THEY say Guinness is good for you. It certainly led to fame, and even fortune of a kind, for Clows Top man Terry Keegan.

Mr Keegan of the Oxley's smallholding is probably the only regular horse brass designer in Britain and is certainly one of the country's best known personalities among heavy horse devotees.

He is founder of the 500-strong National Horse Brass Society, joint founder of Heavy Horse World quarterly magazine which celebrates its 50th issue this month, and a strong supporter and member of the Shire Horse Heritage Fund, among many other interests.

He is known all over the country as a designer of bespoke brasses incorporating individual insignias.

He designed the Severn Valley Railway brasses presented to horse owners in the recent SVR Heavy Horse event.

And it all started because of his job as a draught beer rep for Guinness, the company he worked for until 14 years ago since graduating from the London School of Economics in the late 1950s.

Hebecame fascinated with brasses from the heyday of dray horses. He used to chat to ''the old boys'' at the bar about the styles of harnessing and driving shire horses.

He became an expert and was asked to write Heavy Horse - Its Harness and Decoration . It was published by Pelham and sold in Britain and America in 1972.

The ''old boys'' also helped him find the orginal Walsall foundries that used to produce harness brasses and could still do so.

Some had held onto the old patterns, but Mr Keegan realised, on the back of the 1960s revival of interest in heavy horses, there was a need for new quality brasses. They were especially in demand from independent breweries but also for shows.

Working in a back room of the farmhouse he produces 70 a year. He and his wife Mary, also an LSE graduate, exhibit the work at shows. Now aged 68, he plans to stop the tours next year but will continue designing.

With early roots in Dublin and spending much of his boyhood on a farm in Scotland run by his mother's family, he wanted to bring up his three children, twin boys and a daughter, to enjoy country life too.

The family moved to the 15-acre holding at the Oxley's 30 years ago to set up a traditional farm milk bar, where families could stop for refreshment and enjoy farm surroundings.

It ran for 10 years but the couple became disillusioned when they failed to get local authority support to extend the site. The children's needs took over, and the enterprise ended. Mr Keegan continues to think up new ideas related to his interests particularly in the skills and artefacts of yesteryear.