Sun Inn, Hook Norton

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.