Business events in Alton

Hops, water and beer

Alton is in the Domesday Book, and it grew up around a ford over the northern branch of the River Wey. For most of the last two centuries it was a brewing town. The Watercress Line's history of Alton says hop growing took hold after the Napoleonic Wars, and that the town's water was rated second only to Burton on Trent for brewing India Pale Ale. Two big breweries were running by the mid-nineteenth century, one owned by Henry Hall and one by Abraham Crowley, later taken over by Courage and Watney. Brewing ended up concentrated on the Hall's site, latterly owned by Molson Coors, and stopped altogether in 2015. Hop growing had already ceased in the late 1990s.

Hall was also a director of the Mid-Hants Railway, which opened in 1865. British Railways closed the line in 1973, and the ten miles to Alresford are now run as the Watercress Line, which shares Alton station with the mainline trains.

The town and its work today

Alton Town Council calls it the largest settlement in East Hampshire. The parish takes in the town and the separate village of Holybourne, and it sits at what the council calls the gateway to the South Downs National Park, next door to Chawton and Jane Austen's House. The ONS counted 17,880 people in the Alton built-up area at the 2021 Census.

The council describes a shopping centre of national chains and local independents, with cafés, restaurants and pubs within walking distance of each other. Outside the centre, East Hampshire District Council's assessment of employment land names Mill Lane, Newman Lane and Omega Park as Alton's well-occupied business areas, and notes that the district's well-occupied employment clusters generally sit close to the A3 and the A31. Across the whole district, the ONS counted 6,485 enterprises in 2026.

Events in and around Alton

Business events in Alton are listed on this page, and we have a page for Alton House Hotel. For the rest of the district, see East Hampshire, with Bordon and Liphook to the east. If you are going to a morning meeting for the first time, what happens at a business breakfast explains the usual format.