Brewhouse At Hook Norton Brewery

The brewhouse at Hook Norton Brewery is a historic building established around 1850. The main structure is a three-storey tower brewery built in 1872, with a six-floor tower added around 1898 by William Bradford of London, which incorporates parts of the earlier brewery. It is constructed from ironstone with some ashlar dressings and features Welsh slate roofs adorned with ornamental ridge tiles.

The brewhouse consists of three main sections: the copper house on the left, the six-floor tower brewery, and the fermenting house. The copper house is a single-storey structure with tall paired lights, cast-iron glazing bars, and chamfered stone lintels. It has a hipped roof with triangular dormers and a hipped, gabled lantern.

The tower brewery is divided into two sections. The left section is four storeys high, featuring paired recessed windows with cast-iron glazing bars and chamfered stone lintels, along with machiolated stonework at the eaves. It has a hipped gambrel roof with triangular lights and a hipped gabled lantern for the cooling house. A moulded band runs above the third storey. The six-storey tower on the right has a mock timber frame and a hipped roof for the sack-hoist housing. It includes a segmental-headed window with cast-iron glazing bars on the fifth storey, with machiolated stonework above it. The sixth storey has cast-iron panels and long rectangular lights. The tower culminates in a hipped gabled roof with triangular lights in the gable. The doorway to the steam-engine house features stone architraves and a scroll pediment.

The four-storey fermenting house on the right has tall lights with wooden glazing bars and stone sills, along with a wooden door to the first floor. It has a gabled roof covered in Welsh slate, with a brick end stack on the right. The rear of the building has irregular L-plan ranges.

Inside, the brewhouse contains brewing equipment dating from around 1850 and 1900, including a stationary steam engine supplied by Messrs. Buxton and Thornley of Burton on Trent. The site also includes a range of associated buildings, such as a stable block from 1898, offices with a cellar built in 1896, and a malthouse constructed in 1865 and earlier. Hook Norton Brewery is noted for being the last independent brewery in North Oxfordshire.