Clarence Henry Warren (1895-1966)

Post date: Sep 23, 2020 8:21:33 PM

Clarence Henry Warren was born in Kilburn but his family moved to Mereworth sometime before the 1901 census. In 1901 the family were living at the Post Office, The Street, Merworth where his father was a grocer and Sub Postmaster. Clarence was the youngest of 3 children, all boys, and already attending school. In 1911 he is the only child at home and still at school.

He wrote many books on the countryside of which A Boy in Kent, published in 1937, is one. It is an account of his boyhood in Fladmere (=Mereworth) and includes an excellent chapter, called The Gay Invaders, on the hop pickers of Mereworth. Given his date of birth the account is pre-WWI. It is thus based on recollections about 20 years before Orwell was hop-picking in Brewers Hall Farm, Mereworth. The summary below does not capture the beautiful style in which the account is written.

It describes the defensive prepations of the villagers in anticipation of the September invasion: the pubs getting in extra beer; picking all ripe crops of damsons and apples; repairing fences and hedges; the procurement of more tea, sugar, flour, cheeses etc to sell to the hoppers; removal of all goods from shop windows; the creation of a high barricade round the counters.

It describes the hop fields out of season: "a complicated system of poles and wires and string"; "men on long stilts"; spraying "yellow clouds of sulphur ..against the blight".

The first invaders to arrive were 'casuals' (without a job) on foot pushing their belongings on prams, together with 'toffs' intending to get best huts and have a few days holiday before picking begun. 'Rowdies' arrived in due course, some in wagons but majority by hop -picking special trains into Wateringbury, stopping at every pub on the way from the station. Would crowd into shop bantering with his father. Description of characters such as Mrs Eliza Grunter and Long Tom. Respected neither person or property; policeman cycled around but disappeared if trouble.

In hop gardens were orderly enough and worked hard. They sang all the latest popular songs such as "Down at the ol' Bull an' Bush". Description of the measurer and the bookie- one year measurer "caught by his heels and tipped headlong among the stinging hops, It was an old trick, practiced on most people in time." Ladies from the village also came to pick as well as the missionary with a reminder about the prayer meeting to be held. Work went on all night in the oast houses.

Description of hailstorm in one year resulting in children taxing the resources of the Hop-pickers hospital -a small room in a cottage with one nurse. Clarence's parents restricted his mixing with hoppers in the fields, which he resentd, but he mixed with them in the shop in the evening.

On Sundays hoppers brought their dinners to the bakers for cooking. After church and dinner they crowded in public houses, danced and sang. Friends came down from London for the day.

Clarence "admired them all, but most I admired the gypsies.... a people apart, silent and unapproachable...lived in painted caravans." Some farmers refused to employ gypsies, who disliked and blamed for any theft. One year at end of picking two clans met in village for a reconciliation but which degenerated into a massive fight between them.