Hook Norton Brewery

Hook Norton has brewed beer since 1849, when John Harris, a farmer and maltster in the village, began making it to sell, and it has been brewed by his family ever since. The brewery is run today by his great-great-grandson. Five generations is a long time to keep one thing, and Hook Norton has kept it without much fuss.

The building is part of the appeal. The brewery is a Victorian tower, six storeys of brick and iron and louvred timber raised at the end of the 1890s by William Bradford, who designed breweries the way other men designed churches. The process runs top to bottom by gravity: the grain goes in at the head of the tower, the beer comes off at the foot, and very little has been changed to hurry it along.

The shire horses still work. On certain mornings the dray goes out from the yard to the village pubs behind a pair of them, which is not a re-enactment but simply how the nearest deliveries have always been made.

It would be cheaper to do it another way. That is rather the point. Some things in these hills are kept because they are worth keeping, and the keeping is the whole of the value.