COCKNEY INVASION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 21 September 1938, Page 22

COCKNEY INVASION.

HOPPERS IN KENT.

(JOOD CROPS EXPECTED

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LOXDOX, September 3

This week-end the Londoners in Kent hold their first "at home" for another hopping season has begun. By tea time on the first day score* of huts had been whitewashed and papered. "You'd be surprked," said one picker. "to see how lovely it will be when the lino and rugs are down, the curtains up and the dishes set out on the dreseer." One of the biggest and jolliest gatherings was to be found at Tatlingbury Farm. Five Oak (ireen. Here were assembled the Tidburya, Plumbs, Cathriddes, Coxe* and Smiths, from Balham. Bromley, and Lewisham—over 30 in all descendants of 71-year-old Mrs. Elizabeth Reeee, of Rotherhithe.

Across the field, with its 60 little houses in a huge circle round a brown mountain of fagots, is Mrs Stormer. aged 77. surrounded by her seven children. , *I<> grandchildren and IM great-grandchildren. The hops at Brook Farm, near Tonbridge, are "just right" this year, the farmer said. "Last year we had only lialt a harvest, but this year it is different," he added. At every farm one heard the same story of big, heavy petals, hard, strinjr weeds and scanty leafage—the ideal of the hop farmer