220 
Hop Cultivation. 
The Hop Districts of England. 
From the time when hops were “ fetched out of Flanders ” 
into Kent, this county has been the principal English hop-pro- 
ducing district up to this date. According to the latest returns 
(1892) of the Board of Agriculture, there were 34,052 acres of 
hop land in Kent, out of 56,259 acres in the whole of England, 
and this proportion has been maintained for many years. The 
Kentish acreage has fluctuated with the rest of the English 
acreage. In 1863 there were 36,367 acres; in 1873, 39,040 
acres; in 1883, 42,737 acres. It maybe seen that hops are 
grown in the same parishes in Kent as at the beginning of this 
century. There were 290 then, there are 296 now. 
The hop-growing limits are defined somewhat sharply by 
geological conditions. For instance, in the district between 
Chatham and Faversham, and from Faversham nearly to Can- 
terbury, extending for some miles, chiefly below the London, 
Chatham and Dover Kailway, the finest hop land in England, 
or, as some hold, in the world, is situated. The soil is clay, 
loamy clay, and sandy loam upon the Thanet, Woolwich, and 
Oldhaven beds, which crop up here and overlie the Chalk on the 
“ backbone of Kent.” As the Chalk appears again with a thin 
and gradually decreasing surface of loam, the hop land becomes 
less valuable, and at a short distance from this point hops are 
not cultivated at all until, longo intervallo , the “Bastard” East 
Kent district begins, where the hops produced are of inferior 
quality as compared with East Kent hops proper, being grown 
upon useful, somewhat heavy soils, lying for the most part upon 
the belt of Gault alternating with the Folkestone beds inter- 
vening between the Chalk and the Weald Clay. Below Canter- 
bury there is a district between Challock and Barham where 
hops of first-class quality are grown, upon loams of a lighter 
character resting on the Chalk. The crops here are not so heavy 
as those yielded on the deep loam and brick earth in the Faver- 
sham district, and the plants will not take such long poles, but 
the quality is most excellent. 
“ Bastard ” East Kent hops form a line of demarcation be- 
tween East Kent hops proper and those known as Mid Kents, 
which are for the most part produced upon the soils of the Lower 
Greensand formation — the loams, and clay loams, and hassocky 
detritus of the Hythe and Folkestone Beds and the Atherfield 
Clay — between the Chalk and the Wealden formation, running 
from Lenham nearly to Tonbridge. A small part of the Mid 
Kent district is upon the Weald Clay, but it is Weald Clay 
modified and improved by admixture with Greensand soils. 
