SHOTOVER HILL, Oxon | Orangerie at Work, April 2018

Sunset, Good Wine and Good Food. Inauguration of the Orangerie
with Dinner. L to R: Alice, Chris. Photos by JT Marlin.

Edinburgh, April 21, 2018 – Earlier this week I was in Oxford and was the designated photographer at a celebration of the completion of an Orangerie at "Mouette" on Old Road, Shotover Hill.

My nephew Chris decided on an Orangerie (a cross between a gazebo, a conservatory and an observatory) to make better use of the hill behind his house. 

It is now an outstanding place to have a drink and a meal as the sun goes down.

Shotover Hill is a uniquely British wildlife preserve/park/hiking trail in the Headington area. It still doesn't have street numbers so good luck trying to find a house on the hill.

Headington Quarry at the base is where C. S. Lewis used to spend time. He is buried at the local Holy Trinity Church. Shotover Hill also has a brewery that produces craft beers.

Toast to Goal Completed.

I don't know whether this is allowed, but some of that craft beer sitting in that graveyard might be an alternative venue to the Orangerie. The graveyard is closer to sea level but it would certainly not be Low Church.

Levels 1-3, with two more in front of the house.

Looking Down (1)

Looking Down (2)

Looking Down (3)

OXFORD BEER: Brewer Walton of Shotover Hill

Brewer Walton
Keeps the malt on.
His Trinity brand
Is ever so grand.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

I have previously recorded a visit in New York City from Paul Walton, a branding expert who contacted me after reading my article on the coats of arms of the Oxford Colleges in the Michaelmas issue of Oxford Today.

Arms as Brands

We both see coats of arms as one of the earliest forms of branding.

It was important in battle to know who was trying to kill you, and who you were supposed to kill. Imagine a sports field where everyone wore the same color shirt...

(Hey, wait, Yoko Ono already Imagined this; her message was that chess matches would be very peaceful if all the chess pieces had the same color and the chess board squares were undifferentiated. No thrill of battle, but the compensating joy of peace.)

Brewer Walton

Earlier this month I was in Oxford and visited with Paul at the Coffee House at the Broad Street end of the Turl (its formal name is the Turl Street Kitchen).

We talked inter alia about his craft-beer enterprise, Shotover Brewery. He says the Trinity brand of his beer (one of the Brewery's four brands) is doing well and he thinks its success reflects both its good name and good taste:

• Trinity is certainly a good name – why else would the Great Gatsby have chosen it as the name of the college at Oxford that he claimed to have attended, when he had the pick of the litter?
• On the taste front, the brewery recently won an award as the best beer in Oxfordshire. 

Shotover?

Shotover Brewery gets its name from Shotover Hill, which is located in Headington (leave Oxford by  Magdalen Bridge and take the Old Road) on the other side of the Ring Road.

But how did Shotover Hill get its name? A couple of sources say that Oliver Cromwell shot his musket over Shotover Hill when he was engaged in the Siege of Oxford. If you remember, Cromwell and his New Model Army eventually overwhelmed Charles I and a few years later beheaded the hapless king, the only sitting English king ever executed (after Charles, the "divine right of kings" dogma was peddled less aggressively).

But Paul says that Shotover Hill is a lot older than Cromwell's musket:

It was an arrow that shot over the hill. Shotover was an ancient royal hunting forest. Another good contender for the origin is from the French Chateau Vert.

Just to confuse us all further, I consulted Widow Wikipedia, Grandma Google's sister, and she agrees with Brewer Walton that Shotover is older than Cromwell–so old that in her opinion the "Shotover" is derived from the Old English scoet ofer, meaning "steep slope".

Take your pick.

HERALDRY: Beer, Branding and Paul Walton (Updated May 17, 2016)

Paul C. Walton, Brand Professional and Amateur
Heraldist. Photo in NYC by JT Marlin.

One of the flurry of messages I have received since the publication of my article (OT, Vol. 28, No. 1, 45-50) on the heraldry of the Oxford colleges was a suggestion that I meet with the correspondent.

I did so recently at the Harvard Club in New York City. My new friend is Paul Walton, who is in the branding business and is an amateur herald.

He gave me the 1953 book, Simple Heraldry, which I have reviewed here. We spoke mostly about heraldry as a medieval form of branding. He has suggested a number of leads for me to pursue and I am grateful.

The Importance of Brand Differentiation

Paul said the reenactments of British Civil War battles in memory of Col. Richard Bagot show how important it is to be able to

• distinguish friend from foe on the hazy battlefield, and
• identify leaders from a distance by rank as well as regiment, so that battle groups can form. 

Col. Bagot died of his wounds received at Naseby in 1645, when Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax won a decisive battle against Charles I. It was a battle with many moments of confusion. Charles might well have won it. A lesson about keeping your head.

Flag of Col. Richard Bagot, fighting

for England (St. George's Cross),

i.e., Charles I. Cromwell won.

He noted that in the Battle of Bull Run – known as Manassas to residents of the South  – the first Confederate flag (the "Stars and Bars") was too like the Yankee Stars and Stripes to allow the troops to distinguish between them, leading to "friendly" fire. (See James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, in the Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 342.)

After Manassas, the South adopted the more easily distinguished Southern Cross, the St. Andrew-style saltire. Paul recommended I visit the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond to see how the flags developed.

History of Branding

I said I suspected that men in battle have had to brand themselves as soon as they put on helmets. At an Oxford alumni event in New York City I asked a visiting Greek historian how combatants could distinguish ally from foe when there were so many city states. She said that the animals on Greek pottery represent family images that would have appeared on armor, and that armor was sufficiently distinctive that there were other clues. Paul noted that the Game of Thrones uses animals as avatars.

Once a picture of some sort is used to add value to a product, the chance to be deceptive comes up. Patroclus got into Achilles' armor and died because of it.

From here we got into discussing counterfeiting. He said that the French confiscate anything that is found to be counterfeit. They show no tolerance for it. Yet the extent to which a brand adds value is a way to measure the results of advertising.

Value from Branding

Paul's expertise is in brand finance, which means the accounting for intangible ("goodwill") assets. The market value of a company is higher than its tangible assets. This difference is viewed as something created by branding. It is the goodwill generated by advertising, public relations and marketing.

He formed the Value Engineers in 1986 in Beaconsfield, Bucks. Since 2005 it has become part of the Cello Group. The company focuses on health care and consumer products.

The Golden Fleece used by Brooks Brothers, for example, has brand value. The symbol goes back to Philip III ("the Good"), the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy whose knights were named The Order of the Golden Fleece. Their symbol was a lamb suspended in a ribbon. In the 19th century when Henry S. Brooks saw the sheep hanging from shops on Savile Row, he decided to adopt this brand or logo in 1850, when it was painted above the door in New York.

Shotover Brewing Company

One of Paul's enterprises is the Shotover Brewing Company. He has therefore been looking at the heraldic history of brewing marks. The five-pointed red star on Heineken beer is a brewer's mark common in northern Europe. It signifies the five elements of beer-making:

A kennel manager takes dogs for a walk on Shotover
Hill. The van has four carriers opening to the back,
and more to the side. Photo by JT Marlin.

1. Hops
2. Malt
3. Barley
4. Water
5. The Brewer's Art, Alchemy, Magic

Shotover Hill is outside of Oxford on what was once a coach road to London. It was also a royal forest. Charles Wesley was robbed on the hill in 1737.

Now it is an ancient woodland and park. A Queen's College scholar reportedly killed a wild boar on Shotover Hill by feeding his copy of an Aristotle text to him. Pearls before swine.

The Shotover Brewing Company is located on the southern (London) side of Shotover Hill.

The Company has four brands of beer – Prospect, Scholar, Porter and Trinity.  See photo.

The four brands of Shotover Brewing Company.
One (Trinity) is named after an Oxford college.

Only one is named after an Oxford College, and it is not his own – he went to Brasenose. (Not the easiest brand to market. Brasenose Beer might work.)

More about Paul Walton

Having done some due diligence for this article I have looked up Paul's website and I would like to share a peek into his interesting life:

Originally an advertising planner who preferred making brands to making ads, he wrote Bluff Your Way in Marketing with business partner Graham Harding to bring a little wit and sizzle to the solidly worthy protein offered by the likes of Philip Kotler. 

As the driving force of brand consultancy, The Value Engineers, he brought an energetic blend of structure and creativity to global branding projects for clients such as BA, BP and Unilever. When TVE joined Cello Group in 2005, Paul was appointed to the main board as Director of Strategy. In 2012, he swapped PLC board meetings for the equally challenging seminars of an MA in Creative Writing and started work on his first novel, Historyland, a dark comedy set in a near-future England, which has become a giant theme park. Now combining an advisory role at TVE with his writing, Paul enjoys exploring how inspiration from the arts can stimulate new thinking for people, organizations and brands to deploy against today's big issues: positioning, connection, coherence and growth. In this role, he has been known to wear many hats, but these days there is no hiding the colour of his hair.

Keeping Up

I expect to have more to say about branding and heraldry:

• Who keeps track of brands the way that the College of Arms keeps track of English heraldic designs?
• What other heraldic charges have become consumer brands or trademarks?

You could follow this blog or Paul Walton's. He has also recently written a book, Marians on the Mawddach, about his time at St Mary's School.