Business events in Hook

A village on the London to Exeter road

Hook began as a handful of farms and houses on the road from London to the south west. Hook Parish Council's history says the road became the main stage coach route from London to Exeter, and that a turnpike was later built to ease the climb up Scures Hill, west of the village. The Hook Neighbourhood Plan adds that the White Hart coaching inn helped fix the settlement at the junction of that road, now the A30, with Station Road and Elms Road.

The railway came through in the 1830s, but the village had to wait about 50 years for a stop. Local landowners campaigned for one, and the station opened in 1883. Hook became its own civil parish in 1932, and the parish council says the population has grown tenfold since. Building speeded up after the M3 opened in the early 1970s, and between 1981 and 1985 new housing doubled the village's size. The ONS counted 9,065 people in the Hook built-up area at the 2021 Census, which is large for somewhere that still calls itself a village.

Business parks and commuters

The Hook Neighbourhood Plan, made in February 2020, names three business parks inside the village: Bartley Wood, Bartley Point and Osborne Way, with some large industrial and office buildings, and Murrell Green Business Park in the rural part of the parish. The plan is candid that occupancy of the big offices at Bartley Wood fell after 2008 and that some offices there have been converted to homes. One of its aims is to keep Hook's role as an employment centre and a starting place for small firms.

For the wider picture, the plan describes Hart's economy as strong in professional services, telecommunications, data processing and specialist electronics, with a growing hospitality sector. The ONS business register counted 4,600 enterprises across Hart district in 2026, a district figure rather than one for Hook.

Many residents commute. The plan notes direct trains to London Waterloo, Basingstoke and Southampton, and the station's platforms run towards Waterloo on one side and Basingstoke on the other.

Coming to an event

From the M3, junction 5 is just south of the village. The station is managed by South Western Railway and National Rail lists 157 car park spaces. To the south, Bartley Heath and Hook Common are open land, and the plan describes Bartley Heath as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Basingstoke Country Hotel, on Scures Hill on the London Road, has hosted a regular morning group listed under Hook. Events listed under Hook also reach a little further out, to Barnsgrove at Greywell and Warbrook House at Eversley. Nearby towns with pages here include Basingstoke, Fleet and Tadley, and the rest of North Hampshire.