| Back To History Index | |
|
Malt and Oast Houses. Brewing in rural areas was a local industry, the bad roads meant journeys of more than seven miles or so resulted in ruined beer. Beer needs three main ingredients : hops, malted barley and water, all readily available within the parish. The mansion houses, larger farm houses and the licensed victuallers would all have had their own brew houses. Ratling Court, once owned by the Earls Cooper, and until the 1950’s in Nonington parish, still has a very fine example of a brew house. A lease dated 8th. March 1716 between Wm. Hammond and Anthony Hammond, both esquires of Nonington, mentions ‘ the mannor house called the new Building’, the old St. Albans Court, and gives ‘the free use of the Bakehouse, Brewhouse, Woodhouse and Well.’ Ale houses such as the ‘The White Horse’ in Church Street would have brewed their own ale and beer until it became usual for brewers to supply them with their products. In 1790 this alehouse was leased for twenty-one years by William Hammond of White Friars, Canterbury to William Baldock, brewer, of Canterbury and John Rigden, brewer, of Faversham. The records of the Poor House list purchases of hops and malt from Stephen Pain of Esole Street, maltster. Large quantities of hop pockets (sacks) were manufactured in the 1820’s by the Poorhouses inmates, obviously for local use. Hops were, until the early 1880’s, the third most important crop grown in the parish after wheat and oats, their widespread cultivation in the parish ceased towards the late 19th century, although the 1901 cencus list hop pickers living in huts on Curleswood Park Farm near Ratling.Hop gardens were to be found on Oast Field to the rear of Park Farm at Frogham where an oast, which still stands, was individually recorded in the parish tax records until about 1860. It appears to have still been in use as an oast by the then farmer, Mr. Ratcliffe. A cart track ran from the oast through the adjoining hop garden, which lay between the track and the Frogham to Holt Street road to Ruberries Wood. Parish records list other hop gardens on North Field, Holt Street Farm (between the farm and the Ash Path) and at Mount Ephraim whilst Old Court Farm, no longer in the Parish of Nonington but deserving mention, had a large hop garden between Old Court Wood and Bonnington Farm, with its oast houses. Land used to cultivate hops attracted additional tithes, giving the tithe holder a lucrative source of income until tithes were finally abolished in the 1930’s. Hops need to be dried and this is done in oast houses, before the nineteenth century many malt houses doubled as oast houses as both processes require heat. There are few identifiable oasts in Kent from before 1800, a few examples of pre-1840 rounded oast are to be found, after about 1840 square kilns, as can be seen at Bonnington Farm, were deemed more efficient but in the 1880’s round kilns returned to favour once again and its from after this time that most remaining oasts date. An oast at Ratling is recorded in 1859 as belonging to the Hammonds of St. Alban’s Court but appears to have gone out of use in the 1860’s. The building, by then a dwelling, was sold when the St. Alban’s estate was dispersed in the 1930’s, but has since been demolished. Another oast house belonging to the Hammonds is recorded in 1839 to the rear of Church Farm, but by 1859 records do not list a working oast but refer only to Old Oast Hill. The square building referred to as a granary in St. Alban’s Court’s home farm yard, now Granary Cottage, is similar to a post 1840’s oast house and may have been used for both purposes as oasts were only used for a few weeks in the autumn, the rest of the time they were put to other uses, usually the storage of other agricultural produce or machinery. |
|
|
|
|
| Bonnington Farm oasts, immediately adjacent to the present and past Nonington parish boundary with Goodnestone, are fine examples of the mid-nineteenth century square oasts. In the background is the early eighteenth century Goodenestone Park mansion, built by the Brooke-Bridges family and often visited by Jane Austen. The Brooke Bridges family once had large land holdings in the parish of Nonington. | |
|
Malt houses One malt house survives in the parish with documentary evidence existing of at least one other. A document of 1700 mentions a toft of land of eight and a half acres part in Nonington, part in Barson (Barfrestone) parish where a malt house had previously stood. A toft was the previous or abandoned site of a house or building. The maltster, possibly the Knott family, licensed victuallers and therefore brewers and maltsters who were millers, like the Pain family in Nonington. Now converted into a dwelling, the malt house, once belonging to John Harvey, the local seed merchants, is easily recognisable as the thatched building with its date of construction, 1704, painted on its gable on the eastern side of the Sandwich road in Esole Street. Malting on a small scale for private use continued here until comparatively recently. The malt house may once also have been used to dry hops before the advent of oast houses as heat was also needed to dry hops as well as malt barley. |
|
|
|
|
|
The Malt House in Easole on the Sandwich Road circa 1910, then part of the St. Alban’s estate. |
|
|
|
|
|
The malt house in the 1980’s. |
|
|
Views of the well in the malt house used in the malting process until the 1930’s. The well was in existence until the malt house was converted to a dwelling in the 1990’s |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Back To History Index | |
