Wealden Times | WT266 | July 2024 | Property Supplement inside

Above: The dining area has lovely views over the
garden. The beautiful tablescaping is by local company
Beyond the Table (beyondthetable.co.uk) The conical
rattan pendant light above the table is by Nkuku
and like many Victorians, has a solid air. Although recently
refurbished, it is an established conversion and has been
a home for several families since then. It must be very
interesting to own an oast house – they are such symbolic
buildings and the Weald in particular has a large number,
some dating back to the sixteenth century. Kent has the
ideal soil and conditions for growing hops and had plenty
of wood for the kilns, so the industry quickly grew and
flourished here. The landscape is now famous for these
wonderful buildings, although hop farming has declined and
nearly all of them have been converted to other uses now.
The iconic round shape of a Kentish roundel oast is lovely
to look at, but circular rooms are hard to furnish without
spending a fortune. The oasts here are square with pyramidal
roofs, rather than roundels, which is lucky – these have all
the character, but are practical too. “My neighbour’s house
has many more original features, there aren’t many left here,”
says Tricia, “but we have lots of wonderful photographs
of the original oast back in the hop drying days. This
place was converted to a residential dwelling in 1983.”
“We are near the hop picker line – the trains that bought
people in, mainly from East London, to pick hops in the
summer. They were staying in pretty basic conditions
I think, but then it was an escape from the city and
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