Baldwin Photos Hop Picking - Copy by University of Kent Special Collections and Archives, Ronald Baldwin Local History Collection
An exhibition titled ‘Local Stories: Memories of Hopping around Brook and Wye, Kent‘, will be on display in Kent’s Templeman Library Gallery from 18 October to 29 November 2024.
The free exhibition will be open to all and is in collaboration with the Brook Rural Museum. It will open with a launch event on Friday 18 October at 18.00.
Attendees will have access to explanatory panels telling the story of Kent’s history of hops, technology innovations of hop production through the years and glimpses of what the future of hop production could bring. There will be items from the University’s special collections and archives and extracts from Oral history recordings.
The themes of the exhibition are:
- ‘Hopping Wye’ – history of hopping, with a local focus – about hop production, the industry getting big in the 19th century.
- ‘A Family Affair’ – A child’s perspective of Hopping (to tell all the oral history stories that were collected) illustrated with images – using QR codes and quotes
- ‘Height of Innovation’ – talking about Wye College being at the centre of innovation
- ‘A changing industry’ – decline of the industry, and changes to hop production
- ‘Future of hop production’ – including reference to research being carried out at the University by Dr Helen Cockerton (Industrial Research Fellow at the School of Biosciences) with Dr Klara Hajdu (a hop breeder at Wye Hops) to create hop varieties which are more resilient to drought, pests and diseases using genetic informed breeding.