The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Hop picking
The end of the line for Herefordshire's hop pickers. It's 1966 and the traditional seasonal job for hundreds of Black Country workers is fast becoming a thing of the past.
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Overview
"Where does the noble hop come from?", asks ATV Today reporter Lionel Hampden. Well, it's often not from Kent's 'Garden of England' but the hop fields of Herefordshire. This film records the testimonies of the seasonal workers who poured in from the Black Country to handpick this crop. But, as they reveal, by 1966 this way of life was becoming a thing of the past, as falling prices and new mechanical methods of harvesting signal the end of an era.
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