Kent Our Food

'British food is about more than what we put on our plates.

'Our landscape, our climate and our history

'define what we grow and where we grow it.'

Ah!

This is the mustard that built empires.

'Each place, each region, each food has its own story to tell.

Oi!

HE LAUGHS

It's the most dangerous kind of farming I've ever known.

I would rather fish for shark!

'I'm exploring Britain to discover

'how our soils and seas have shaped our tastes and traditions

'because our food is who we are.'

Those were the shoes that were put on the cattle.

-So they would fit those...

-They really shoe cattle?

-They have.

'Alongside me on this journey are historian, Lucy Worsley,

'archaeologist, Alex Langlands...'

Definitely whisky in that!

-And does that find its way into the fish, ultimately?

-It does, yeah.

..'botanist, James Wong,

'and horticulturalist, Alys Fowler.'

Oh, wow!

-It's a TOTALLY different thing when it's cooked.

-It is. It really is.

'This is the story of our food.

'This time, we're in Kent.

'This is the garden of England, rich with orchards and fruitful harvests.

'It's also on the doorstep of Europe, a source of new tastes and ideas.

'And it's all within easy reach of the markets of London

'via an ancient network of rivers and estuaries.'

What's the great thing about falling off here?

Remember to go that way!

'I'm going to be travelling by traditional Thames barge,

'taking a trip up the Medway

'to see how the white van men of the waterways

'helped put Kentish food on the map.

'But my journey begins in the heart of the county.

'I'm starting with a crop perfectly suited to Kent's soil and climate,

'a crop brought here from Europe to transform our national drink.'

These amazing towering plants are hops,

and their pale green flowers are the beginnings of a very Kentish taste

because they're what gives English beer its bitterness,

the clean, grassy, palate-cleansing tang

that makes British beer beer.

'Hops are a very labour-intensive crop,

'grown purely for their cone-like flowers.

'Kent became their stronghold, thanks to favourable growing conditions

'and the number of seasonal workers prepared to travel from nearby London.

'Whole families would race to pick the hop flowers

'that were then dried before being added in the brewing process to create flavour.

'Hop farmer Chris Nicholas has just started this year's harvest.'

I guess you know when they're ready because of the timing,

but is there anything...

How can you tell that this particular...

This fellow... How do you know it's ready?

Well, the traditional way is...

-..if you look at a hop...

-Yup.

-..there's a seed.

-Mm hmm.

When the hop first forms,

the seed inside is milky.

As the hop becomes ready, the seed starts to dry out.

You can see the lupulin, which is the brewing value,

on the petals.

-Is that the yellow stuff?

-Yeah.

Now the seed is not milky.

It's actually quite firm. That means it's ripe.

How many hop flowers do you need for a pint of beer?

-Just a couple.

-Just a couple?

-Yup.

-So, like...

-These two... That's a pint?

-Yup.

-It smells of very hoppy beer...

-Yeah.

-..when it's on your fingers.

It smells sort of garlicky when you fist smell it, and then lemony.

And then, when it's on your fingers, it smells like...

I smell like I've come back from a really, really good night.

'You CAN flavour beer with fresh green hops,

'but usually, they're dried.

'This would once have been done in an oast house,

'but these days, they're dried in kilns.'

So, you dry them here?

This is part of the drying system.

Hops is 83% water, and we try and dry them down to 10%.

To tell when they're dried,

I just get into the kiln while it's going,

and grab a handful, and then you rub them.

These aren't anywhere near ready. These are about half dried.

And what will happen, if you end up with three

of just the strigs left in your hand, that's 10% moisture.

That's how the old Victorian driers dried them off.

-And you still do it that way?

-Still do it that way.

It's done all over the world, all the hop driers.

They might have got electronic equipment,

but it's always still done by hand.

It's a very kind of heady smell, isn't it?

It's very kind of, "Woah!" Makes you feel a bit woozly.

'Hops and beer have been the perfect Kentish partnership for centuries,

'but go back further into history, and the story is very different.

'Brewing has been going on for millennia.

'It's a way of making our water safer to drink.

'But hops weren't always part of the recipe.

'In medieval England, there were no hop gardens,

'and beer as we know it simply didn't exist.

'Master brewer, Stewart Main,

'is going to introduce me to the original British pint.'

-So, what was beer like before hops?

-It would be very variable.

It was called ale.

It was only called beer when hops were added.

Before that, it was ale,

and ale wives, women,

used to brew the beers. It was a farmhouse kind of thing.

-We now, when we talk about real ale...

-Yeah.

..we do mean a hopped drink like beer?

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes.

But at the time, there was a distinction?

We're looking at the alcoholic beverage,

before hops came to this country.

'Malted milled grain is mixed with boiling water.'

It's a lot of trouble to go to, just cos you can't drink the water.

-Well, it's that or dying, I suppose! What would you choose?

-GILES LAUGHS

-Beer or death!

-It's just a wholesome, natural drink.

It doesn't have to be highly alcoholic.

-Children drank it, didn't they?

-Of course they would.

'Flavourings like rosemary, honey and heather are added.'

I have to say

that I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks less like beer.

-It's ale, lad. It's ale!

-Ale!

'It's left to ferment for several days.'

Now, you can see how it looks exactly the same.

But you see the fluid in there?

Now, what would they do? They'd allow that to sediment out.

I bet they would because what they've got there is

a yeasty-smelling muddy puddle.

But it's not going to kill you!

We'll just see how this tastes.

Mmm.

It smells of mouldy bread,

but it tastes of beer.

You can imagine that chilled, nicely cooled.

That's a lovely drink.

You're going to have such a big sales problem with the colour.

What do YOU think the alcoholic content of that is?

Six.

Six?

would you be surprised if I told you it was 13?

-GILES LAUGHS

-Yes!

-13%.

-Really?

-Honestly. 13%.

Gosh, I drink too much, don't I?

'Although our British ale was alcoholic,

'it was unpredictable and it spoiled quickly.

'The Europeans were really the first to brew with hops.

'The Germans were using them in beer by the 12th century,

'soon followed by the Dutch and the Flemish.

'When Flemish weavers came here to work in the late 14th century,

'they brought with them a taste for hopped beer.

'It took a couple of hundred years, but it caught on,

'and by the early 16th century,

'Kentish farmers had a new cash crop and a new drink.

'English beer today would be unthinkable without hops.'

So these are...?

These are the hop pellets. Hops have been

milled and reconstituted in pellet form.

-It still smells just exactly of hops.

-They do.

And we're going to add them now to this copper.

Brilliant.

'Shepherd Neame is Britain's oldest brewery.

'There's evidence that its heritage dates back to the 16th century,

'the industry growing on the back of Kentish hops.

'It's Stewart's job to monitor every part of the process.

That's the freshest beer you will ever taste, Giles.

I think I can taste the hops.

-Oh, you can?

-I'm so into hops now that I'm...

-You can taste the hoppiness and the bitterness.

-It's very bitter.

You've got a lingering bitterness now just at the front of your palate.

That seems bitterer to me than beers you normally drink in the pub.

Shepherd Neame's beers are famous for being very bitter.

We're in the heart of hop country!

'The possibilities for beer expanded with the arrival of hops.

'Different varieties create different flavours.'

Now, you look at that. Lovely golden colour,

light chestnut.

With a lovely dry bitterness as well.

Mmm.

Yeah, I know. I can see. I just need to just quickly get a...

-Just to be sure.

-Just to be certain I need to get a...

-I'm keen that you make your mind up.

-Mmm.

Yeah... Yes...

Yeah. Mmm hmm. That obviously went down well.

If you compare the ale that they were drinking before they had hops,

it's got this kind of... which had no structure.

Well, if you think about it,

we're adding different hops with different bitternesses

to give different aromas and different flavours.

They would add different types of flowers and herbs to give different flavours,

so you can see the parallel between what was done in Saxon times.

The hops are added, yes, to make the beer bitter

and to give a nice hoppy and fruity aroma, but they're

actually one of nature's preservatives.

So, they will preserve the beer. They make it last a long time.

This means, presumably, hops not only gave it flavour,

but it must have made it possible to move from a thing that was just done

-at home to something that could be done on a commercial scale.

-Absolutely.

Well, it became commercial, of course.

And the commercial aspect of brewing

coincided with the infrastructure of distribution.

So, it would start with canals and then roads.

Beer has always been part of Britain's way of life.

It's our national drink.

'Kent has a long history of embracing new ideas and flavours.

'But it didn't hurt that it had thousands of customers practically on its doorstep.

'So for brewing to work commercially, Kent needed another ingredient. Transport.

'The brewery sits on a tidal creek in Faversham that leads out into the Swale Estuary.'

-Morning, Brian.

-Good morning.

-A beer run to London.

Thank you very much indeed. That will get us half way anyway.

'Brian Pain is the skipper and owner of this barge, the Lady Of The Lea.

'He and his crew are going to show me how Kent used to get goods to market.'

-Well, it's very thirsty work.

-Really?

Lots of pulling and heaving. The crew is in danger of getting dehydrated.

-I thought it was easy. I thought that was the point.

-They're easy, yes. You'll find out later.

'Before modern roads and railways, barges were the safest and cheapest

'method of putting Kent's food on the table.

'This network of rivers and estuaries were once the motorways of their day.'

-Do we know what route we're taking?

-I think we do.

If not, I've got a road map of Britain down below. I'm sure we can find a way.

'In their heyday, there were over 2,000 of these barges,

'the largest fleet in Europe.

'They could navigate narrow creeks to pick up goods direct from farmers and suppliers.'

I'm amazed you're out so quickly.

Seconds ago, we were in the bustling, glittering lights of Faversham.

Suddenly, we're in open fields. It's like Belgium or something.

Yes. It's got a strange beauty around here, the marshes.

'The earliest barges were simple floating boxes, rowed to shore.

'But bargemen soon realised they could be transformed to sail the windswept estuaries.

'A sailing rig was added and the Thames barge was born.'

What sail are you going to put up? Like I know the difference between sails!

We're going to put the top sail up and the clue's in the name.

-The great thing is we fall off here...

-What's the great thing about falling off here?

-Remember to go that way. You'll be in the water.

-Is it deep enough? I'll be OK?

-You'll be fine.

Do you want to see a back somersault with a triple pike?

Just in time for the Olympics. Would you like to know just how terrified I am?

'Beer from the brewery would have been delivered straight to London,

'but we're settling sail for a different destination, heading to the River Medway

'and a journey upriver into the very heart of Kent.

'This is where Kent's reputation was really built.

'Grapes and apples are all very well, but by late summer,

'it's cherries that are the real stars of the show.

'Kent led the way with the first English cherry orchards in the early 16th century.

'It's still leading the way today.

'Horticulturalist Alice Fowler is uncovering a new cherry revolution

'with its roots firmly in the past.'

Now this is a traditional orchard with traditional wide spacing

and huge trees, hence the need for these very tall ladders.

The ladders have a wonderful feel.

You can sort of tell that hundreds of people have climbed up and down them and they're stained.

They're sort of brilliant dark cherry red along each rung.

'This is Kent farming with a rich history.

'John Leigh-Pemberton's family have been growing cherries here for more than three generations.

'And as with any old orchard,

'the fruit trees can tell their own stories.'

If you have a look around this side, you can see where it's growing out of the lower part of the tree.

What's happened is that the graft is here,

that's where the top stop was put onto the tree.

This is the root stop. This has shot out from beneath.

It's showing its true form, which is it's a wild cherry tree

and it's got these little sour wild fruits on with tiny stones and tiny pips

and it is from this that the cultivated cherries have developed.

And probably, if you look up in here, that's a cultivated cherry.

-There's a huge difference in size.

-Huge difference from these tiny things.

And the wild cherry is native to Britain. We've actually always eaten it.

It's one of our early forage foods because there's evidence in Bronze Age sites and stuff like that.

But when did we go from eating this to eating this?

The Romans, I think, were probably the first to start grafting cherries

and selecting varieties deliberately and propagating them.

Because if you grow from seeds you're only ever going to have

one tree of a particular variety.

The only way you're going to get lots of trees of the same variety is by grafting.

In the UK the real start of the fruit industry in Kent

was with a chap called Richard Harris

who was Henry VIII's fruiterer.

Harris set up an orchard in nearby Teynham

and brought graft wood in from France.

All on the orders of a King

who wanted a sweeter cherry for his dinner table.

-Henry VIII really backed it.

-Oh, he backed it, he backed it.

He saw it as part of his attempt to modernise the country.

And I think probably he'd seen the French were doing it better

and thought that we've got to do something about it.

There's a wonderful description

in William Lambarde's Perambulation Of Kent,

which was one of the first county guides

written in 1570, of Richard Harris's orchards.

And it says, "In the year of our Lord Christ, 1533,

"he obtained 105 acres of good ground in Teynham

"which he divided into ten parcels

"and with great care, good choice and no small labour and cost,

"brought plants from beyond the seas

"and furnished this ground with them

"so beautifully as they not only stand in most right line

"but seem to be of one sort, shape, and fashion

"as if they'd been drawn through one mould,

"wrought by one and the same pattern."

And it's just so beautifully written, this.

And you can see that for Lambarde to walk into this orchard

and see trees in a straight row,

in a completely new style of growing

must have been really a wonderful thing for him.

You can sort of see why it's called the garden of England, Kent.

Because it does have this...just such a romantic air. But...

Yup. It is very lovely and very romantic

but I'm afraid that it has...

it's in the past, you know?

It's as much in the past

as taking your children to school on a horse and cart.

It's just, it's very lovely

but it doesn't fit with what the world wants.

The cherries that come out of this orchard

I would not be able to sell in a supermarket.

Before the Second World War, around 40,000 acres

of cherry orchards stretched across Southern Britain.

But these trees were too tall,

too delicate, too unpredictable for modern tastes.

By the turn of the century, less than 1,000 acres were left.

What Kent needed was a new kind of tree.

And once again, they looked abroad for inspiration.

In West Germany, breeders had created

a new, dwarf rootstock known as Gisela.

And for farmers like John, it was the perfect solution.

The trees only grow to around three metres or ten feet tall.

They make it much easier to pick.

-And I pick like that?

-That's right.

-Not holding the fruit?

Not holding the fruit, you pick with the strig. That's right.

-And the colour?

-Colour wants to be...

There is a good example.

The left hand cherry is the right colour,

the right hand one is a little bit too dark

and it's too small so that's going on the ground.

The dwarf trees can even be grown under covers

to protect them from rainstorms,

further guaranteeing the crop for supermarket shelves.

There is a big renaissance going on in UK cherry growing.

The acreage is expanding again after years and years of decline.

The technology, the techniques are improving.

We've got better varieties of cherry,

we've got better rootstock, so we've got smaller trees.

We've got tunnels...

All sorts of things are working in the industry's favour now.

The key to this whole renaissance

really is about having this smaller rootstock, isn't it?

That was the moment?

Absolutely, for sure. Suddenly our picking costs are halved.

Suddenly we have trees that we can manage and prune easily,

that we don't need ladders. We don't need anything like that.

These trees are only eight or nine years old.

They're still only this size

and they'll be smaller once we've pruned them after finishing picking.

It's completely revolutionised the business.

Kent broke new ground with the first cherry orchards.

But the traditional trees pioneered by Henry VIII have had their day.

Cherries are part of a bigger story of Kent.

A reflection of the willingness of farmers here

to embrace new ideas and make them their own.

The best of both worlds are farmers like John,

who are going to keep the old orchards going

for as long as possible but invest in the future of cherries.

And the future of cherries

are small, and covered, and perfectly ripe.

On the Lady Of The Lea,

we've reached the coast and are now in full sail.

As I sweat it, you can pull it in, OK?

We've left Faversham far behind

and are sailing round the Isle Of Sheppey

into the Medway estuary.

Are there not nautical songs we could sing?

There are, yes. They've got lots of swear words in, though.

Cherries would once have been transported on barges like this.

Kent's soil and climate are perfect for growing fruit

and the waterways got it to market before it could spoil

Before heading down the Medway proper

I'm stopping off at an orchard that still has its own wharf.

That's the line in.

Yes. >

-And we're going in there?

-Yeah.

You look a little bit more concerned than I thought you would.

Ha-ha! No, just looking at the way out.

That must mark the way out as well.

You can see yourself where the wharf is.

You can actually only get to it at high water

cos it's mud there at the moment, still.

The Lady Of The Lea is designed for shallow waters,

provided Brian gets the tides right.

2ft draught and we're aground!

'Turns out, we're a little early.'

Theoretically, there should be

another 3ft of water before high water.

So there should be just enough to get on that jetty.

Lovely jubbly! That'll do!

Heave!

-Ah-ha, Robert.

-Welcome, Giles.

-Do you like my transport?

-Yeah, it's lovely, isn't it?

'This is Shoregate Wharf.

'And the orchards that run down to it

'are owned by fourth generation fruit farmer, Robert Hinge.'

And what are these? I mean...these are apples.

-Don't tell me!

-Yeah, yeah, these are Cox's.

And am I allowed to eat them?

Can you sell that? Is that a bit small?

No, no. That's fine.

-Bit sharp.

-No, no.

We're here about a week early, I think.

It's delicious. Amazing.

So you don't use the estuary any more?

No, it's all done by road now. But it would have been years ago

by my grandfather, great-grandfather.

Fruit would have been taken up to London and the organic matter,

manure, would have come back and been ploughed into the fields.

To create nice apples like that. Is there any other reason? Why Kent?

Well, we're more of a continental climate.

So it is warmer and tends to be a bit drier here as well.

You just grow old-fashioned varieties like this?

No, no. We still grow a lot of them

but more and more, we're planting Gala, Braeburn, Jazz...

-Jazz!

-Jazz, yes.

-Come along now!

-HE LAUGHS

Around two thirds of tree-grown fruit in Britain

now comes from Kent.

And Robert is a major commercial supplier

of varieties both old and new.

This is a traditional variety of Worcester

which we've just finished picking.

-Tremendous flavour.

-I've never heard of a Worcester.

Beautiful, perfumey flavour.

-Mmm, yup. Mild, though.

-Yeah.

-And what's this, a Gala?

-Gala, yeah.

And it's becoming the most widely grown variety now in the country.

Totally different texture.

That's much more an apple grown

for people who prefer to eat sweeties, isn't it?

People who like Mars bars but they know they should eat fruit.

So they eat this incredibly accessible,

pink, sweet, sugary apple.

-Children's fruit...Grown up's fruit.

-Absolutely right!

OK, well, we've got traditional Bramleys.

Really the only commercially grown cooking apple now.

-Let me eat some raw. I like a raw Bramley.

-Are you sure?

-Yeah! Make your eyes water.

-It will do.

-A wasabi of an apple.

-Nice with a bit of cheese...

-HE LAUGHS

-..and a pound of sugar!

Mmm! Wow!

Robert's apples now make their way to market by road

but here in this orchard,

it's easy to see how the waterways

helped put Kentish food on the table.

Apples could be loaded onto barges

and make it to London in less than 12 hours.

But that's not where I'm headed.

-Hi, Brian.

-Ah!

-More produce.

-Thank you very much indeed.

I'm following the Medway further upstream

into the heart of the county.

Fruit is only part of Kent's story.

To the South, rolling chalk gives way to open marshland.

But this is an important part of the Garden Of England too.

Archaeologist Alex Langlands is discovering

how farming has left its mark

on this seemingly wild landscape.

You're never far from a dyke or ditch out here on Romney Marsh.

And that's because all of this land around us

has been reclaimed from the sea.

The present coastline today lies some five miles

in a southerly direction.

This 100 square mile stretch of marshland

is difficult to cultivate and is vulnerable to flooding and disease.

In the hot summer months,

these ditches would have held stagnant water.

And they would have proved a fertile breeding ground

for malaria-carrying mosquitoes and all sorts of diseases.

Things like cholera and dysentery. They would have been rife.

And in fact, one in three babies

never lived to see their first birthday.

So it was a pretty desolate place at that time.

It's hard to imagine what could possibly prosper

in this treacherous environment.

But this landscape actually holds

some of the richest pastureland in Kent.

And the one creature that positively thrives on it

is the Romney Marsh sheep.

Hardy and nimble, the Romneys have allowed farmers

to make the most of this marsh for centuries.

Converting grass into valuable meat and wool.

You're going to show me how to catch a sheep now?

Sixth generation farmer, Howard Bates,

is continuing the tradition.

And today it's time to check the flock.

You've always got to catch the one that wants to be caught.

-That's the first.

-Yeah!

-Right, let's catch this one here.

Lovely!

Now THAT is how you catch a sheep!

So what are you looking for in a good a Romney sheep?

We start right at the front. They've got to have a good mouth.

A right square muzzle, so she can graze this grass nice and short.

All the higher value meat is in the back of the animal.

You want this triangle shape.

Goes from front to back

and from the top of the sheep triangularly.

OK, across the top here.

A triangle out here and a triangle out here.

Because I guess all roads are pointing to this rump end?

Yeah. And, of course, then this triangular shape

is far easier at lambing time.

She's beautiful, this sheep.

She's just got this nice square muzzle.

Nice white face. Good coat.

So today the plan is to run them through the race

and check them over for condition?

Yes. They've got to have good set of teeth.

Their udder has got to be sound

-for milk production next year.

-Right, OK.

Yeah. OK, if you just walk back there.

Oh, right. This one, look!

Walk to her now. I think she'll come up there.

She just doesn't want to go!

Come on, you! Come on.

No harm here. It's all about your health, sweetheart.

So you're just feeling to see if they're missing any molars, yeah?

Because if they can't break down their food properly

then that's going to impact upon milk production, I guess?

Yep, yes.

'Romneys are a dual purpose breed,

'used for both their meat and wool.

'Nowadays it's the meat that makes the money,

'but their fast growing fleece was once a prized commodity.'

-It's got a lovely, long staple.

-Yeah.

-I mean, look at that.

Remembering that this is only a few months' of growth.

These were shorn in July.

Of course, so you've still got the best part of the year to go.

Absolutely, yeah. A Romney staple is about eight inches long.

That's amazing, isn't it? You're look at something like that.

That's superb.

You begin to understand why it was so valuable, the wool of these sheep.

Anything else you're checking at this point?

In legislation now we have to check they've got their correct ear tags.

Right, OK. You do that. Now that's the only part of this job

that isn't something that was practised hundreds of years ago.

Otherwise, what we're doing here

-has been done for hundreds of years here.

-Absolutely.

-With this breed of sheep on this marsh.

-Absolutely.

'What has changed for Howard,

'and the few remaining sheep farmers on the Marsh,

'is that they get to go home at night.

'Until the 1930s, at certain times of the year,

'farmers would need to live out on the Marsh to tend their sheep.

'This difficult and dangerous job

'was often delegated to freelance farm-hands, called lookers.

'Their legacy is preserved by local sheep farmer, Dennis Cole.'

Well, of course, they call them lookers

here on Romney Marsh, instead of shepherds.

Because quite often the lookers would look after two or three flocks

for the rich owners that lived on the hill.

Because it's not such a healthy place to live down here.

So that's the difference between a looker and a shepherd?

Yeah, that's right.

It's not that he's any better looking.

Ha-ha! Is that what they tell you?

'Whilst tending the flocks in his care,

'the looker would roam this wide open marshland,

'with little to interrupt the landscape

'other than these curious brick huts.'

Wow! This is lovely.

So what were these huts used for then, Dennis?

Well, it was for the looker to stay in during the lambing period.

To look after the sheep.

And, of course, you need to be close to the sheep

at this time of year because when they're lambing,

they could lamb in the middle of the night, couldn't they?

Yeah, that's right. And if he got the odd weakly lamb

he could bring it in, in front of the fire and get it going again.

It sounds very romantic to me at the moment!

-Don't think it was!

-Ha-ha!

They worked long hours and it's fairly basic.

No electricity. No plumbing.

In their heyday, there were around 350 lookers' huts on the marsh.

Today, barely a dozen are still standing.

The Romneys are such a resilient, dependable stock

that they've been exported to breed all over the world.

And they're still here on the marsh where they belong.

Sheep have helped shape this community and this landscape.

'I'm sure we can pour you a little something.'

Been a tough day out there on the marsh.

'And they still provide excellent quality meat

'which is known for being particularly succulent.'

So here we go.

-We've got a rolled leg of Romney Marsh lamb.

-Whoa!

It's probably one of the nicest lamb joints that you can get.

That is juicy and you can see the marbling in there, can't you?

Yeah. All the way through it.

I have to say, that's really how I like my lamb, so...

Mmmm!

-That is absolutely delicious, Scott.

-Good.

The fats are coming through there.

But not in a congealy way, just the taste.

The fat's not completely dissolved so it's still very tasty.

-Absolutely stunning.

-Good.

-Now I know what keeps you here on the marsh.

-Ha-ha!

That is delicious.

On my journey through Kent, I've reached Rochester

where the Medway starts to narrow.

Barges like this could ply their trade in the estuaries

but they were also designed to sail upriver.

BARGE WHISTLE SOUNDS

Eh? Do what? I've forgotten!

Just turn it a bit.

Turn it a bit?

METAL CLANKS

OK, Giles. Hold it there.

-Like that?

-That's it.

That meant they needed to be adaptable.

Because rivers have bridges.

We're coming to Rochester Bridge

where we've got to lower all the gear flat on deck

because the problem of the bridge being lower than the mast, you see.

'Because time and tide were of the essence,

'bargemen would hire in specialists known as hufflers

'to quickly lower the mast.

'Fortunately for me, there's still one available.'

This is Spider. He's the great-grandson of the hufflers

that have been huffling on the Medway for years.

Centuries, probably.

The hufflers were tall, powerful men who would row out

and lower the mast for a fee.

The aim was to try and shoot the bridges,

the barge sailing on while the huffler lowered the gear.

I've got to say, I've heard all these stories

about how they shot the bridge, they didn't stop moving,

the hufflers ran out and put it down. Is that...

Spider IS only a trainee huffler.

It does solve one mystery though.

How they get a ship into a bottle.

We could go straight into a bottle of cognac and we'd be away.

Absolutely, and be having a whale of a time in there, I think.

'We're following the Medway inland, towards the orchards and wharves

'once visited regularly by barges like the Lady Of The Lea.

'Traditional crops like hops and fruit

'still have their place here

'but history has shown Kentish farmers

'are never afraid to embrace new ideas

'even when they turn out to be old ones.

'To the West, in the Darenth Valley,

'a sea of indigo is in full bloom.

'Botanist James Wong has gone to learn

'about a very fragrant and flavourful modern Kent crop.'

Look at this!

I think the first thing you notice

when you walk into this big purple haze

is the scent that really hits you in the face.

And almost psychedelically purple. God, that's good!

You feel like you've been dropped inside

one of those French Impressionist paintings, Mary Poppins style.

You know, when I was growing up,

French Impressionist paintings were my only knowledge of lavender.

I grew up on the other side of the world, in tropical Asia.

And it is brilliant to walk into one of them.

Lavender has a great flavour and a long history

in our kitchens as well as in our medicine cabinets.

Queen Elizabeth I loved lavender and had a particular fondness

for lavender jams, jellies and teas.

It's not really so strange when you think about it.

Lavender is a member of the mint family, a close relative

of rosemary, sage, and thyme. All flavours we use regularly today.

People have preconceived ideas about lavender.

They think about it as these little grains

that you find in the sachets in your granny's linen cupboard.

But it's so much more exciting than that.

It has a whole raft of chemicals.

150 different chemicals that give it different medicinal qualities.

Everything from being antibacterial to antifungal

to even anti-inflammatory.

And you could almost argue

that the reason why we're so drawn to its scent and flavour

is it's the same chemicals that give it these medicinal qualities

that have that scent and flavour.

So we've almost been hardwired instinctively

to find chemicals like this exciting and want to consume them.

Lavender is a Mediterranean plant,

most likely first brought here by the Romans.

It was grown in kitchen gardens and then on a larger scale

in the 19th Century in the southern suburbs of London

until rising land prices squeezed it out of business.

But modern Kentish farmers are just as enterprising

as their predecessors and saw a gap in the market.

Less than 20 years ago,

Caroline Alexander helped this extraordinary crop

find a home right here.

And it's thrived.

She grows it for pharmaceuticals and as a flavouring.

There's more lavender grown in Kent than any other county in the UK.

-Which is great.

-Yes, rows and rows of the stuff.

I bet you're glad you're not having to do it by hand.

You've got that fancy machine!

-SHE LAUGHS:

-Absolutely!

It's so beautiful to see a field so intensely purple.

But how do you know when to harvest? Is it the colour? When it changes?

Yes, it's partly the intensity of the colour

which just grows as the season progresses over these few weeks.

But, in particular, it's the exact flowering stage you get to.

If I show you one of those.

What we've got there is on the flowering stem,

you've got about a third of it is still in bud,

a third of it is in full flower,

and then a third is just beginning to go over.

So that's a perfect description

for when it's at its mid-point of flowering.

Yes, exactly maximum oil yield stage.

And if it goes on beyond that,

there's the risk of it shedding and dropping onto the ground

and then we've lost it.

So you're not growing lavender for its flowers,

-you're growing it for its oil.

-Exactly.

Lavender is well suited to the free-draining chalk soil

and rolling hills of the North Kent Downs.

The conditions mean the flowers are particularly rich in oil.

Caroline's husband, William, runs a distillery on-site.

Well, we've just brought this trailer in,

full of about six tonnes of lavender flowers.

And we're now connecting onto the steam,

because, ingeniously,

we use this as the still pot in the distillation process.

And the steam, you can hear it

and see it there now, going into the trailer.

It's got a special floor

that allows the steam to go through all the plant materials.

It opens up the cells

and lifts the lavender, which then exits

through the chimney up there and through into the separation unit.

It all does it in one kind of pressure cooker way?

Yeah. We've taken a lot of hard, back-breaking work out of this

by inventing and developing a system

which enables us to do large quantities.

-You don't lose a single drop?

-No, we keep it all.

So all the cooked lavender is left over in here

and all the good stuff is pumped up in gas form through there?

-Exactly that.

-Fantastic.

-I can't wait to see what's in there.

-Come this way.

-Wow!

-So this is a steam condenser

and already we're starting to get some liquid out.

It's pushing out the air that was in the trailer.

And that's all the steam.

But now we can see it's condensing to a liquid.

A mixture of oil and water,

And the way we separate it is oil floats on water,

so we just allow it to float on water in this tank.

And already you can see the oil rising to the top.

I've never seen that much essential oil!

-It will build in this tank so we get 40 litres or so.

-Wow!

How much lavender do you have to put in

to get 40 litres of essential oil?

Five or six tonnes, but it depends on variety.

But that's the first oil, and it pours off initially.

You get a lot of oil in the first 15 minutes of distillation.

I normally know essential oil

from those tiny little ten or five millilitre bottles.

And that's LITRES!

It's so strong my eyes are watering!

It's really strong at this stage of the distillation.

It's all mixed in with the air.

The second you walk in you're really hit in the face by the amount of it.

It's incredible to believe

that was fresh plant material half an hour ago.

Caroline and William produce essential oil

for pharmaceutical use but they also process it for food production.

They turn it into a water-soluble essence

which is easier to cook with.

'It's a modern twist on an old ingredient.'

-So, Matt, I hear you're a bit of a local food hero.

-That's right!

'And Matthew Kearsey Lawson has used it

'to bring back a Victorian recipe

'for lavender conserve.'

So my question is, why am I slicing up apples?

-Ha-ha!

-Ha-ha! Because you have to!

The base of the jelly is all Kentish Bramley apples.

So that's the bulk of it.

-The core and peel and everything?

-The whole lot.

Cos that's what contains the pectin, which is what's going to make it set.

The lavender's right at the end, actually.

Yeah, cos this is the pulp here.

Why do you add the lavender at the end?

Purely because if you add it too early,

you will cook away the flavour.

-The flavours are volatile oils and as you heat them, they evaporate.

-They will do, yeah.

Your kitchen will smell lovely, but your jam won't taste of anything.

That's right.

It's strange, because we think of lavender as quite unusual

to use in food, and quite modern, and quite cool.

But at one point it would have been a real staple of the kitchen.

Just as common as rosemary, parsley, sage,

all those common kitchen herbs.

This would have been right up there as one of them.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

Lavender jelly, people would have put it on pork, on lamb,

things like that.

If you want to be very posh,

you can have it on croissant and scones.

Even one customer said to me you can put it on cheese on toast.

Excellent! So it's kind of a sweet and savoury thing.

I guess that works.

It's got floral stuff which works with sweet.

But at the same time it contains the same chemicals

that are in things like pine and eucalyptus and rosemary

so it has that herbal flavour.

-Exactly.

-Right, proof's in the pudding.

That's it.

-Yep.

-Wow!

Yep, I know. It's surprising, isn't it?

With the apples and plums

and lemons and everything,

it almost kind of has a mincemeaty kind flavour.

Kind of sweet and spicy.

But at the same time it's really familiar.

It doesn't taste like anything too out there and crazy.

-Go oh, pile it on.

-I can see you enjoyed that so much.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

Fantastic!

On the Medway, we've reached Allington Lock,

where the tidal waters end.

The river was so important to transporting food and goods

into and out of Kent

that locks were built to make it navigable as far as Tonbridge.

Cargoes were closely monitored and tolls were charged.

Tim Benger is the current lock keeper

and he's still collecting money today.

-Hi there!

-Hi, how are you doing?

Very good. Looking forward to paying you some money.

Always, always!

Come up to the office and we'll sort the licence out.

So how much is it?

All depends on length of time you stay and how long the boat is.

-I'm passing through.

-Passing through.

Just pay for a daily licence.

-You're bigger than 11 metres.

-Thank you.

Stick your signature there.

So how long have there been tolls for coming through here?

Ever since this was put in place.

And they were able to stop boats, work them,

take the details, and pay the fees.

These are the original ledgers. We can open up some pages.

You see here, lists.

These are the vessels that used to come through.

This is what they were carrying.

You've got fruit, timber, coal.

-When is this?

-This is 1960.

So as recently as 1960 they were still using the canal?

Absolutely. I think it was about the mid-'70s

that they stopped using it as a commercial venture.

These are copies of goods inwards ledgers.

These go back to the 1800s. 1870s.

That's nice handwriting. You see, they cared.

You can see it's hops, seed, maize.

At this point they were just charging them for going past?

That's right, yeah. They just paid a toll.

And you still do it today. The traffic wardens of the water.

-Ha-ha! Oh, don't say that!

-Ha-ha!

Zoink! Well, there we are. That's done. 18 quid you owe me.

These waterways were once the lifeblood of Kent.

They connected it to market and made its food famous.

I'm sailing on further inland

in search of a uniquely Kentish harvest.

But there are also riches to be found on the coast.

To the East, shingle beaches shelve gently out to sea.

Historian Lucy Worsley is searching

for one of the most ancient foods this county has to offer.

A food that has helped shape people's lives here for centuries.

Now imagine you are a Neanderthal person wandering along this beach.

There's lots to eat here, if you can find it.

Just lying on the shore. Mussels, all sorts of stuff.

And if you're lucky and you know what you're looking for,

a delicious oyster.

But I reckon you'd have to be pretty hungry

to work out that there was something tasty in there.

Now if you hadn't seen it before,

would you eat a blob of grey mucus like that?

You'd have to be quite brave to give it a taste, I think.

We haven't got many truly indigenous British foods

but they do include shellfish.

And here, where the Swale meets the sea, that means oysters.

The Romans were the first to spot their commercial potential,

even shipping them back to Rome for the greatest of feasts.

These days we tend to think of oysters as a luxury.

but that wasn't always the way.

This coast can tell a story of a food that's fed both rich and poor.

By the Victorian era, towns like Whitstable

had started to grow fat on the oyster trade.

Fishermen were skilled sailors,

jostling for space and a daily catch.

It's a tradition that still continues today.

Richard Green's family are the custodians

of the Whitstable Oyster Company,

a business that can trace its origins back to the 1400s.

They trawl the same oyster beds

fishermen have trawled for centuries.

Looking for the top prize - a native Whitstable oyster.

-There's a native!

-You've got the touch!

That's a true, proper, genuine, real,

absolute native from Whitstable.

It looks like a little pony club rosette.

-It's a nice, neat little thing.

-It's like a heart.

What do they need to grow well?

Well, they need shallow water.

You need brackish water.

Does that mean a bit salty and a bit clear as well?

Correct. You need a lot of nutrients coming off the ground,

which we have here, because we've got these wonderful salt marshes.

You've got the Swale estuary here. Not just the Thames.

All the old oyster hands would say

most of the goodness for native oysters comes from the Swale.

You can see how much work there is...

just to get...

-There's a native!

-Well done!

How many have we caught this afternoon?

We've done not bad. In the dozens. Maybe not the hundreds.

What was the year in which the most oysters

went out of Whitstable and up to London?

The peak time I believe was about 1860.

And that was the year in which 50 million oysters

went up the river from here to London.

That's it. 50 million oysters at least, they reckon.

By the middle of the 19th Century

there were nearly 100 oyster fishing boats or smacks

working out of Whitstable.

Catches were landed, sorted, and sent direct to London

to be sold on every street corner.

Oysters were cheaper than meat.

Beef and oyster pie was a Victorian classic.

The richer you were, the more beef you added.

The poorer you were, the more oysters.

It couldn't last.

By the 20th century the industry had begun to burn itself out.

Over-fishing and two winters that froze the sea solid

pushed the native oyster to the brink.

That is a rock oyster, from the Pacific.

Yeah, you've got it, rock oyster. Though they've been here...

They're pretty indigenous now.

'Rock oysters were introduced in the 1970s to boost numbers.

'They grow fast and you can fish them all year round.'

That's a native, that's a small one.

THAT'S a native! That's a really good contrast.

You can see the difference.

With a rock oyster there's a much deeper shell.

Native oysters are flatter and the reason it's flat

is cos it sits in the mud like that, and that's what holds it in place.

'It's the natives that made Whitstable famous.'

This is about as good as you're ever going to get with oysters.

It's a good size. This is the native.

This is the Rolls Royce. This is the real thing.

It doesn't look like the most beautiful object in the world.

-Well...

-The shell's pretty.

Well, I like them.

Should have brought some wine shouldn't I?

What do you think?

It's amazingly sweet.

I guess I've just maybe not had very nice oysters before now.

Give me more, give me more! I like it!

In the summer they're breeding, so they're creamy.

In fact nobody has natives in the summer because they're too creamy.

Yes, they taste not so good.

But we're OK now we're in October.

There's an r in the month, It's OK to eat them.

This is a good time.

-Mmm!

-You like that as well?

Oysters have made their way back after the boom and bust

of Victorian times.

They're now a modern delicacy.

-Is this a good day's catch, then?

-That's good. About 400-500 oysters.

Do you see a parallel with prosperous Victorian Whitstable

and Whitstable again, from the 1990s onwards?

Well, the difference is Victorian Whitstable had a lot of industry.

-Now we have a wonderful, wonderful tourist trade.

-Sure.

The face of Whitstable has changed.

This is a town that has risen and fallen

and risen again on the back of this harvest from the sea.

I've had a terrific day here in Whitstable.

I've learnt that I like oysters. I'm not frightened of them any more.

And I've also learned

they're not just luxury food for rich people.

Way back when, they were dirt cheap.

Poor people foraged for them on the beach.

And they knew if you just popped them into a fire,

after a while they magically pop open.

What could be easier than that?

Mmm!

Back on the Medway we've passed through Allington lock

and are heading towards Maidstone.

This is starting to feel like a proper river.

When I envisaged the idea of the Garden Of England

I wasn't thinking of Faversham and the cranes and the grey skies.

This is it.

This is the beautiful part.

But you have to remember, things like the lock

and even places like this were industrial.

And they're here, and are like they are

because of the past trade and industry that worked on them.

I do find the fact that all the riverbanks

have been populated by houses and twee little boats

rather sad, really.

Because, erm...

You know, I suppose I'm being an old Faversham dinosaur.

-A Favershaurus?

-Ha-ha! Yes!

-They died out quite early on.

We're motoring towards Maidstone. But first,

I'm hopping off for a detour west of the river

in search of a seasonal treat that I've loved since I was a child.

I'm on the trail of cobnuts.

A cultivated form of the hazelnuts that grow wild across Britain.

All my life I really have loved cobnuts

but I've never been certain what they were.

And thus I was never certain when they're in season

and I never knew quite where to get them.

I happen to know that now is the time

and that this is the place to get them.

This is Shipbourne church. There's a market every Thursday

and from August to October you can find fresh cobnuts here.

-Morning. You're John, aren't you?

-I'm John, that's right.

-I'm Giles.

-Hello, Giles.

I'm here for cobnuts.

This is very, very, very exciting. Genuinely.

The Victorians always finished a meal with Kent cobnuts.

They'd have a glass of port and a Cox apple and some cobnuts.

The greatness of the British Empire was basically built

on a cobnut after-dinner nibble.

The thing with cobnuts,

the reason that I don't get to eat them as much as I'd like,

is this very, very short season.

And that you eat them fresh.

NUT CRACKS

Nice and soft to crack.

If they're young you can do it with your teeth.

The older they get, the leatherier the skin.

You can break a tooth on that.

Quite small, quite sort of acorny.

Mmm! It's so nice! There's so much juice and milk.

It's not a thing that people associate with nuts.

Is there any reason

why Kent is so good for cobnuts?

It's the soil and the climate. And it's traditionally been grown.

I mean, there were 7,000 acres of cobnuts

before the First World War in Kent,

which has got down now to a growing 500 acres.

Traditionally from Sevenoaks right out past Maidstone

there's a greensand ridge, and there were thousands of acres of cobnuts.

And what is the greensand ridge?

Presumably that's Limestone, is it?

It's loamy soil with a lot of stone but it grows cobnuts very well.

Who wants a nut? Who hasn't got a nut there?

Molly, have you had one?

Molly, did you say, "Ugh"?

-Eat your cobnut.

-She doesn't like them.

-Where do cobnuts come from?

-Kent.

-And where are they grown?

-Plats.

And what's a plat?

A plat is like an orchard. But for cobnuts.

Really? I confess, I didn't know that.

Plats, or cobnut orchards, start to bear fruit come late August.

At Richard Dain's farm, it's time to start picking.

I'm fascinated in how they pick.

Do they just shake them and they fall off?

At this stage, you pull them off.

The nuts grow principally under the branches.

This is a first nut, is it? This is the youngest kind?

Are these the most popular kind?

Oh, yes. They're called green at this stage. Green nuts.

It's best to do it with your teeth, isn't it?

No, it is not! You will crack the enamel!

-It's very unwise to do that.

-Is it?

Yes. Please don't tell our English public to do that.

It would be a dentist's charter.

Oh, he's shaking the trees.

You can do so. Some of them do.

I'd love to shake a tree.

TREE RUSTLES

-You've got one or two off, well done.

-One or two! Look at that!

And he's got 'em! How many have you got picking today?

-22 pickers I think, today...23.

-And how much will they pick?

-They'll pick something like two tonnes today.

-Two tonnes?!

Isn't it easier to shake them? Do you not do that?

That's surely quicker, isn't it?

God, I was born to do this!

Though the season for fresh nuts is short,

Richard's figured out a way to produce oil.

So the cobnut taste can be enjoyed year round.

Fantastic! You really can taste the cobnuts.

-It's much milder than a walnut oil.

-Yes, it is.

And not as greasy as groundnut oil.

It's a low temperature oil.

Although you CAN cook with it, drizzle it over fish for grilling,

It's really a salad oil.

Mmm! That's like eating 10,000 cobnuts all at once.

It's very concentrated.

You get all the benefits of cobnuts, just...mmm!

THEY SING SONG IN OWN LANGUAGE

Kent's pickers used to come from London.

Now they come from across the globe but the harvests remain the same.

Cobnuts, cherries, hops, apples.

Foods that made this the Garden Of England.

On the Lady Of The Lea

we're nearing Maidstone and the end of my journey.

But our barge isn't suited to this modern world

with its concrete bridges.

As you can see, it's going to be very tight.

He'll reverse, won't he?

Reversing is not going forward quite as fast as we were.

Cheerio, huffler. All good. I'm off!

'Kent's position on the map and unique appetite for new things

'are what made it so important for food production.

'The Garden Of England on the doorstep of Europe.'

STEAM TRAIN CHUGS

Next time, we're exploring the West Of Scotland.

Travelling through the Highlands to find out

how a story of subsistence became a story of supply.

-Your man's a long way away, is he?

-Yeah, you don't need to worry.

-Are you sure?

-Yeah, I'm 100% sure.

GUNSHOT

-Is he alive, the geezer?

-Just about.

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