Oast house stays, East Sussex
Sleeping in a hop kiln
- Sleeps 4
- From £220 a night
- Usual 2-night minimum
- One well-behaved dog included
4.8/5 from 85 verified guest reviews
What an oast house is
A machine that lost its job
Drive through Kent or East Sussex for half an hour and you will pass one: a squat brick round or square, a steep conical roof, and a white cowl at the top that looks like a hat put on in a hurry. The job was drying hops. Hops come off the bine wet, and wet hops spoil, so the oast was the machine that solved it.
When the hop acreage fell away the oasts stopped earning, and a building that cannot pay for its roof usually loses it. Many were demolished; many more were converted, which is why so much of Kent and Sussex now sleeps in round rooms.
The anatomy
Four parts, one working idea
The kiln
The round or square base, with a fire below and a slatted drying floor above it. Hops were spread on hair cloth over the slats so heat could rise evenly through the crop. Structurally, the building is a chimney with a floor in it.
The cowl
The white hood on a spindle at the top, fitted with a vane so it turns with the wind and keeps its opening on the sheltered side. Wind across the opening draws air up the kiln; wind into it would stall the draught. Nobody operates it.
The stowage
The taller barn-like part alongside, where dried hops were cooled, pressed into pockets and stored. Most oasts are really two buildings joined: the kiln for the heat, the stowage for everything before and after it.
Single kiln, or several
One round kiln with a stowage belonged to a smaller holding; the great hop farms ran kilns side by side. Ours is a single-kiln oast, which is why the round room reads as a room rather than a wing.
The longer history of the Kent and Sussex oastA defence of the cowl
Ours, specifically
The Oast at Martins Farm
A converted single-kiln oast standing in the old yard of a fifteen-acre estate above Frant, established 1830. The 1875 Ordnance Survey sheet shows the building here, as an oast, doing its job. We make no claim about what was dried inside it or by whom — the census sheets and the survey tell us it was an oast and that the estate did the ordinary work of the Weald. The cowl above it still turns with the wind, which makes it the only part of the building that never changed job.
A round room, and no straight walls
Conversion is not a soft option: a kiln is a cylinder with deep sills and a floor plan that resists most furniture designed since 1960. What you get instead is a sitting space with a curve no architect would have drawn for you, inside walls thick enough to be quiet.
Four guests, two bedrooms
The Oast sleeps four across two bedrooms. There is no cot and no high chair at the property, which is the sort of thing better said here than discovered on arrival.
An AGA, and a boot room
The kitchen has an AGA and a small butler's fridge. A practical boot room and laundry facilities hold the American-style fridge with its ice machine, a washing machine, a tumble dryer and an electric drying rack — the working end of a house on a farm, and the reason a wet walk is not a problem.
A dog welcome
One well-behaved dog is included with every stay, and a second may be considered by prior agreement — ask before you book. There are fifteen acres of orchard and meadow to walk, and Winston, the estate's golden retriever, to meet at the gate.
Sleeping arrangements, in detailThe documented record of the farmThe land as it is today
Staying here
An oast house holiday near Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a short drive north; Frant village, the church and The George are ten minutes on foot up the lane. Two nights minimum, from £220 a night, booked direct with us rather than through a listing site — which is also the only way to ask for a breakfast hamper or Sussex sparkling wine on arrival.
Rates vary by season and by length of stay, so the price shown for your dates at the time of booking is the price that applies.
Reserve
Stay in the oast
Four guests, two bedrooms, an AGA and a cowl that still turns. Book direct for live availability and real rates.