A collection of films charting Kent’s riveting rural past with unseen footage has been released – and it’s available for anyone to see.

They slept sometimes 10 to a hut and worked like Trojans in the fields during the day, but their time in the hop gardens of Kent was the highlight of their year and made childhood memories to last a lifetime – and beyond.

Films capturing the lives of the hoppers who came to Kent in their hundreds back in the 1930s have been released by the British Film Institute, many never seen before.

Rural Life features more than 750 films online, dating from 1900 to 1999, part of the Britain on Film project.

The fascinating footage shows hop-pickers and oast house workers hard at work in the fields. Villages captured forever in film include Biddenden and Chilham.

The films include:

Kent Hop Farming (1930)

Showing families of hop-pickers, including children, hard at work pulling the hops off the bines and putting them into sacks ready for drying in the oast house.

The film also shows the way the families lived in hopper huts and cooked on open fires.

It shows some hop-picking scenes around Goldwell and Biddenden in the 1930s and shows the days when large numbers travelled to Kent for the seasonal work, many from London’s East End. Special trains, called Hop Pickers’ Specials, would be laid on to transport them to the Kentish hop gardens.

Hop Fields of Kent (1937)

This award-winning film starts with “The cultivation of hops goes on all year round.”

The 19-minute footage tells the story of hop cultivation in 1930s Kent, the annual cycle starting in January with the preparation of the fields and the wooden poles for the hops to grow on, while men worked on stilts to construct the overhead lattice. In September, East End families would arrive to pick the ripe hops. The film shows them at work drying the hops.

Frank Perrin Barritt, who made the film, was a Tunbridge Wells solicitor as well as a highly skilled photographer and amateur filmmaker.

Gypsies in Kent (1938)

Join a Roma family as they journey through Kent during the crop-picking season in an unsentimental look at life on and off the road, captured by the Barnes brothers. Twin brothers John and William Barnes devoted their lives to film, making important documentaries and impressionistic films about rural life in Kent throughout the 1930s.

O Famous Kent (1934)

In this nine-minute film the Barnes Brothers turn their attention to Chilham, where you can see farm animals and workers on the land. Everyday life is captured, with a farmer greeting a postman while a swineherd walks a sow and her piglets along a road.

Making of Kent (1976)

Princes Charles stars in this documentary about the architectural character of the county, looking at the buildings, geology and history that shaped the county and its villages.

Watch the films online yourself at: player.bfi.org.uk/film

There is also an interactive map where you can click on the area of Kent to find what films are available.

WATCH THEM

The BFI Film Audience Network (FAN) will be staging screening events across the country to see the films.

The Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone will be home to an exhibition devoted to the history of hop-farming in the region throughout September and October and there will be public screenings. It will be free to enter.

Details of the screenings will be available nearer the time at britainonfilmscreenings.org.uk

THE FILMS

Rural Life by the British Film Institute (BFI) has released more than 750 films from 1900 to 1999 as part of its Britain on Film project, which reveals hidden histories and forgotten stories of people and places across the county and makes them available on BFI Player via an interactive map; 97% of them are free.

It charts the changing countryside and rural life in southern England, highlighting pursuits and traditions still surviving today, as well a s customs, trades and skills that have since disappeared. Many of the films were drawn from the Screen Archive South East (SASE) and Wessex Film and Sound Archive (WFSA).

Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI national archive, said: “It’s an immersive experience to watch them, and often deeply moving.

“People who live and work in the countryside will be fascinated to see how their forbears used to live.

“Like many other city dwellers, I was born and bred in the countryside and this collection of films offers all of us an extraordinary and very real social history of the British countryside.”

The films in Rural Life are drawn from the collections of the BFI National Archive and the UK’s Regional and National Film Archives. By 2017, thanks to National Lottery funding and the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, 10,000 film and TV titles from 1895 to today will be available to view.

DID YOU KNOW?

Pop singer David Essex was one of the many children who travelled to Kent for the summer to pick hops with his family.

He recounted some of his memories in his autobiography A Charmed Life and once said: “For a scruffy London kid like me, the sights and sounds of the countryside, the wind on your face, was a different world. I remember my Uncle Levi, who was tall and handsome and told wonderful stories. He told me the natural life was important, not the material things.’’