Hoppers Hospital

Hoppers Hospital

Originally a farmhouse built in more than one phase during the 17th century, this building was later adapted for use as an ale house in the 19th century. In the late 19th century, a Roman Catholic charity purchased it to serve as a hospital for hop-pickers. The front courtyard was added around 1940. The building is now used to provide holiday accommodation for deprived people from the East End of London.

The main house is timber-framed with ground floor walls underbuilt in painted 19th-century brick and first floor walls hung with peg-tile. It features brick stacks and chimneyshafts with a peg-tile roof. The courtyard buildings are constructed in brick with a pantile roof.

The main house is set back from the road facing south with a 4-room plan. Two larger central rooms are heated by a stack between them with back-to-back fireplaces, with a stair rising from the centre left room in front of the stack. Smaller end rooms each have a projecting end stack. The centre stack and stair date from the 17th century, while the end stacks were added in the 19th century. Roof evidence indicates the main block was built in more than one phase, with the left (west) half constructed before the right half.

The building comprises 2 storeys with attics and secondary or rebuilt lean-to outshots across the rear. The front courtyard is enclosed by a circa 1940 cloister-like shelter featuring a central front archway and a fireplace and stack in the west wall.

The house has an irregular 4-window front with late 19th and early 20th-century casements with glazing bars. There are 3 contemporary front doorways, all containing plain plank doors, 2 of which have plain narrow flat hoods. The eaves are plain and the roof is half-hipped at both ends.

The exposed carpentry indicates the 17th-century structure is well-preserved, although the partition between the two left ground floor rooms has been removed. The left end room has plain joists while all other rooms have chamfered axial beams. The beam over the first floor chamber left of centre is chamfered with scroll stops. All fireplaces are blocked. Some plain but good plank doors, probably from the 19th century, survive. The roof structure indicates 3 separate 17th-century phases. The 2-bay section over the left (west) half appears earliest, with remains of clasped side purlin construction despite 19th-century alterations. The narrow central bay, approximately over the central stack, is also of clasped side purlin construction but with purlins set at a different height. The next bay to the right has an uncollared tie-beam truss with raking struts and butt purlins, and the right end truss is an A-frame truss on a tie-beam with butt purlins.

The front courtyard shelter is open with the pitched roof carried on a series of brick piers arranged in a 5-bay front with central entrance. The roof rises over a bellcote with pyramid roof. A pole at the apex is thought to be the shaft of a former cross. Both front and back of the bellcote are panelled. A central plaque is inscribed: "In happy memory of Old Friends who loved hopping and who loved this place very dearly who gave their lives for Old England and for us, 1914-18. Lord all pitying, Jesu blest grant them Thine Eternal rest."

Below is a brass plaque in memory of Alexander Forsythe Asher, an Augustinian priest (died 1946) and Helen Chalk (died 1938), with symbols of the old Rose and Crown on each side.

The area around Capel is the centre of the Kent hop industry, and this building is an important monument to the more labour-intensive heyday of that industry.