A history of our Pub

The pub lay at the heart of village life in England in the 1800s and you can still find many pubs filling this important roll in many communities today.
A good example is the Hook Norton pub “The Bell Inn” in Adderbury. For over 200 years this pub has been the centre of village life, and many of the village clubs and events, like the two village Morris teams, the Theatre workshop group and the village bell ringers still have this pub as their meeting place.

Early links with the pub trade

Links with pub trade started for Hook Norton Brewery when in 1849 the founder of the brewery John Harris moved from his fathers’ farm in Chilson into the village of Hook Norton. He purchased a moderate sized holding that included a malthouse.

The previous owner had started supplying farmers who brewed at home and a pub or two. Switching from farming into maliting was followed in 1856 by his first step into commercial brewing.

The pub as a brewery

The pub landlord for many years not only sold beer from the pub but also brewed it. However, by the 1800s the pubs that brewed their own beer were in decline.

They found it difficult to compete with the quality of beer now being produced by commercial brewers and this was also the case for pubs in and around Hook Norton itself that brewed on the premises.

The Railway Inn pub and The Crown Inn pub both in Droitwich continued brewing their own beer for a while. This is known because the records at Hook Norton show that each pub ordered 3 consignments of 14 sacks of malt in 1884.

Pub ownership, a tied estate

John Harris continued to supply local pubs that did not brew their own beer. Then in 1859 he purchased his first pub or beer house as it was known, in Down End, Hook Norton. Ten years later the second pub, The Pear Tree also in Hook Norton just below the brewery, was acquired for £260. This pub along with the ale house would be the beginning of the brewery's ” tied estate”.

Independent pubs

The pub as part of the ”tied estate” was a guaranteed outlet but independent pubs or “free houses” were the backbone of the business at this time.
This business was serviced by agents called “outriders” whose job was to locate a pub in their area and pass any orders back to the brewery.
Each outrider would be supplied with a horse and trap supplied and paid for by the brewery.

The “outriders” visiting the pub would also provide another important roll for the brewery.
By calling at the pubs on a regular basis in their pony and traps they would be providing an early version of customer service while allowing the agents to then collect payment from the pub at the same time. Probably the first agent visiting pubs for Hook Norton was Richard Howse. Taken on in 1863 he was still working for the brewery 30 years later.

The tied estate

The 1890s was a period when breweries all over the country were rushing to add pubs to their list of tied houses and Hook Norton was part of this trend.
And between 1890 and 1907 the brewery’s pub count increased by 14 with 4 beerhouses.

When in 1925 another local brewery, Blencowe’s, was selling up, Hook Norton brewery was able to add a further 5 pubs to it's estate, at a total cost of £3,175.

These were cheap purchases, and you could expect to pay considerably more for a pub. Examples of which are the Three Conies in Thorpe Mandeville which cost £2,000, acquired in 1920 and 2 years later, the brewery was prepared to pay up to £3,300 for the Tower Inn pub at Edge Hill (now the Castle Inn).

During the 1950s and 1960s, government legislation for British pubs put breweries under pressure to upgrade their facilities. This was not just a question of changing the pubs colour, but rather more costly improvements. This, in some cases, was to make the provision of proper toilet facilities for the first time in the pubs. There was also a need to make the bar area much brighter and more welcoming in order to attract new customers including women in the swinging 60s.
Although expensive at the time these improvements to pubs represented an investment and the tied estate remains an enormously valuable asset to Hook Norton brewery.

Hook Norton pubs today

Today the Hook Norton Brewery Company Ltd has a tied estate consisting of in and around Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Gloucestershire and also supplies a large number of free trade accounts and wholesalers in the Midlands and the South of Britain.

Inside an Edwardian pub

Some impression of the inside of small pub in the 1900s can be gleaned from details of the pub accommodation derived from a list when the tenancy of a pub changed in 1909....

The Queen's Own public house in Woodstock took its name from the county’s prestigious Yeomanry regiment “The Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars”.

It was a small pub purchased by the brewery some time before 1898, and served a local clientele rather than the many visitors to Woodstock who would prefer to patronise larger pubs and hotels.

The public rooms in the pub consisted of a bar parlour, a small taproom and “new” taproom linked by a passage which had shelves in a recess. The pub presumably had tables and wooden chairs in all the rooms and there were 2 settles against the wall in the “new tap room”. This room also had a deal double cupboard. Warmth in this room was provided by a “self setting range” with a fender in front.

Some of the walls were papered others distempered in a single colour, the wood was painted dark brown and the ceilings white. Gas lighting flickered on the walls with incandescent burners to make the light brighter in the small taproom and bar.

The pub had spittoons on the floor of the old taproom only, suggesting that an old habit was being restricted to this one room. The bar had oil cloth and lino flooring but the floors in other rooms of the pub were bare boards, probably spread with sawdust. What public house would be complete without a fireplace, and the The Queen's Own had its hearth situated in the bar, complete with a mirror over the mantle.

The pub had a ”four- pull beer engine” on the bar (a device for pumping beer up from the cellar, possibly requiring four pulls of the handle to produce a pint).
Not being a large place it had a limited stock of glasses, 25 pint, 12 half-pint “glass cups”, 21 other unstamped glasses of various sizes and 5 soda water glasses. Down in the cellar of the pub were 3 wooden stoops for supporting the barrels, again suggesting modest consumption of beer. The pub sold Hook Norton ale and stout together with minerals, cigars and tobacco. For entertainment the pub provided a bagatelle board and 2 sets of dominos.