Early Oasts
The earliest description of an oast dates from 1574. It was a small building of 18 feet (5.49 m) by 9 feet (2.74 m) in plan, with walls 9 feet (2.74 m) high. The central furnace was some 6 feet (1.83 m) long, 2 feet 6 inches (760 mm) high and 13 inches (330 mm) internal width. The upper floor was the drying floor, and only some 5 feet (1.52 m) above the ground floor, hops being laid directly on the slatted floor rather than being laid on hessian cloth as was the later practice.
Read more about this topic: Oast House
Famous quotes containing the word early:
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)