Hook Norton Brewery

Hook Norton, Oxfordshire

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Isisbridge ^club

Britain Express
www.britainexpress.com/counties/oxfordshire/properties/hook-norton-brewery.htm

The pretty Oxfordshire village of Hook Norton is home to a historic rural brewery founded in 1849. Hook Norton Brewery still delivers barrels of beer to local pubs in a traditional dray drawn by shire horses, and visitors can tour the 19th-century brewery buildings and enjoy the on-site brewery museum.

History
In 1849 John Harris purchased a 52-acre farm in Hook Norton. The farm estate came with an existing malthouse. Harris was more interested in brewing than he was in farming, and he took over the malting business.

Harris saw an opportunity to expand his trade and began dealing in hops. From those small beginnings to handling the brewing himself was a short leap and it seems he began to brew beer around 1856. The brewery's record books have kept careful track of every brew ever made on site, and the first record comes from 1 November 1856 with the notation 'Mild XXX'.

In 1859 the brewery bought its first 'tied house' at Down End. Tied houses are inns required to buy at least some of their beer from a particular brewery. Contrast that to a Fee House where the publican can buy beer from any supplier they choose. In 1869 the brewery bought the Pear Tree Inn, which stands a stone's throw away at the end of Brewery Lane. Today Hook Norton Brewery has thirty-seven tied houses.

Though many of those pubs received deliveries of beer in the traditional way, from a horse-drawn dray, the arrival of the railway into Hook Norton in the 1880s meant that the brewery's products were able to quickly reach a wider audience.

Founder John Harris died in 1887 and the operation was taken over by his nephew Alban Clarke. Under Clarke's ownership, the brewery doubled in size. Clarke added a bottling room, shed, storehouse and stable block, built new offices, and erected the present six-storey brewery on the site of the original building. It is this picturesque late Victorian building that forms the core of the brewery today.

To power the brewery, Clarke installed a 25 HP steam engine to pump water from a well beneath the brewery. This same steam engine still powers the operation and it is thought to be one of the last steam engines in Britain still in use for its original purpose.

Steam power did not stop there; in 1904 Clarke bought a steam-driven wagon for delivering beer. This wagon was used to carry heavy loads to Banbury for further transport. Clarke wasn't slow to realise that this large wagon would make an excellent travelling billboard and had brightly coloured signs made for the wagon's sides. The steam wagon was decidedly old-fashioned by 1928 when the brewery bought its first lorry. The shire horses still delivered locally but the lorry handled anything further away.

Shire horse deliveries finally stopped in 1950, only to start again in 1985. As of this writing, the brewery has a stable of four shire horses, two of which are retired and two are still working. These horses deliver to pubs within five miles of the brewery and you can usually see them in action three days a week.

5 years ago. Edited 19 months ago.

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