Starting about 1930. 2 or 3 or 4 around then, the hops marketing board was formed, which gave the security of marketing and price to the hop growers. That created a prosperity in the Ledbury district and the prosperity in Ledbury.

Uh, right through to about 1980 almost, I would think. The only farms in the whole of Ledbury district which were really profitable were Hoprown Farm.

I don't say the others lost money, but they were, they were, hadn't got any spare money.

Um, so they.

Prosperity of Ledbury. Before and after the Second World War was created by the Hoppers.

And they're spending power.

And when you were harvesting your hops, where did you get your picklers from? The 1st 5 years.

After I left school, I was working for my father.

We picked our hops by hand.

And our hop pickers were of three types.

The one with the local people, the, the, the workers' wives, and other people who came to help. Quite a lot were gipsies. We had about. 15 gypsy families, I would think who all came from. Is McCunselor in Wales or.

Bath Top end of Bath, or er Mangotsfield in Bristol.

Black Horse Road, Mangotsfield. And we used to, I used to go with my father every year to make sure that they were going to come and they were going to come and help us. The rest of the pickers who we housed in the buildings and various places came from Bath.

Bath or. A mining village. South of Bath towards Radstock called Peasow.

There was a minor mining families came from there.

I think we were the only farm in the West Midlands who drew its pickers from Bath. The vast majority were either drawn from the South Wales mining valleys or the Black Country. Dudley, you mentioned it. I can't think of what other towns in the black, but I mean they regarded it as their holiday, didn't they, to come.

That is right, yeah. Well, it was their only holiday.