IIop Cultivation. 
22 f 
that in the charmed districts enumerated where hops can be 
successfully grown. Mr. Topley remarks upon this 1 : — 
Hops take up a large area iu Kent, next to which county come 
Sussex and Hereford. Besides those counties, it is only in Surrey, Hants, 
and Worcester that hops are grown iu any quantity. The unequal distri- 
bution of this crop is very remarkable, as there appears no sufficient reason 
why it should not be cultivated in other districts. Everywhere below the 
Chalk escarpment hops might probably be cultivated with success, and the 
vale of Pewsey, for instance, would seem especially suited for them. 2 
There are, no doubt, other districts where hops could be 
produced, but their introduction into new localities would be 
attended with great initial expense. Oasts, hopper houses, and 
other buildings must be provided, and skilled labourers intro- 
duced, and, as will be seen later on, the cost of hop cultivation 
increases year by year. The cultivation of hops has been tried 
in many counties, notably in Nottinghamshire and Essex, and 
has been abandoned. 
Some of the hop grounds in the best districts are more than 
100 years old. In some cases there is no record of the date of 
the first planting of certain Golding grounds in East and Mid- 
Kent, Farnham, and in Herefordshire, by the river Teme, where 
it is said the land will grow hops for ever. It is, however, being 
discovered by hop planters that the plants in such very old 
grounds do not crop well, and are more liable to blight and 
mould, and less able to resist these attacks and climatic varia- 
tions. In several cases of very old grounds a sacrifice has been 
made, the plants have been grubbed up and change of crop 
has been resorted to for a time with much advantage. 
In order to show the fluctuations in the hop acreage and 
hop yield in England the following table is given: — 
Year. 
Area, 
Total yield, 
acres. 
cwt. 
1800 
38,436 
500,000 
1820 
50,048 
275,000 
1840 
44,085 
68,000 
1800 
46,272 
107,000 
1880* 
66,703 
473,000 
1892 
66,259 
413,259 
maximum area 
was 71,789 acres in 
1878. It may be 
added that in 1872 hops were grown in twenty-three counties, 
while in 1892 there were but eleven counties in which they were 
cultivated, and the whole acreage of five of these only amounted 
to 198 acres. 
1 On the Agricultural Geology of the Weald. By W. Topley, F.G.S. Journal 
of the Royal Agricultural Society, vol. viii., 2nd series, 1872. 
2 I have seen splendid samples of hops grown in the Vale of Pewsey. C. IV. 
