Whether you are considering pre-marriage counselling or simply want to learn more about how it can benefit you and your partner, this article will provide you with valuable information to help you make an informed decision. To help couples navigate the challenges of marriage and start their lives together on a strong foundation, many experts recommend pre- marriage counselling. While it can be a time of great joy and happiness, it can also be a period of significant stress and adjustment.
With a good suntan, stained hands and some cash in their pockets the hoppers returned back to Bermondsey healthy, happy and relaxed from their “holiday.Marriage is an important milestone in the lives of many individuals. All in all everyone made something out of hopping and went home happy.Īs the weeks rolled on, the hop bines would gradually become bare as all the hops were picked and put in houses to be dried on the floor.Īt the end of the season the farmer would shout “pull no more bines” and the hoppers downed tools. Local vendors called into the fields and set up shop with cakes, fruit and toffee apples. Travelling peddlers arrived laden with goodies such as braid, ribbons, buttons, brushes and pots and pans. The Ashes: Michael Ash looks back on the Blitz, hopping holidays and a life in the book business Hop pillows for insomniacs and cures for digestive problems (and no doubt hangover cures for the cider!) were all available to buy. They were renowned for their herbal remedies and used the hops in their recipes. They sold rabbits to the hoppers for their teas along with handmade baskets, pegs and heather. Traveller families brought their colourful painted caravans and camped for the season.
The peddlers on a clear day professional#
Professional photographers would visit and take pictures of the families in their best clothes, leaving their card for them to buy a picture when they got home. Some farmers would give their workers a mid-season sub so that they could buy provisions from the various callers to the fields. The farmers would put on entertainment for the kids and organised treasure hunts, horse rides and competitions. Some people ventured down to the local pub and happily staggered back in the pitch dark. “It was good fun until it came to walking back across the field in the dark to our own hut!” He’d tell us kids ghost stories about a woman in white from the Medway. “We’d go down to Johnny’s hut with some bread that we would toast on his fire.
Mary Barrett recalls Johnny, a man with a wooden leg, who came from a large family of hoppers.
After a hard day, people would sit around the campfire singing, chatting and playing cards. He had contracted the virus at home but it had not manifested itself until he had been in the hopfields a week.Ī warning went out in the local paper of the time telling people to stay away from the fields until the virus had cleared.Įven though the work was hard there was still time for leisure. In 1928 there was a smallpox scare in Tunbridge Wells after a boy from Lambeth was discovered with pockmarks and peeling skin. Here they tended to wounds and treated any diseases that sometimes broke out. People obviously got ill during the season so the Salvation Army and the Red Cross would set up hopper’s hospitals. It was a 12-hour day and back-breaking work but hoppers drank firkins (small barrels) of cider in the fields which no doubt kept them in the holiday spirit. Stripping the hops from the bines cut and stung the hands and turned them black so many people brought gloves. Curtains went up in the windows, tea was brewed, pans were hung up on hooks on the door and even pictures and mirrors were fixed up.
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