer, by the 1880s.  He played alongside such acts as the immensely popular comedian Arthur Lloyd and his wife Katty King when they visited the theatre, for example, ‘The Rival Lovers’ in 1888.  The character of the rustic in his repertoire had served him well.

http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Hastings.htm

The Cricket Season

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The cricket season is well and truly on us again and it seems that a century or so ago, the smock frock played its part in the game, although not as a stand in for cricketing whites, even if it might have been suitable, if a little voluminous.

In July 1895, the Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser reported the death of Isaac Baxter, aged 77, who was the blacksmith for the villages of Beare Greene and Capel Street, working his trade for over fifty years in a smock frock.  He was a renowned cricketer, living opposite the ground, and known for:

The vigour of his batting, as became the wielder of a sledgehammer, and as one of the swiftest over-hand bowlers in the South of England. Demur was frequently made as to whether his was fair bowling, or was throwing.  Eventually the question was submitted to some Surrey County players, who decided that it was fair bowling.  Once it was said his ball knocked a bail a distance of forty yards.

He would have seemed a formidable opponent with his upper body strength!

In 1890, a single wicket match was played in Cranbrook, Sussex, in the dress of ‘ye olden times’, the cricketers wearing ‘box’ hats.  I am not sure what they are, but the umpires had tall white hats and white smock frocks.  The smock frock was the right colour and added a certain gravitas to those charged with keeping order.

The inhabitants of Cranbrook certainly liked their sport.  A year later, Cranbrook Athletic Sports contest was revived after a ten year gap.  Half day holidays were granted by businesses to allow attendance with cheap fares on the railway to Staplehurst too.  Most of the events seem fairly similar to modern athletics competitions including running races, long jump, high jump and a mile bicycle race.  The one which drew my attention, however, was the ‘300 Yards Walking and Smoking Race, the competitors smoking veritable “Churchwarden” clays [pipes], and wearing smock frocks with high hats…Time 1 min. 41secs.’  Dressed similarly to the cricket umpires, I think that that competition might possibly just be frowned upon today and certainly in the context of athletics!

Cricket and smock frocks were also used to entice inhabitants of Chapel Row in Berkshire, to come to the local fair in August 1830.  Cattle were to be bought and sold and men hired for harvest work, but there was also prize money for a cricket match, with hats and smock frocks for good bowling, which might have been appealing to local labourers.

Order was to be kept at the fair with no fighting of any sort allowed though other amusements were provided.  Jingling was apparently a game where players were blindfolded and had to try and catch another who wasn’t but carrying a bell, hence jingling.  And I would love to try a treacled cake.  I haven’t been able to ascertain exactly what these were, but as treacle was a by-product of sugar refinery and this was before golden syrup was invented, I imagine that they were cheap sweet treats for the locals, who would have had very little other sugar in their diets.

chapel row

The Chapel Row Fair is local to me and sadly not on this year.  Maybe next year it will be back – perhaps a revival of jingling and treacled cakes might help!