Oast house
An oast house consists of a rectangular one- or two-storey building (the "stowage") and one or more kilns in which the hops were spread out to be dried by hot air rising from a wood or charcoal fire below.
The drying floors were thin and perforated to permit the heat to pass through and escape through a cowl in the roof which turned with the wind.
Early oast houses were simply adapted barns, but by the 18th century the distinctive tall buildings with conical roofs had been developed to increase the draught.
Square kilns remained more popular in Herefordshire and Worcestershire and came back into fashion in the southeast in the later 19th century.
In the 1930s, the cowls were replaced by louvred openings as electric fans and diesel oil ovens were employed.
Some oasts had a man-powered hoist for this purpose, consisting of a pulley of some 5 feet (1.52 m) diameter on an axle to which a rope or chain was attached.
The hops would be spread some 12 inches (300 mm) deep, the kiln doors closed and the furnace lit.
It weighed a hundredweight and a quarter (140 pounds (64 kg)) and was marked with the grower's details, this being required under The Hop (Prevention of Fraud) Act, 1866.
The pockets were then sent to market, where the brewers would buy them and use the dried hops in the beer-making process to add flavour and act as a preservative.
Examples of this type of conversion can be seen at Catt's place, Paddock Wood,[9] and Great Dixter, Northiam.
[18] In the 20th century, oasts reverted to the original form with internal kilns and cowls in the ridge of the roof (Bell 5, Beltring).
Oasts were built as late as 1948 (Upper Fowle Hall, Paddock Wood),[20] or 1950 (Hook Green, Lamberhurst).
[22] A rare material usage was at Tilden Farm, Headcorn where the kiln was built from Bethersden Marble.
[citation needed] During the Second World War, a few kilns were built with a basic timber framing and clad in corrugated iron (Crittenden Farm, Matfield).
[26] Some oasts had conical kiln roofs built of brick, these were covered in tar or pitch to keep them weatherproof.
Brick kiln roofs could be tarred (Little Cowarne Court, Bromyard) or left bare (The Farm, Brockhampton).
[33] The roofs would be topped with a cowl (Upper Lyde Farm, Pipe-cum-Lyde),[34] or a ridge ventilator (Kidley, Acton Beauchamp).
[citation needed] In Belgium, the main hop growing area is around Poperinghe and Ypres, West Flanders.
[36] Apart from Nord, the main hop growing area in France is around Haguenau, Bas-Rhin and around Dijon and Bèze, Côte-d'Or.
[37] In Germany, hops are grown around Tettnang, Baden-Württemberg; around Hallertau, Hersbruck, Illschwang and Spalt, Bavaria.
Local councils nowadays are generally much stricter on the aesthetics of the conversions than was the case before the planning law came into being.
[43] Other conversions of oasts for non-residential purposes include a theatre (Oast Theatre, Tonbridge,[44] Oast house Theatre Rainham), a Youth Hostel (Capstone Farm, Chatham,[45] another at Lady Margaret Manor, Doddington – now a residential centre for people with learning difficulties),[46] a school (Sturry),[citation needed] a bakery (Chartham),[44] a visitor centre (Bough Beech reservoir),[47] offices (Tatlingbury Farm, Five Oak Green),[48] and a museum (Kent Museum of Rural Life, Sandling,[49] Preston Street, Faversham,[47] Wye College, Wye,[50] and the former Whitbread Hop Farm at Beltring).
