Playing Hooky: Adrian Tierney Jones
Writing about Hooky
Adrian Tierney Jones tells us the story behind his latest book
Playing Hooky is a history of the Hook Norton Brewery, the beers that the company has brewed over 175 years, the family who have steered it through the often choppy waters of British brewing and the people who have worked there, whether involved in making or selling the beer, or looking after the iconic horses. It is also a history of its pubs and some of the characters that have worked in them and occasionally some of those who have drunk in them down through the ages.
However, when I was commissioned by the brewery's Managing Director and head brewer James Clarke, I wanted it to be more than a straightforward history. I also wanted to tell the story of how the brewery adapted to the changing tastes of beer drinkers over three centuries, coped with the difficulties of two world wars and the ups and downs of the economy, worked with the changes in the pub trade (the growing popularity of lager in the 1960s and a management debate over fruit machines, for instance) and adopted the various technical advances that transformed the act of brewing. Furthermore, I also aimed for the book to weave in the history of Hook Norton village as the brewery has been such a strong part of its story since the foundation in 1859, with many members of the family playing their part especially in the fire service. In effect I wanted Playing Hooky to be a well-rounded and holistic history that placed the reader firmly in this beautiful part of North Oxfordshire, as well as making them crave a pint of Old Hooky or Double Stout.
This is my third history book involving the business of beer and brewing. First up was 'Crafting a Company', which was about the then independent Fuller, Smith & Turner, back in 2015. Around roughly the same time I wrote 'Brewing Champions', which followed the history of the International Brewing Awards from its inception in 1886. Both were fun to work on, with the latter enabling me to spend plenty of time in the National Brewing Library at Oxford Brookes University, where all too often I got lost in the bound volumes of now extinct trade journals such as Brewers' Guardian, Brewing Trade Review and The Brewers' Gazette. I returned to the library for 'Playing Hooky', and, as was the case when I first researched there, I found myself being diverted down different rabbit holes as my eye would be caught by various news stories such as one from 1922 that detailed several Belgian beers, including a "curious beverage known as Lambic".
However, the main thrust of my research was spent over at the brewery to which I made regular visits over the course of a year. Here, I was given free rein to plough through swathes of documents that detailed the brewery's history. I went through old brewing logs from the 1850s onwards, which showed that before, and for a while after, the First World War, Hook Norton used hops from the USA, New Zealand, France and Germany, a common practice for British brewers as noted by Julian L. Baker in 'The Brewing Industry', published in 1905. This was something I had noted when working on the Fuller's book, but I didn't realise that it also applied to country breweries like Hook Norton. I was also given access to all manner of correspondence, some of them going back to the 19th century, where James Clarke's great-grandfather Alban Clarke, for instance, sent a polite reminder to a local reverend who owed money for beer delivered to his home (less respectable debtors apparently got sharper toned reminders...).
Alban Clarke was also the driving force behind the construction of the classic late Victorian brewery of Hook Norton, most of which remains today. He hired the noted brewery designer William Bradford (see also Harvey's brewery for another example of his work) and also oversaw the registration of Hook Norton as a limited liability company at the turn of the century. His brief, succinct and occasionally slightly peppery diary entries between 1897 and 1900 portrayed a busy man who was impatient and frustrated at what seemed like the slow progress of the building of the new brewery, but according to James Clarke he was "firm but fair". The brewery also still has in its possession Alban Clarke's copies of brewing journals, which showed he was someone who tried to keep up with the changes in the British brewing industry. Sadly, he died in a bicycle accident in 1917.
Another valuable source of information were the minutes of the Directors' meetings, the first of which took place in July 1900. Subjects debated that year included the beer allowance for brewery employees. Here it was decided that each man should have three pints of beer given to him daily and that boys would get half the quantity instead of their present allowance. It was also noted that 15 minutes would be allowed for beer time at 10.15am, and no beer was to be served from the office beer engine except to office employees or customers and this arrangement would commence January 1901. There were other changes noted. Minutes from the year of 1928 recorded the purchase of a 30cwt Morris lorry, which was the first part of the journey that would see horses eventually phased out by the early 1950s. As we know this was only temporary and the horses were brought back in 1985, and they continue to deliver within a four-mile radius and also appear at numerous private and public events. Just before the book went to press, there was a fire at the stables and thankfully no one nor any of the horses were hurt, but we managed to shoehorn in James Clarke's account of the day.
One of the most dramatic series of letters I was allowed to read and quote from came from the late 1940s/early 1950s when James Clarke's grandfather Bill Clarke had to deal with his two sisters, who were shareholders, wanting to cash in their shares. He did not have enough capital to pay them out and Hook Norton like so many family-owned breweries could so easily have become a footnote in British brewing history. However, as I quote James Clarke in the book, "it was during the war that my grandfather's sisters said that they wanted out of the business but he could not afford to buy their shares off him. He wanted to keep the brewery going and so he spoke to our auditors in London and asked them if they could find someone to invest in the brewery. He was put in touch with the Gilchrist family, but I don't know if he approached any others. The prerequisite was that the investors who bought in would do their best to keep the business going. He wanted to protect jobs and I had a not entirely dissimilar threat 70 years later in that I wanted to do the same thing during Covid". Members of the Gilchrist family were owners of Buttonwood brewery but this was a separate investment and not a buyout, while a member of the Gilchrist family, Lizzie Williams, still remains on the board to this day.
Returning to the brewing logs they also revealed little snippets of British history. On Friday, September 1, 1939, while Bill Clarke oversaw the brewing of PAB, which was a mild, he noted that "evacuation from London started today", while a second note presumably written two days later was simple but powerful: "Britain at war with Germany as from 11am on Sunday". The logs also demonstrate the dominance of mild as that was the only beer style that seemed to be brewed from the 1920s until the 1950s, when a bitter started to be produced more often, both for cask and bottle, where it was called Jackpot. Further on, in 1977, we find the first mention of Old Hooky, which was originally going to be called Old Bill and was produced just in time for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The royal beer connections do not stop there as another beer was produced in 1985 for the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, of which James Clarke said that the recipe lasted longer than the marriage. By then Bill Clarke had died in 1982 and was succeeded by his son David Clarke, who sadly passed in 2004. As I discovered Bill Clarke was a popular man in both the brewery and the village, with one story being told about how when he was seen approaching one of the local pubs, everyone would finish their pints knowing that when he saw the empty glasses he would order refills for everyone. I spoke to his daughter-in-law, James Clarke's mother Paula Clarke about him and she had nothing but fond memories: "He always had a little hidden smile and was so kind to me. Everybody loved Bill Clarke."
Plenty of other subjects are covered in the book, including the long connection the brewery had with working men's clubs in Coventry, which was something new to me. Then there were the challenges of beer tax, new tastes in beer (what we used to call 'craft beer'), pub alterations in the 1950s as drinkers demanded more (including indoor loos) and obviously the two world wars. I hope that what I have done with Playing Hooky is to have brought a brewery, its culture, its people, its beers, its pubs and those who lived their lives around it to vivid life. It is a book I suggest you read with a glass of one of Hook Norton's peerless pints to hand.
Adrian Tierney-Jones