§ 52

Once the storehouse for grain, the Tythe barns were the meeting place for landlords, their tenants, and country folk; the flail made delightful music at threshing time. In them county dances were held and seasons celebrated. Before the Town Hall was, they were. In the new life the Tythe barn was used, in the first instance as a dwelling place for a kind of Franciscan order, not bound by an oath or dedicated to any sectarian creed; it is a place of retirement for scholars as well as for communal activity. By degrees the little community grew. New buildings, inexpensive but sanitary, have been added; surrounding land purchased and cultivated with the specialties common to the soil of Kent—Fruit and Hops. Hops especially, because the New World repudiates “Kultur,” and no longer substitutes for that fragrant and desirable fruit deleterious chemical products which agents interested in a “Company” exploited against the original article. The noisy, smoky threshing machine does not visit here; grain is threshed by the flail. The occupiers of these buildings subsist upon their own land; cows and goats give them milk; they make their own bread, and brew their own light beer, and wines got from the elder, the pear, apple and some sweet grapes grown and flourishing well in sunny aspects.