One place in particular reflects the impact the county-wide industry had on Worcester – The Hop Market.

The Hop Market Hotel, today residential dwellings and a shopping forecourt, was built at the turn of the 20th century. Although, as the name suggests it was originally a hotel, its name reflects the site’s long association with the sale of hops there.

The site was used as a marketplace for hops from the 1730s. Markets were frequently held in differing locations throughout the city but tended to pertain to certain areas according to what stall-holders were selling.

In the 18th century the site was occupied by one of Worcester’s first Work Houses for the poor. Here impoverished children and elderly people were given relief and a trade to learn. The charity seems to have been entwined with the holding of a Hop market and the Corporation of Worcester (the council) agreed that any profits gained by using the building as a marketplace for the sale of hops should go to support the charity.

In fact the city-wide body that governed most charitable relief in Worcester were known as ‘Guardians of the Hop Market’.

Hop Markets continued to trade here in to the 20th century. In 1901 The Worcester Advertiser reported that riots nearly broke out when an over-production of the crop led to a dramatic fall in prices and merchants were mobbed for the cheap crop.

The industry suffered during the first world war. It was recorded at a meeting of the Hop Market Guardians in 1917 that that year’s crop would be smaller as the board of agriculture had decreed that acreage given over to hop production would be halved.

Traditionally, many of the city’s working class population relied upon the opportunity to go out seasonally and assist with harvesting for their annual holidays in the country. Although this practice continued well in to the 20th century, the industry inevitably became more and more mechanised.
In 1920 the first mechanical hop-harvester was brought to the country by a Worcester produce who imported the machine from America.

Although hop-trading ceased in the city in the mid-20th century, the county of Worcestershire still plays an important role in the production of Britain’s hops. Alongside Herefordshire and Shropshire, it forms part of the ‘Hopshires of England’.

The ‘Hopshires’ are responsible today for the production of more than half of Britain’s hops. Cheers!

This location fact has been provided by Joe Tierney of Faithful History. To learn more stories of the ancient city of Worcester, spanning thousands of years of history in ‘The Faithful City’, visit https://www.facebook.com/faithfulhistoryworcester