Ashley Hutchings noted in his songbook A Little Music:

"Until fairly recently the annual excursion to pick hops in Kent was the only holiday of the year for many Cockney families. It wasn't much of a rest for them, as this song indicates.

Gypsies, too, were regular hop-pickers - going where the seasonal work took them. This tune was collected from a Sussex gypsy, Mary Ann Haynes, by Mike Yates."

This song was recorded by the Albion Band for a single in 1976 and included on their 1977 album The Prospect Before Us. The Albion Dance Band performed this twice on BBC radio sessions. One with Shirley Collins singing was recorded on July 22, 1976 and included on The BBC Sessions; the other and much faster one with John Tams singing on probably May 31, 1977 was published on The Albion Band Live in Concert - BBC Radio 1. Both versions were also added to the Ashley Hutchings 4CD anthology Burning Bright. The Albion Band also performed this song live in Switzerland in 1978 at the 7. Folk-Festival auf der Lenzburg.

Compare this to Luise Fuller singing Hopping Down in Kent in a 1972 recording in Sussex by Mike Yates on the Topic LP Green Grow the Laurels: Country Singers from the South and CD Hidden English: A Celebration of English Traditional Music and on The Rough Guide to English Roots Music.