This volume, the ninth published in the University of Hertfordshire's Studies in Regional and Local History, is based on Celia Cordle's University of Leicester Centre of English Local History doctoral thesis. It was awarded the first Hasted prize by the Kent Archaeological Society in 2007, thereby achieving a financial input to enable its publication. There are six main chapters which take the reader from a general survey of the Weald and the early days of hop farming, through to the later nineteenth century and then the twentieth-century situation. Chapter five explores the activities of the hop factors and hop merchants in the Borough at Southwark. A final main chapter, ‘The Last Hurrah’, deals with the issue of tithe commutation and the nineteenth-century repeal of hop duty. A concluding section usefully draws all these threads together.

Through the careful linking of grower, factor, merchant and brewer, although the latter is not fully dealt with here, the book offers a detailed analysis of the fluctuations in hop growing in the Kentish Weald, and the impact of that cultivation on the economy and landscape of the Borough, where the trading of hops took place. The earlier chapters demonstrate how hop cultivation was integrated into farming systems and how attention to the hop garden varied through the different seasons, in the expenditure of both money and time. In so doing, Cordle gives an excellent account of the processes behind Wealden hop production and skilfully utilises a variety of sources: primary documents, published literature and, perhaps most importantly, oral histories, the latter being handled particularly well.

Hop growing in the Weald of Kent could bring excellent profits, but also losses. It was, as Kipling said, ‘the gambling of farmers’, and on moving to his Burwash home he grubbed the hops immediately. But many, in the hope of profit, applied huge amounts of fertiliser and cattle were kept specifically for the manure they would provide. Other fertilisers included shoddy and slag and different types of guano, the latter being dealt with in some detail. One of the book's pervasive themes is change, although Cordle correctly attributes a cautious attitude to nineteenth-century Wealden farmers, who most frequently offered what she refers to as a ‘measured acceptance’ of innovation. This acceptance gradually filtered through in the form, for example, of the adoption of wirework and creosoting. The twentieth century witnessed the development of mechanised picking, the tractor, a greater emphasis on disease control and the development of disease-resistant and dwarf varieties. The huge post war research contribution of Wye agricultural college is also properly emphasised.

For readers wishing to explore more fully the intricacies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century hop cultivation in the Kentish Weald (there is only a passing reference to other regions such as the west Midlands) this is an excellent text, with a full bibliography. There might have been more illustrative material: perhaps a diagram to explain the planting schemas, or even some of the many available photographs of the people involved, such as the pickers, farmers and middlemen. At times the text is long on description but short on analysis: precisely why, for example, could American and German hops outbid those from the United Kingdom in the home market? And what is it that makes an East Kent ‘Golding’ a superior hop to a Wealden ‘Fuggle’? Finally, the greater deployment of primary sources such as the census enumerators’ schedules, the 1910 valuation survey books and maps, and the National Farm Survey of 1941–43, would have added greatly to our understanding of those case study farms chosen, and also the middlemen in the Borough. Nevertheless, those sources which were used were revealing, and well handled. As an insight into an iconic rural landscape, this is an excellent guide.