Hook Norton village is
a destination for beer aficionados, since the brewery
is what the British brewing industry should be all
about: Small enough to qualify as hand-crafted; big
enough to be available over a considerable area; and
brave enough to produce some challenging beers in
amongst its standard fare.
They do a fine
job. If Hook Norton is on tap, it takes a damn fine
beer to change my order. In this case, there were
five different Hook Norton beers on tap, and wouldn't
you know it, I was driving. A pub worth revisiting,
as long as I do not arrive behind the wheel!
There are three watering
holes in Hook Norton: The Bell Inn; The Sun Inn; and
The Pear Tree. In addition, just out of Hook Norton
on the Milcombe Road is The Gate Hangs High, and they
all belong to the Aunt Sally League. Aunt Sally is
a pub game indigenous to Oxfordshire and adjoining
areas of other counties, which involves, roughly,
throwing small sticks at a skittle called a dolly
and trying to knock it over.
Like many of the finest
pub games, Aunt Sally has rather relaxed rules and
involves throwing something at something else. Dominoes
would be an exception, unless you are playing Yorkshire
rules! Aunt Sally is a variation on pub skittles and
dates back to the English Civil War, being introduced
to the area by the Royalists. The Parliamentarians
were a dull lot and spent very little time or energy
introducing games to the population. The Royalists
though were a flamboyant crowd and got involved in
all kinds of activities like hiding in trees and spending
entertaining evenings in pubs prior to battle.
Indeed, alcohol has played
a significant role in English history. Some credit
the entire Dark Ages to beer, when the Brits went
from fine roads and indoor plumbing, courtesy of the
Romans, to carts tracks and alfresco toilet arrangements
in the span of about six hundred years. Nothing much
was achieved in the meantime, other than producing
copious amounts a particular potent ale and mead,
and drinking it in significantly large quantities.
Oh, and getting over-run from time to time by Scandinavian
hordes.
There is a strongly-held
belief in scholarly circles that the English we defeated
at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 not because they
had to troop down to the south coast from the far
north-east to greet William, but because they did
so largely in a state of inebriation, or at best that
unsatisfactory condition that immediately follows
said state.
Anyway, Aunt Sally. Once
a group of punters has decided to play a game, each
player takes six sticks, each of these sticks being
solid cylinders of wood about eighteen inches long
and about two inches in diameter. The player stands
behind a white line about ten yards from the target,
which immediately limits the availability of this
game, since not every pub has ten yards of space free
of fragile targets, such as glasses and other patrons.
The player throws at a dolly, a small odd-shaped skittle
that is placed on top of a thin bar.
A point is scored by successfully throwing a stick
and dislodging the Dolly without hitting anything
else, which is a difficult feat to achieve sober.
If the metal rod is hit, which usually causes the
Dolly to topple from its perch, everyone shout "Iron!"
in as broad an Oxford country accent as they can muster
or fake. After six throws it is the next player’s
turn. Every player will eventually have had four turns
at throwing six sticks. The totals are totted up and
assuming someone has managed to keep track of all
this, the highest score wins.
So far so good,
and even those well on the road to intoxication will
at least have some idea of who is doing well and who
is having their hide well and truly whupped. But if
the game is close, you can quickly lose track. If
the highest players' scores are tied, then we attempt
a 'throw off'. In the first round of the throw offs,
which doubtless gets really exciting, each player
has just three sticks. If they are tied after that,
they then get one stick each. After that, if they
are still tied, they each have six throws per turn
until someone scores more than the others, someone
admits to having lost track of the score an hour ago,
the pub shuts, or any combination thereof.
Pub games are a rallying
point for the local community, no matter how obscure
they may be. I have personally witnessed a round of
dominoes in a Yorkshire pub so competitive that people
have been standing on tables and on the bar in order
to get a good view of the championship game.
Stuck away quaintly
in this little Oxfordshire village, Hook Norton Brewery
has an enviable reputation amongst beer-drinkers.
It has not swayed from producing traditional cask
conditioned real ales in the same brewery it has occupied
since the 1800's. More to the point, it has not swayed
from doing it with an 1899 steam engine as it’s
principal power source.
Yes, forever pushing
the limits of what can be learned from this book,
you are about to find out about sparge arms! This
is the last stationary steam engine working commercially
in the United Kingdom. The liquor used for brewing
Hook Norton beers (brewers do NOT use the word water!)
is pumped up from a deep well by these two huge pumps.
The hot wort is also sent from the coppers to the
fermenting tanks by the same pumps. By way of a complex
arrangement of belts, pulleys, shafts and cogs, this
massive steam engine also drives the hoists, malt
mills and the mash tun sparge arms. (I am not making
this up!)
Unfortunately,
this is the only place in the United Kingdom where
you will see anything like this earning its keep on
a daily basis. All the other monuments to engineering
have fallen by the technological wayside. While it
is still very much a workhorse, and not some cosseted
museum piece, it is now thankfully part of an officially
designated 'Heritage Brewery', which means it has
been offered a certain amount of protection well into
the future.