There’s plenty of nostalgia surrounding the days of hop picking, but there’s no denying it was a tough life.

Families used to travel to Kent from London every summer for six weeks of hard labour in the sunshine.

Up to nine people slept in 10ft square huts on a bed of straw with no water or electricity, but conditions may have still been better than home.

Health and safety rules may mean he must use a torch rather than candlelight, but Dan Moore, an entertainer at Kent Life in Sandling, has spent this week living as a hopper in an original tin hut on site in Lock Lane.

“It came out of a joke really when my dad joked I should live here as I was at work a lot,” said the 31-year-old.

“People have reacted in various ways. Some visitors to Kent Life haven’t believed that I’m really living like this, but from my friends and colleagues the word which has been used most is ‘madness’. It has been a bit of a challenge.”

In the 16th century, there were 34,000 hectares of hop fields across the country, but that number has fallen dramatically.

By day, Dan has been educating visitors about the history of hopping and by night watching the wildlife and wrapping blankets around himself. Hoppers had a better time, however.

He said: “There would have been quite a few families, and in the evening after they’d been hop picking, there would have been music around the fire.

“They’d eat stew which had been cooking on the stove, and it would be quite a sociable time."

Original hoppers would have slept top to toe in a makeshift bed, sometimes with children underneath. They had to make their own furniture and washed in a tin bath outside.

But luckily for Dan, he has been allowed two hours a day to pop home to wash.

His hopping challenge, which is raising funds for Kent’s Life’s charity of the year, the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, will end tonight in time for the attraction’s Hops ‘n’ Harvest Beer Festival tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday.

To sponsor him, go to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/KentLife