A short walk along the river from the weir at Yalding is this splendid example of a Kentish Oast House. I thought I would include this in the Extras album as compensation for the industrial shot for today at Yalding Weir!
Kent was famed for its hop farming, and Oast Houses were developed to dry hops effectively and in quantity as part of the brewing process.
They consist 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 (this is the white structures you see at the apex of the conical roofs above). The freshly picked hops from the fields were raked in to dry and then raked out to cool before being bagged up and sent to the brewery.
Ian
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