An artifical hop field has sprouted at the Southbank Centre

An artificial field of hop plants has arrived at the Southbank as a sculpture that recalls the history going hopping in the 19th-century. Although condemned in 1519 as a “wicked and pernicious weed”, hops helped to transform thick ales into far more appealing bitters and lagers.
Kent was filled with fields of hop plants, and each summer, thousands of Londoners would take a working holiday to Kent to work in the fields to bring in the harvest, while also getting away from the polluted