The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
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Lovely collectors item here in the form of a Guinness penguin figurine as featured in many of John Gilroys adverts. 20cm x 15cm x 10cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.
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Classic Guinness Advert extolling the anti depression properties of the Black Stuff ! 35cm x 30cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks. -
Lovely collectors item here in the form of a resin Guinness Hapless Zookeeper as featured in many of John Gilroys adverts. 40cm x 20cm x 10cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks. -
Rare,humorous 1940 Guinness advert depicting an opened bottle of Guinness with accompanying note-"opened & passed by censor" 47cm x 34cm Ardee Co Louth Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain. Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” -
Out of stock
Rarely enough seen John Gilroy inspired Guinness For Strength advert 47cm x 39cm Carlingford Co Louth Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” -
Framed 1990s Guinness pure Genius advert . Dimensions : 44cm x 80cm Dublin Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm -
Beautiful portrait style print, in antique hardwood frame, depicting the great Arkle with regular jockey Pat Taafe on board wearing the distinctive yellow and black silks of Arkle's owner Anne,Duchess of Westminster. Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe. At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes. On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent 1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle.In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year. The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals. The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races. Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again. Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth. In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13. Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'. The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co. Meath in April 2014. Origins :Co Limerick Dimensions :50cm x 60cm -
Framed 1980s Guinness No beer comes near advert in association with legendary Irish Folk Band -Clannad. Dimensions : 44cm x 60cm Dublin Clannad are an Irish band formed in 1970 in Gweedore, County Donegal by siblings Ciarán, Pól, and Moya Brennan and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan.They have adopted various musical styles throughout their history, including folk, folk rock, traditional Irish, Celtic and new-age music, often incorporating elements of smooth jazz and Gregorian chant. Initially known as Clann as Dobhar, they shortened their name to Clannad in 1973 after winning the Letterkenny Folk Festival with the song "Liza". By 1979, they had released three albums and completed a successful US tour. From 1980 to 1982, they operated as a six-piece with their sister/niece Enya Brennan on additional keyboards and vocals, before she left the group to pursue a solo career. Later in 1982, Clannad gained international attention with their single "Theme from Harry's Game",which became a top-five hit in Ireland and the UK. The song was featured on Magical Ring (1983), which was met with much acclaim.They experimented with more new-age and pop-influenced sounds in the 1980s and 1990s, as evident on Macalla (1985), and Anam (1990).This transition would ultimately go on to define their sound as almost purely 'Celtic', making them innovators of that genre.After Landmarks (1997), the band went on a hiatus in order to pursue solo projects.They regrouped in 2007 as a four piece again, with Moya, Ciarán, Noel, and Pádraig completing a world tour in 2008.In 2013, Pól rejoined and they released Nádúr, their first studio album in fifteen years.Pádraig Duggan died in 2016, leaving the group to embark on their 2020 farewell tour as a quartet. Clannad have won numerous awards throughout their career, including a Grammy Award, a BAFTA, an Ivor Novello Award, and a Billboard Music Award. They have recorded in six different languages,and scored eight UK top 10 albums. They are widely regarded as a band that have brought Irish music and the Irish language to a wider audience, often experiencing more popularity abroad than in their native Ireland. Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm -
18th Century Guinness Advert extolling the virtues of the Black Stuff -Health,Pweace and Prosperity-all any man could ask for ! 18cm x 24cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks. -
Lovely,original example of this iconic Guinness Advert as printed by Mills & Rockleys Ltd Ipswich. 35cm x 70cm Bruree Co Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain. Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading.[12] The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” But as this particular ad says-Down with Guinness .You'll feel better ! -
Great piece of old Irish Musical Nostalgia- an old poster advertising Joe Dolan playing at the Central theatre in Tullamore Co Offaly on Sunday 19th March,some time in the late 1970s. Joseph Francis Robert "Joe" Dolan (16 October 1939 – 26 December 2007), otherwise known as Boots, was an Irish entertainer, recording artist, and pop singer. Chiefly known in Ireland for his association with showbands and for his innovative style and high pitched singing voice, he had a wide appeal with many international fans. His energetic and charismatic stage performances were well known as was his long standing advertising slogan: "There's no show like a Joe show". The only Irish singer to reach number one in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Dolan was a constant presence on the hit parade in Ireland and overseas. Dolan was born at the County Hospital, now known as the Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar, County Westmeath on 16 October 1939, the youngest of eight children in a Roman Catholicfamily. He was orphaned at a young age – his father, a bicycle shop proprietor, died when Joe was eight; his mother when he was fifteen. He sang in school, and his mother had encouraged him to take up the piano. He made his first stage appearance at a talent show held in a marquee on the Fair Green in his native Mullingar. Dolan's voice was high with a comprehensive range without the use of falsetto and he made comprehensive use of a technique known as melisma which gives the vocal a plaintive edge reminiscent of Arabic religious chanting. Vocal gymnastics such as this were not common in the 1960s and 1970s but were later made popular by artists such as Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, among others. As well as securing his first (and last) "real" job as a compositor in local newspaper The Westmeath Examiner in 1958, he got his first guitar. After learning some skills on the instrument, he and his saxophone-playing brother Ben started to play in local bands. They soon formed a band of their own – The Drifters. Not long afterward, the band was renamed Joe Dolan and the Drifters and finally Joe Dolan and His Drifters to avoid legal action from the American band of the same name. The Irish musical landscape in the 1960s was dominated by the showbands. The first single "The Answer to Everything", (previously released as a B side by Del Shannon) was released in September 1964, quickly reaching number 4 in the Irish charts. Dolan and his band were managed by Seamus Casey. In the summer of 1968, however, some of the band left, with Dolan and Casey citing "musical differences" as the reason, although in the official biography by Ronan Casey (Seamus Casey's son) further elaboration includes references to unhappiness about financial issues. Dolan never achieved any notable chart success in the U.S. but had good acclaim with concert audiences in carefully targeted areas. His first tour in 1965 followed an offer, which he refused, to play in Las Vegas. Instead, he decided to play a whistle-stop tour of Irish-American venues in places such as Chicago, New York and Boston. An added benefit to this string of engagements was the opportunity to hear American music which hadn't yet been played in the UK and Ireland. The first song gleaned in this fashion was the Jim Reeves classic, (That's When I see the Blue in Your) Pretty Brown Eyeswhich Dolan released on the Pye label in 1966. A second US tour in 1967 led to an appraisal in Las Vegas and a substantial offer to appear there but he turned it down. Eventually in 1980 he accepted $10,000 a week plus board and lodgings to perform for six weeks over September and October at the Continental Lounge of the Silverbird Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas. Eventually playing 64 shows and selling out most of them, he and his band returned to Ireland to be immediately rebooked for Vegas in January 1981. Although this trip was a further success, he turned down subsequent offers to return to Vegas. When word of this got out, other venues approached him with increased offers, thinking he was merely hunting around for the best deal, but the singer refused them all. Several other attempts were made through the years to entice him back but he never returned – except on holiday. In 1978, he became the first Irish artist and one of the first Western acts to tour communist Russia. Joe toured the segregation era in South Africa and was on a UN blacklist for defying the artists' ban.After reforming the band Dolan recorded a song called "Make Me an Island", written by the songwriting duo Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, for Pye Records in conjunction with Shaftesbury Publishing. The track was a hit in England and led to Dolan's first appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops and helped to make him the biggest Irish star in the world at that time,eventually becoming a number one hit in 14 countries, as well as reaching Number 3 in the UK, becoming Joe Dolan's only British Top 10 hit, and one of only four hit singles Dolan ever had in the UK (all of these hits performed better in the Irish Charts). In Ireland, the song peaked at number 2 in August 1969, the same week it was Number 3 in the UK. It has been claimed that Dolan was the first Irish star to appear on Top of the Pops,[18] although this supposes that neither The Bachelors nor Val Doonican appeared on the show between 1964 and 1969 (which seems at least doubtful given that both had several big hits in both the UK and Ireland in the mid-'sixties). After the recording of Make Me An Island, Dolan was approached and signed by the MAM Agency whose major star was Tom Jones. Follow-up singles "Teresa" and "You're Such a Good Looking Woman" also made an impact. Other single releases such as "It Makes No Difference" and "You and the Looking Glass" were not big hits at home in Ireland or in the UK, but they were international successes. A collaboration with writers Roberto Danova and Peter Yellowstone in the mid-1970s produced more singles which made little impact on the British domestic market but did well internationally. "Sweet Little Rock 'n’ Roller" (1974) was the first of a number of reasonable successes for this team but wasn't a major hit in the UK until later recorded by Showaddywaddy, who had a Top 20 hit with the song in 1979. His next single, "Lady in Blue" was his biggest ever hit, winning five gold records and selling one million copies. It was popular in Europe, Australasia, Africa and South America but not in Ireland or the UK. Further hits including "Crazy Woman", "Sister Mary", "Midnight Lover", "Hush Hush Maria" and "I Need You" followed. Reflective songs such as "If I Could Put My Life on Paper" were a collaborative attempt to show a more maturing artist, whilst definitive versions of songs such as "Danny Boy" maintained a touch of Irish on disc and in concert. In any given month Dolan could be touring the Middle East one week, Australia the next, then South Africa and then back to Europe and Ireland. Further international successes and tours followed, with hits such as "More and More" and "It's You, It's You, It's You". With his own record label, studio and material Dolan became one of the biggest selling independent artists of the 1990s with albums such as 'Endless Magic' keeping him near the top of the charts. At the end of the decade he refined his voice for the 21st century when he hooked up with EMI for a series of albums (such as Joe's 90s, 21st Century Joe and Home Grown) which saw him tackle more contemporary music from acts as diverse as Oasis, Pulp, Blur, U2, Bruce Springsteen, The Coral, R.E.M., Mundy and his old pal Robbie Williams. At the Oxegen Festival 2009, Blur's Damon Albarn dedicated the song "The Universal" to Dolan. Dolan never married and dealt with speculation about his sexuality throughout his life. He dismissed persistent rumours that he was gay. The official biography suggests that he had a quiet offstage presence and preferred to keep romances out of the public eye but cites a long relationship with Isabella Fogarty whom he met in 1977, started dating in the 1980s and subsequently lived with.She was with him when he became ill on 25 December 2007. In September 1970, Dolan and his band were performing at the Wookie Hollow Club in Liverpool. Dolan and a member of his road crew stayed in the venue for drinks and to chat to their fans. Some people at a nearby table were attempting to bully the (by now closed) bar into providing them with champagne. Dolan joked that they should come back in a few hours for a "champagne breakfast". The men took exception to this and became abusive. Dolan and his companion tried to leave but were prevented from doing so. During the following fracas Dolan was headbutted, (breaking his nose) kicked, punched and slammed into lavatory fittings and a wall in a sustained attack which was only halted when the sound of police sirens could be heard. It took six weeks for the singer to recover well enough to return to work. The club was sued but went into liquidation. The police attempted to identify the perpetrators and held identity parades which Dolan attended but no-one was ever prosecuted. In October 1976, Dolan and a group of friends were flying with Aer Lingus to Corfu for a golfing trip.On several occasions during the flight Dolan was moving around talking to other passengers who knew him. One of the party remembers they were "quite merry". The singer was asked several times by cabin staff to return to his seat and, finally, after being threatened with being "restrained" he did so. Upon landing, he attempted to leave the airport without his luggage and passport but was prevented from doing so by security staff, one of whom drew his pistol and pointed it at Dolan. The tour operator subsequently received a fax from Aer Lingus refusing to fly the star back to Dublin. Newspaper headlines in Ireland proclaimed the star's airline ban for life although, as it transpired, the ban only lasted for close to two years, eventually being lifted after the airline negotiated with the star following his continued references to it on stage and in the media. Dolan's health began to decline after he underwent a hip replacement in 2005, which put him off the road for 12 months and led to the discovery of Type 2 Diabetes which appeared to account for the low energy levels he had been experiencing. In a bizarre twist, following a discussion with Keith Duffy of the boyband Boyzone, the hip bone which was replaced was signed and auctioned for €650, the proceeds being given to Irish Autism Action. Dolan returned to his schedule in 2006, initially with vigour, but soon began to report further signs of low energy. Doctors diagnosed a low blood platelet count and Dolan began a series of blood transfusions, After each, he felt better for a period, but always began to feel weaker again. At this same time, Dolan was also suffering from unexplained nosebleeds. In autumn 2007, on advice from his doctors, Dolan cancelled his Vicar Street concerts due to "exhaustion". On 16 December 2007, the front page of the Sunday Independent reported that Dolan was suffering from a "bad virus" and had been forced to cancel his entire Christmas tour. Dolan's website was inundated with well wishes in the wake of the article, which was reproduced in several newspapers the following day. Despite the blood transfusions and other medical interventions, Dolan became weaker and he was finally discharged from the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin on 23 December 2007 in a wheelchair. Dolan spent Christmas Day 2007 at his home in Foxrock in southeast Dublin with some friends. Later that evening, his illness suddenly worsened, and he was rushed by ambulance to the Mater Hospital. En route to the hospital, Dolan suffered a massive intracerebral haemorrhage, at which he became unconscious, and was connected to life support equipment upon his arrival. At approximately 14:30 hours on St Stephen's Day, surrounded by family and friends, the machines were switched off and Dolan died within 20 minutes, never regaining consciousness. He was pronounced dead at 15:03 hours. He was 68 years old. His funeral mass was held at the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar, on 29 December 2007. Many famous faces from both sides of the border attended, including singer Ronnie Drew from The Dubliners, comedian Frank Carson, snooker legend Denis Taylor and former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.Dolan is interred in Walshestown Cemetery, Walshestown North, County Westmeath. A 540 metres (1,770 ft) bridge was named after him in the Clonmore Industrial Estate in his hometown of Mullingar, it opened officially on 6 September 2010; it is the longest bridge in the Republic Of Ireland. There is a statue of Dolan in Mullingar's Market Square.Dolan's hip bone is the only body part to ever be sold on eBay. The singer had initially sold his bone at a charity auction before his death and it was later sold on eBay. Origins : Co Offaly Dimensions : 54cm x 40cm 6kg
Grave of Joe Dolan at Walshestown Cemetery, Mullingar -
Fascinating vintage photograph of a Dublin City Centre Wall totally given over to yesteryear advertising posters.A horse and cart can be seen adjacent .Some of the products and companies being advertised include institutions long closed including-Manders Dublin Ale,Phoenix Brewery,Cooneys Blackening,Pooles, Also posters advertising a sports day in Ballsbridge and rosaries for mixed marriages ! Robert Manders & Co, New Brewery, 113 James Street, Dublin, Ireland. Established 1800 and registered in 1882. Association with the Phoenix Brewery (Dublin) Ltd. was terminated in 1897 and carried on though restricted to ale brewing until c.1907. From:-The Breweries and Distilleries in Dublin In 1862 Robert Manders & Co brewery occupied 111-113 at the north side of James Street. The concern was also the business address of the Manders family. Alfred of Flesk Priory, Killarney, Frederick of Belfield, Roebuck, Richard of Brackenstown, Swords, Robert of Landscape, Dundrum, Herbert of Obelisk Park, Blackrock, Richard of Shanganagh, Bray, and Robert Geoghegan of Carysfort, Stillorgan. Apart from the brewery they had flour mills at Islandbridge and bakeries at Fownes Street, Moore Street, Church Street, Camden Street, and Baggot Street. The brewery continued until 1909. Phoenix Brewery (Dublin) Ltd, 89 James's Street, Dublin, Ireland. Founded 1778 and was later known as the Phoenix Porter Brewery Co. Registered January 1897. Acquired by John D'Arcy & Son Ltd 1906 and closed 1909. From the Brewery History society Journal Number 91 This brewery publicly advertised itself as "the largest brewery in Ireland but one". Founded in 1788 by Charles Madder who by all accounts was a brilliant technical and innovative brewer. He had come from London to brew porter in Dublin. His business and trading activities were poor and the brewery was rescued by one John Brennan and later his son Charles. Essentially a porter brewery with a capacity to produce 350,000 bulk barrels per annum, it launched its own O'Connell's Dublin Ale. This was probably due to the fact that when they took over Robert Manders & Co's Brewery, their next door neighbours in 1897 it replaced Mander's Dublin Ale. It enjoyed a local and export trade however for whatever the reasons it became bankrupt and closed in 1909. The franchise of brewing O'Connell's Dublin Ale was given to D'Arcys. From:- Breweries and Distilleries in Dublin Francis Coleman moved from 103 to 105 James Street on 15-8-1807. At that time Francis Coleman & Hamilton dissolved their brewing partnership. The Guinness Power station site (now Roe & Co distillery) near the corner of Watling Street occupied part of the site of the Phoenix brewery founded in 1778 by an English brewer called Mather. In 1828 John Brennan bought the brewery and was succeeded by Charles Brenan. Daniel O’Connell junior son of the Liberator acquired the Phoenix Brewery in 1831 which occupies a three acre site at the corner of Watling Street and James’s Street. It operated under the name O’Connell’s brewery for a time. There was a campaign to support their porter as “Catholic” against Guinnness’s “protestant porter“. Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator, refused to support that activity while he was an MP. Guinness was a political rival but was quite liberal on the Catholic Emancipation and Repeal questions. Phoenix acquired the adjoining the six acre Manders brewery site at 111-117 James’s Street and in 1897 the concern became a public company. The brewery extended from James Street to the Quays and had the second largest output in Ireland. John D'Arcy & Son Ltd’s Anchor Brewery bought the Phoenix brewery, then operating for 160 years on 13-6-1905 and it was hoped to continue both breweries as well as the Phoenix brand O’Connell’s ale. However by 13-10-1905 the Phoenix site was for auction. Cooneys Blacking in Penny Boxes: Blacking (polish), a nineteenth-century shoe polish Younger's Brewery (William Younger & Company) was a brewery in Edinburgh which grew from humble beginnings in 1749 to become one of the city’s main commercial enterprises, supplying domestic and foreign markets. It should not be confused with another, less renowned Edinburgh brewery, that of Robert Younger, who also brewed in Holyrood at the St. Ann's Brewery or that of George Younger, who brewed in Alloa. In 1931 Younger's merged with McEwan’s to form Scottish Brewers, which in turn merged with Newcastle Breweries in 1960 to form Scottish & Newcastle. By the late 1960s the combine employed the largest single workforce in the city -
28cm x 33cm Christy Moore is one of Ireland's best known folk singer's, songwriter's and guitarist. He is one of the founding members of Planxty and Moving Hearts. His first album, Paddy on the Road was recorded with Dominic Behan in 1969. In 2007, he was named as Ireland's greatest living musician in RTÉ's People of the Year Awards.Early life
Moore was born in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland and attended Dominican College Secondary School. He was originally a bank employee who wanted to express himself using traditional music. During a bank strike in 1966, which lasted twelve weeks, he went to England, as many striking officials did, but didn't return when the strike was settled. "I had a wild and wonderful time in England, with no bank manager looking over my shoulder," he said. Doing general labouring work, he frequented the folk clubs and the Irish music pubs where he met Seamus Ennis, Margaret Barry, Luke Kelly, Martin Byrnes and many other traditional musicians.When Irish singing trio The Grehan Sisters, with whom Moore was previously acquainted, moved to the north of England from Dublin in 1967, they assisted Moore to get a higher profile by giving him contacts and support slots on their concerts.Musical career
1973 brought his first major release, Prosperous, which brought together the four musicians who shortly thereafter formed Planxty: Liam O'Flynn, Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny. For a time they called themselves "CLAD", an acronym of their names, but soon decided on Planxty. After leaving Planxty in 1975, Moore continued on his solo career, reforming his old band on occasion (which he has been doing ever since). He also formed the band Moving Hearts with Lunny and five other musicians in 1980. In 1987 he appeared on Gay Byrne's The Late Late Show performing with The Dubliners for their 25th anniversary. In 2000, he published his autobiography, One Voice. Moore's earlier lifestyle resulted in a decline in health and several operations. Moore's battle with alcohol, and subsequent heart operations, have taken their toll. At the end of the 1990s, Moore reduced his workload for medical reasons. Some of Moore's songs are heavily influenced by drink and the effects of drink, his song "Delirium Tremens" being a good example. Listening to Johnny Mulhern's song "Hard Cases" caused Moore to recall the Galway drinking scene with local musicians Mickey Finn, Pete Galligan, Corky and Terry Smith. On 17 April 2009, Moore released his first new studio album in four years, entitled Listen, and promoted it through a series of live gigs. In December 2011, Moore released the album Folk Tale. His next album Where I Come From was released in November 2013 and features a new protest song called "Arthur's Day". The album peaked at number three in the Irish album charts. On the road was released in November 2017, while his most recent album Magic Nightswas released in November 2019.Moore is best known for his political and social commentary which reflects a left-wing, Irish republican perspective, despite the fact that his mother was a Fine Gael county councillor and parliamentary candidate in Kildare. He supported the republican H-Block protestors with the albums H-Block in 1978, the launch of which was raided by the police, and The Spirit of Freedom.He has also recorded songs by the hunger striker Bobby Sands, including "Back Home in Derry" which is based on Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". He ceased supporting the military activities of the IRA in 1987 as a result of the Enniskillen bombing. Political songs he has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly's "On the Blanket" about the protests of republican prisoners, "Viva la Quinta Brigada", about the Irishmen who fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco, and "Minds Locked Shut" about Bloody Sunday in Derry. Moore has endorsed a long list of leftist support causes, ranging from El Salvador to Mary Robinson in the 1990 presidential election. At the Glastonbury Festival in 2005, he sang about the Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie. He supported the anti-nuclear movement in Ireland playing in many concerts and at festivals in Carnsore Point for the cause.
Banned songs
"They Never Came Home" is a song about the Stardust fire of 1981 where 48 people died. The song was recorded on the Ordinary Man album and was released on the B-side of a single in 1985. The song achieved notoriety when Moore was taken to court over claims in the song prejudical to an ongoing court case determining compensation. For instance, the song claimed, "hundreds of children are injured and maimed, and all just because the fire exits were chained". Mr Justice Murphy ordered the Ordinary Man album to be withdrawn from the shops, and costs were awarded against Moore. "Another Song is Born" was recorded for the album's re-release. "They Never Came Home" later appeared on his box set and on the album Where I come from.Musical style
His solo style includes driving rhythms on guitar and bodhrán as well as slower ballads.Family
Moore's brother Barry, whose stage name is Luka Bloom, is also a singer-songwriter. His nephew, Conor Byrne, is also a traditional flautist and tin whistle player, with Christy appearing on his Wind Dancer album. Memorable eventsDetention incident, 2004
In October 2004, Moore was stopped and detained by Special Branch officers at the Welsh port of Holyhead, taken into an office and questioned about the lyrics of his songs. The following day, he released a statement saying: "My driver and I were stopped and held for two hours at Holyhead last Monday, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2002. My driver and I were held separately in two interrogation rooms. I found the whole experience threatening. I was questioned about the contents of my briefcase." Despite initial reports to the contrary, the singer's van, which was full of musical equipment, was not searched. "I was questioned about lyrics of songs and I was asked a lot of personal questions about members of my family and my children and about my home. At no time was I given any explanation as to why I was being held and interrogated in this manner", he added. He said the fact that Irish people are still being treated this way on their way to Britain is very "saddening". "I had hoped to deal with this matter out of the public domain. But seeing as it has become a news item, I feel the need to offer my side of the story. I found the whole affair quite frightening."Desert Island Discs
In June 2007, Moore was a guest on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs.He selected mainly Irish folk music that had inspired him and spoke of personal and political issues that had shaped his life, choosing a set of Uilleann pipes as his luxury item and The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as his choice book.Penguin book of Irish poetry
In 2010 Christy Moore's song "Lisdoonvarna" which he wrote gained entry in The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry.Oxegen
On Sunday 10 July 2011 Moore joined Coldplay on stage at the 2011 Oxegen Festival performing the song "Ride On". -
32cm x 25cm Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) will be remembered as one of the most iconic and indeed controversial politicians in Irish history.MP and Leader of the Irish Parliamentary or Home Rule Party from1882 to 1891 until revelations of his adulterous love affair with Kitty O'Shea forced his resignation.He died shortly afterwards from pneumonia in the arms of his newly divorced and remarried wife Katherine.His death was considered to be a direct result of the stresses he endured because of the Victorian era scandal and his subsequent funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin was attended by more than 200000 people.His notability was such that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940,reads only Parnell. This faithful portrayal of Parnell,well over 130 years old, by the artist JG Wills dates to 1884 and is a beautiful homage to the "uncrowned king of Ireland". -
Original Fianna Fail Charles J Haughey Election Poster from the 1980s.Anyone who remembers the period of Irish Life when Charlie held sway over the country will either look at this poster with fond admiration or in horror -there is no middle ground !The most polarising and controversial figure of modern Irish history. Dublin 83cm x 63cmWhen, after protracted negotiations, numerous disappointments and postponements, you finally get to interview Charles J. Haughey, it emerges that the procedure is slightly differenet than with other interviews. First of all Charles J. Haughey interviews you. This, presumably, is so that he can reassure himself that you're not the kind of person who's going to come out with what is eloquently summed up by his colourful press secretary P.J. Mara as "any of that Arms Trial shite." P.J. is very good on the subject of what happens when people do. Or when they confront The Boss with Sean Doherty, telephone tapping and tape-recorders. "The shutters come down," says P.J., illustrating graphically with both hands the downward motion of imaginary shutters descending to obscure Charles J. Haughey's face. "The fuse starts to burn. And then you've had it." ***** "You like very MI5-ish," says C.J. Haughey as he rises to greet the Hot Pressreporter. His right hand is pressed against the left side of his midriff; either he's trying to look Napoleonic or the stomach is at him. "What in the name of Jazus do you want to talk to me about?" Haughey's tone is one of wearied resignation, leavened with a sizable dollop of friendliness. P.J. Mara points out that all the details were in the letter he gave him a few weeks ago. "What letter?" Haughey demand blankly. "You gave me no letter. You never give me anything!" His gaze, mischievous but unflinching, meets P.J.'s head on. He knows that P.J. knows that he knows that in all probability P.J. did give him the letter. P.J. keeps his counsel. It's explained to Haughey that rather than dealing with the nitty gritty of issues and policies - his views on which are already well documented - the interview will be personal in emphasis. We would like to talk to him about issues affecting young people in modern Ireland but with particular reference to his own experiences as an, ahem, young person. A flicker of a smile breaks through Haughey's blank, quizzical expression. "Sure I'd never be able to remember that far back! That's a long time ago." What kind of "issues"? Crime, vandalism... "Well what could I say about that?" he thinks out loud. "I don't think I could say that I approve of youngsters knocking off BMW's and so on," he muses. "Although, I must admit, I always had a hidden desire to do something like that! I don't suppose I could say anything like that, now could I?" Hardly. "What kind of other issues?" The drug problem... "Sex?" he asks and smiles sardonically. The reporter takes the opportunity to stress that the whole point of the interview is to portray the lighter, more personal side of Charles Haughey, which doesn't normally come across in the media. Most people see him as an austere individual. "Oh but I am austere" he responds, deadpan. "Deep down I'm very austere." There isn't the merest flicker of a smile. The reporter meets his stare, wondering if he's supposed to laugh. He does. So does Charles J. Haughey. The reporter, it appears, has passed the audition, and the interview is duly arranged for the following Monday, which as it happens is the day that Garret Fitzgerald and Margaret Thatcher are due to have their now infamous summit meeting. "What other people have you interviewed?" Haughey enquires. The reporter does a quick mental check, in search of some respectable names to drop. For some odd reason he mentions Christy Moore. "Ah, he's a bit of a rebel, isn't he?" remarks Charles J. Haughey. "Christy wants to change the world!" He pauses. "I gave up trying to change the world a long time ago." You were born in Castlebar. How much do you remember about it? "Well, I was only born in Castlebar. I left at a stage I don't even remember. As a child I lived in Dublin, to all intents and purposes. I also spent a lot of summer holidays in the north, in my grandmother's house. It was a small farm and I got a very good insight there of life on a small farm and of the social life and economics of small farming. And I also got a very clear impression of the community situation in Northern Ireland - how the Catholic small farmers viewed their Protestant neighbours and how they lived with them. But all my life, really, was spent in Dublin. I mean, I'm a Dublin person. Were you very bright at school? "I'm afraid I was, yes. In those days there used to be a Dublin Corporation scholarship at primary school level, and I got first in Dublin. You went to the Christian Brothers. They had quite a reputation in those days for violence towards pupils... "I would reject that. I liked school. By and large, the games at school made up for the less attractive side of it. If you did something particularly awful or outrageous, you got the leather, but it certainly left no lasting scars on me. It was just something of momentary importance. Tomorrow was a new day and the school would be playing Brunner - which was Brunswick Street - in the Phoenix Park, and you'd be off to that. What other kind of pastimes did you have? "Well the main preoccupation in life was football and hurling - playing for the school and later for Vincent's and Parnell's. At a younger stage in my life I used to take up things like birdnesting - collecting bird's eggs maybe. What else did we do? We went to the pictures once a week - if we had the money. KIds those days didn't have any money." What kind of films did you like? "Well now...(pause)They're all jumbled up in my mind. Cowboy films were the big deal. People like Gene Autrey and things like that. Then, later on, I suppose, Humphrey Bogart and things like that. War films. Do you go to the cinema nowadays? "No. (Shakes head) very rarely." Can you remember the last film you went to? "No (laughs) I don't know." What was it like to be a teenager in your day? "When I was a teenager, the war was on, so the whole environment was totally different. Of course there were no motor cars. Everybody went on bikes. The whole country was down to subsistence level. You couldn't leave the country - there was no foreign travel. Young people today know absolutely nothing about it. (Pause) But it wasn't all that terrible. Looking back on it now you'd think it must've been awful, but it wasn't really." There wouldn't have been a lot of teenage crime in those days... "No. Almost certainly not. Literally, we only saw a policeman when he came to stop us playing football on the road! Of course we robbed orchards and things like that, but there was no great tension about it." Do you think the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, that it was a better time to be growing up than today? "Ah, no. (Pauses) I wouldn't say it had any advantages, to be honest with you. I think teenagers today have a great time. I don't mean just now, in the middle of this terrible economic recession, but for a long period post-war, most of them had a great time - great opportunities, all sorts of new things: television, the exploration of space and all these things. And they had a thing that we never could have as teenagers, foreign travel. We just couldn't leave the country - unless you wanted to go off and join the British army, and fight in the war!" What are your recollections of the war? "The big thing was the number of one's friends that went off to join the British army. Because there was no work. You either joined the Irish army or the British army. And kids, if they were in a rebellious mood, and were, y'know rowing with their teachers or parents, they'd go "Fuck you! I'll go off and join the British army if you don't appreciate me or treat me properly!" Did you ever try that one? "No, I never said that. I was in the L.D.F. and the F.C.A. subsequently." As a young man, did you have any inkling that one day you might end up as Taoiseach? "No. Not in the slightest." You weren't aware of being different or special in any way? "Oh Jesus Christ, no!! (Laughs)" What difference do you notice between young people nowadays and back then? "Well, the big difference is that young people today have far more confidence. Admittedly they're probably very depressed immediately now, about job prospects and so on. But apart from that, they have far more self-reliance and confidence than we ever had. They're a more sure generation. Our outlook, our scope, our dimensions were very limited. When I was young, you were very restricted in terms of careers. You dedicated yourself to the Civil Service or teaching, or whatever. It was all very regimented. It was very important to have what was known as a "good job". But young people today have none of those inhibitions. They couldn't give a damn about anything like that. And also, the way they dress: in our day it was very important to wear the right kind of clothes - you had to have a suit and tie and so on; nowadays kids are quite happy to go around in a pair of jeans and a jumper. "I think young people today are fabulous. I love to be with young people. They make me feel good. I love their attitude to life. " What advice would you give to young people who feel depressed by the current economic climate? "Well the first thing I'd say to them is "stay here". I don't think it's any better anywhere else. I know a lot of my son Ciaran's friends are now in New York. There's a lot of young Irish people now opting for that sort of sub-stratum in New York or maybe London - they're working as barmen and waiters and waitresses and that sort of thing. But what I would say to young people is: "Stay, if you possibly can." I think that this present situation is a temporary aberration, a loss of direction, a loss of will and a loss of political leadership, and that there is, and that there is, there must be, a future here. I know that a lot of them are fed up doing courses training for jobs that aren't there. (Pause) On the other hand, we're moving into a technological world - computers and electronics and so on. It's a world that's very foreign to me. I don't understand it. Like my kids now - they treat me like a semi-imbecile, because I don't know how to work tape-recorders and videos, and record things! And, y'know, when I'm going out and there's a programme on television that I want to record on the video, I have to get one of them to do it. They say: "Ah, go away! Leave it to me. I'll do it for you!" "So that, it's their world. And I think we're very, very fortunately placed in Ireland in that whole area. We've a small population and it's an intelligent population. It's well-educated. And, as I said, I think they're terribly confident and self-assured in a way that we weren't in our day. And they have a far better grasp on the world and don't mind getting in an aeroplane and going to Germany or the United States. When you think about it, our total workforce is a million - which is nothing, if you take it that the normal running of the country takes the vast bulk of them. So you're really only dealing with a couple of hundred thousand people, and that's not a lot to train and educate for these new technological industries." Have you studied the report of the National Youth Policy Committee? "Ah, no. I know exactly what I want for young people and I don't need any committee to tell me. I know, from my own constituency, what's needed: they need plenty of facilities - sporting facilities, particularly. I'm a bit old fashioned: I really believe that kids who are into sport - football, hurling, racing, any good sporting activity - never get into drugs or anything else. It's a simple thing I've always found. Didn't have time! So I believe in giving them everything possible for sports and recreational activities. That's the first thing. And then jobs: give them the training for the very best scientific and technical jobs. It's been proved that, far from being intimidated by this technical stuff, it's a cake-walk for them. Kids have taken to playing with computers now. I'd be afraid of them! I just couldn't do it. And that's a tremendous thing: what should be a great, big intimidating, fearsome new world, is in fact child's play to them. So I'd get them a hundred million pre cent into all that technological and science-related area." "After that, I'd love to see every single young person having some creative side to their life. I think a whole new dimension has to be grafted onto our educational system, to try and get every youngster into doing something in a creative sense." Do you subscribe to the current viewpoint which sees our large young population as some kind of "problem"? "I don't know. I don't think so, basically. It's hard to say. There are a lot of young people around now. Y'know? You go through towns and streets - like where I live in Malahide - and it's crawling with young people. Drive through the country - there's young people everywhere. And therefore, to that extent, our society is presumably more volatile than an older, more conservative, settled type of society. Ant that's bringing changes, there's no doubt about that. But I don't think that there's any...I wouldn't be all that worried about an explosion. Y'see, if you go back, all the campuses in America were exploding and you had the French situation - well that's all suddenly changed. There's a big reversal, I think now, among young people. They've become much more cautious - not conservative. But much more committed to trying to find their own way in life, rather than trying to change society. Somebody told me they were in U.C.D. recently, and they were astonished at how conservative the place had become - not conservative really, but how settled down it has become, how serious everybody is." Yes. The '80s seems to be a complete revesal of the '60s? "Oh, a total reversal. I think that's true, isn't it?" You'd have been in your mid-thirties at the beginning of the '60s. Were you aware of the Beatles and all that stuff? "Oh very much. Well. Y'see, I experienced all through my children. I saw what they were doing and what they were interested in. So I was very aware of it. Not part of it, but very conscious of what was happening and what was affecting young people and what their interests were. And I could see the amazing changes in them, between them and me as a young fellow." Did you go to dances as a teenager? "Oh yes. The local dances in the local halls. Much the same as they are now. There wasn't such a thing as a disco as far as I know. Just a band, y'know? Dance bands." What kinds of music? "American music, largely. American jazz and American music. One of the big things that came in my lifetime was the swingback to traditional music and folk songs, the Dubliners and all that. When I was young, that sort of thing wasn't happening. The Clancy Brothers started all of that, I think." What do you think of the current adulation of pop stars? "I think it's perfectly understandable. Kids always related to someone. We idolised somebody - I don't even remember who it was - some female filmstar. I can't even remember their names now! (Laughs) But we sort of related to them and idolised them and worshipped them. A big deal! And it's not any different now. No. I understand that completely." It is, perhaps, slightly different insofar as the modern day stars like Boy George and so on wear make up and dresses and are openly bisexual. "Yeah, but there's also a tremendous following for people like the Dubliners. Ronnie Drew. And my friends The Fureys - they have their own following, and...Ah no, there's a sort of a healthy disparateness about the whole thing. I mean what was the last fellow in Croke Park there now? Or Slane Castle? Y'know? I totally appreciate and understand that. My kids go to that." What do you think of Boy George? "I don't know anything about him. He seems a bit weird. But most of them, I think are top class musicians and professional artists." You like the Fureys a lot? "I love the Fureys. I think they're great. My favourite piece of music is "The Lonesome Boatman" as you know. But I also think the Chieftains are fabulous. I'd go anywhere to hear the Chieftains and the Dubliners, and most of those." What about the Wolfe Tones? "Yeah. I like them. They're a bit of the ould rabble-rousin', but sure they're alright! (Laughs) They've a very sort of limited medium, haven't they? What about country and western? Do you like that at all? "No (Shakes head) I don't. I never hear it. (Laughs) I don't know if I should say that, because Paschal Mooney is on the National Executive of Fianna Fail!" Do you think that there should be some mechanism to allow young people a quicker access to politics? "Politics is not the Boy Scouts! It's a bit of a haul. And I think, per se it has to be; you've to sort of win your spurs and fight your way through. It's like anything: it's like what we were talking about - music and the entertainment world. It's a long, hard haul: most of the guys who are at the top have served out a pretty tough, demanding apprenticeship. And politics is the same. Experience counts a lot in politics. I don't mean that we all have to be like the Chinese: eighty years of age and very wise. But you have to find your way and get to know and handle people." Young people are very cynical about politics and politicians. "But sure, everybody hates politicians! (Laughs) Old people are not any different. The ordinary guy in the pub thinks politicians are all useless and crooked and so on. That's not confined to young people. That's a healthy cynicism and distrust which most modern democracies - and certainly the Irish people - have always had, at all ages." Do you think that the Irish are a particularly political race? "They're tremendous politicians, the Irish people. They're fascinated with politics. The ordinary guy in the pub can talk more intelligently and more wisely and with more depth about politics than anybody in any country in the world. Certainly he's about fifty times ahead of his bovine English counterpart, who knows about Margaret Thatcher and maybe one or two others - but that's all he knows." "You see, the Irish invented American politics. The whole American system is Irish founded and based. They made the Democratic Party. Brian Lenihan is very good on this - he's made a study of it. The Irish were trained here in local politics back in the 19th Century, and when they went to the States they knew how to handle things, which most of their European counterparts didn't. The German and the French, for instance, knew nothing about democratic politics - they came from empire states. " One of the tendencies we've imported from America is the increasing emphasis on the personalities. "Yes. It's become increasingly so now, with the media. The individual politician or political leader becomes the focus, because the media haven't the interest or don't care about the issues. They're too tedious and take too much time to explain. They're much more interested in trying to hone in on A, B or C - on one person and what they're thinking and doing." You see that as a negative development? "It's a bad thing, yeah." But we Irish do seem to go for a strong personality. "Well, it's very tribal you see. In rural Ireland, particularly, you have rural Chieftains, like Blaney in Donegal and so on. I suppose it's a throwback to, a descendent from the Irish Clan/Chieftain system." Yet politicians generally come across as fairly straight-laced, humourless, one-dimensional people. "I think politicians are hard-done-by, but then everybody thinks that about their own profession, I suppose. I don't think that the criticisms of politicians are very well balanced. Nobody ever sets out to try and describe a politician in the round, and say okay, maybe he's very wrong about this, but at least he's trying to do that. But then there's no point in complaining about that. That's part of the apparatus of political life - to be attacked and criticised. Very often, in one's own view, almost continually wrongly." "And there's another thing about this, which is that the ordinary...I hate using that word but it's hard to find another. There's no such thing as 'ordinary people': there's just people but, people are not fooled by all of this. I know that I have a perfectly good relationship with my people, my constituency. They know me, I know they trust me and I think they like me. They don't think I'm a bad person or am out to do anything detrimental to them or to their interests. And that's what matters. That is the compensation for when you read something in the paper that you know is unfair - grossly unfair - and wrong. And when that happens you're inclined to get outraged and angry about it, and upset about it. But that's only passing." "But, if the day ever comes when I'm driving through the city and the busman doesn't say "Howya Charlie?" or the taxi fellow doesn't say "Hello there, how's the goin'?" - if that day comes, then I'll be upset. All this stuff in the newspapers - it does upset, I can't deny that. You'd be a particularly insensitive and inhuman sort of individual if it didn't bother you, from time to time. But it's passing. The other thing is the reality. That's the sustaining reality." What aspect of Ireland or Irish society angers you the most? "Ah, there's nothing really. I couldn't live anywhere but in Ireland. I'm not perpetually angry about anything. I might suffer minor irritations, exasperations or anger about particular things, but...no, I like living in Ireland and in the Irish community. (Here, he pauses at length and reflects, he looks me straight in the eye before continuing). I could instance a load of fuckers whose throats I'd cut and push over the nearest cliffs, but there's no percentage in that! (Laughs) "Smug people. I hate smug people. People who think they know it all. I know from my own experiences that nobody knows it all. Some of these commentators who purport to a smug knowallness, who pontificate...They'll say something today and they're totally wrong about it - completely wrong - and they're shown to be wrong about it. Then the next day they're back, pontificating the same as ever. That sort of smug, knowall commentator - I suppose if anything annoys me, that annoys me. But I don't have sleepless nights about it." Were drugs a big concern for you when you're kids were growing up? "I have to say it was more of a worry for me as a politician than as a parent. I was lucky in that I've never, never....well, I don't know what temptations my kids had to confront or to deal with, but they did whatever they were. And indeed none of their pals, that I know of, ever dropped out or became addicted or anything like that. It was just, I suppose, one of those chances of life, that they happened to be in a milieu of their own crowd, who didn't get involved in all that." On the subject of the current contraception debate: isn't it true that the actual behaviour and practice of young people has long since made the question irrelevant? "(Pause) Ah yeah, I think that's probably true enough." It's all very academic at this stage... "Yeah. (Laughs) I think so, yeah." What about in your own day? Was it like that then? "Ah now! (Laughs) To my dying day, I'll regret that I was too late for the free society! We missed out on that! It came too late for my generation!" "But yes, there was a very definite change. See, when I was young, too, authority was much more of a thing. Authority in society, in the community, in school, and of course the guards. You were afraid of the guards. Nowadays, kid's aren't: they just call them "pigs", y'know? But in my day, if a guard said to you "fuck off", you fucked off as quick as you could! There was far more authority, and that was a big change. Kids nowadays have developed their own ethos and mores. And I think we've changed as parents too. I think we were much more understanding and sympathetic to our children than our parents were to us. My mother knew what was best for me, and told me what to do, and what not to do, and insisted that I did or didn't do it. I wasn't like that with my children. We certainly trusted them far more. We felt that what you had to was just give them a home where they knew they were important, where they were loved and where they were trusted and where they could always come back to. If they made a fuck-up of things, they could always come back home and they would be welcomed and looked after and protected and helped. But our parents were different. So, not alone are young people different today, but we as parents were different to them." So is there a dichotomy there between how you would find yourself responding to issues, like contraception, as a parent, and the way you would feel obliged to respond to them as a politician? "Well.....no.(Long pause) You could exaggerate that. Y'see politics is concerned with more than just sexual morality and contraceptives and things like that. Now, mind you, these are the things that have a moreorless fatal preoccupation for journalists. It's extraordinary that for one journalist who comes to me and asks me my views on economics, or the health services, or social welfare, or the North of Ireland, there's ten that want to know what I think about contraceptives. We, in the political world are dealing with practical things. The social welfare system, for instance, looms very large in modern society - all the anomalies and the problems and the snarl-ups - that's an enormous area, and it affects far more people than the contraceptives thing." What about the Nuclear issue - how do feel about that - on a personal level? "I'm increasingly angry about it, I think it's just lunacy itself - the stockpiling of atomic weapons. Like, what's going to happen? What are they there for? Ah, I don't, I suppose, basically believe that we're all going to be wiped out tomorrow morning by a nuclear war. I suppose if any of us really believed that we'd just go and stick our heads in a gas oven. It's too awful to contemplate. Even the most grotesque film can only give you the vaguest impression of what the devastation is likely to be. So I don't suppose, basically that I really think that we're going to go up in a nuclear holocaust. But I do think that it's a very real danger." Is there anything that can be done about it? "Sometimes I like to think that you could get all the nuclear arms into one, great big rocket - remember that rocket that went away into outer space once? It was going to go around Mars once and then go away into the infinite, never to be seen again. Well, if you could put all the nuclear weapons into some sort of rocket like that. (Pauses, laughing) But, sure, when the rocket would blast off, you'd probably go up anyway! But it'd be a marvelous solution." Maybe it'd be safer if we all took off in the rocket and left the bombs here... "(Laughs) Yeah! You take your pick and I'll take mine! But what's going to happen? I don't know. (Pause) The question of nuclear waste too, and the pollution of the seas and the atmosphere is something that worries me. Not paranoiac, or dramatically, or emotionally disturbed about it, but I can understand people who are. I get increasingly angry at the failure of mankind to get to grips with it." What do you do in your spare time? "Anything that comes up of interest, I'll have a go at it. Most recently, I like to go down to my island, Inishvickillane. The main attraction of the island, apart from its natural beauty, and the wildness of it, is that we're more of a family down there. Fortunately, the kids and the wife like it as much as I do. It's as much their place as mine. I really got to know my kids better down there: in Dublin we're always coming and going. We meet tangently, coming and going out in the hall. But down there we're together, and we share experiences together. But I try and do as many things as possible. Like, for instance, my son Conor is an expert on scuba-diving, and I've got him to give me a little bit of instruction on that." Do you read much? "I do and I don't. I certainly don't read anything like as much as I should. When I was younger, and at school and that, I read and read and read and read. I just read everything. But it's so difficult: you read a review of a book and you say "I must read that". And then there's another one. There's so much going on in the world of literature that even if you had the time, it's very difficult to decide what to read. There's so much you want to read." What would you read, if you had the time? "Well, let me see now...I like history type of books - historical novels, that sort of thing. And then I'm increasingly interested in wildlife, in nature, in the sea, and all that type of thing." Do you watch much television? "No. Not very much. I think most television is tripe. Boring rubbish. To me, television is the News, or occasionally some very good documentary-type programmes. Very few. The News, some documentaries and sport." Do you ever see Dallas or any of those things? "(Laughs) I see them because I have to confess that in my home there are those who look at Dallas. And well, I might go and do a bit of work, but sometimes I might sit through it. I really think it's shit. I think it's terrible shit. But then I know that's a minority view. (Laughs) I think most people think it's shit, like, but they look at it all the same." Did you have any heroes growing up? "Well, I suppose Sean Lemass. He was the greatest human being that I ever met. Or could ever hope to meet." What is the most important quality in a friend? "Wel, there was a great word, d'ya see, that Sean Lemass in his whole life instanced but could never pronounce. Like most Dublin people, he could never pronounce "loyalty" - he always pronounced it "loylaty". And I think that's the most important thing: loyalty. A Dublin man's loylaty. Not loyalty, because that's something different. But loylaty. I think that's the most important characteristic in friends." Christmas is only a few weeks away now. Do you like Christmas? "Oh yeah! And I have to be at home for Christmas. To me, Christmas is a Dublin thing. I couldn't be anywhere else except home in Dublin for Christmas, meeting all my friends, having a drink with them, giving out presents, getting presents. I'm a sucker for Christmas!" Is there a day in your life that you remember as the happiest? "Oh, FUCK OFF!! (Laughs) No!!! You're turning into a fuckin' woman's diary columnist now!' Have you ever read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four? "Yes." What would find in Room 101? What, for Charles J. Haughey, is The Worst Thing in the World? "Ah, I'm not too introverted like that. (Pause) Deep down, I'm a very shallow person. (Laughs) -
65cm x 50cm PHOTOGRAPHER TARQUIN BLAKE has a penchant for visiting parts of Ireland people don’t always get to see. He’s written about and photographed Ireland’s abandoned ‘big houses’ and haunted houses, but for his latest book he turns his sights on Irish castles. Like his previous books, Exploring Irish Castles is a coffee table book filled with gorgeous photos and the background stories to some fascinating locations. While his previous book ideas came from his own travels throughout Ireland, this topic was suggested by his publisher – showing how popular Irish castles are to the Irish and those abroad. “I was given an objective – the book had to cover all the main Irish castles and it should cover a variety of ruins, family homes and heritage sites that are open to the public,” explains Blake. “I went off and started investigating all the Irish castles, drawing up a list of the best ones. I started going out visiting them – I visited about 100 castles and 40 of those ended up in the book.” He wanted to cover all the main periods of Irish castles, from the big Anglo Norman castles like Trim Castle to the tower houses and fortified houses, which are the commonest small castle in Ireland. The book also has a selection of the neo gothic castles – the Victorian country houses made to look like castles. Blake did a lot of in-depth research into the castles for the book. “What I found was a lot of the tower houses would have very little history so they weren’t very suitable for including in the book,” he says. There are around 6,000 towers in Ireland, but Blake says that there are very few records related to them around. He gave some insight into the history of castles here: “The concept of using building methods to protect territory was introduced from overseas in the 12th century, when the Irish term caisleán began to appear in manuscripts. By the 16th century, Ireland had become the most castellated country in Europe.” “The tower houses were built up until the early 1600s and it’s generally recognised that Cromwell’s invasion put an end to true castle building,” says Blake. This is because after the invention of artillery, the castle didn’t provide enough protection from invaders. “Before that they were pretty much invincible and everybody was building them and everyone was living in them,” he says. “After Cromwell, they went back to the renaissance houses, and the big country houses in the Georgian period.” The book features very well-known castles, such as Trim Castle and Blarney Castle, but also some lesser-known locations, such as Co Galway’s Fiddaun Castle. It’s all about trying to encourage people to visit the spots, says Blake. One of the most interesting locations was Tullynally Castle in Co Westmeath. Thomas Packenham, the historian, and his family still live there. “It was a fascinating place to visit,” says Blake. “It’s pretty impressive – it is the largest family home in Ireland.”For me the most interesting part was visiting the places and meeting the people. It was great seeing Tullynally, that’s an example there of seeing how people still live in these places. They have massive kitchen and the huge halls, and you can’t really imagine the rooms – big enough to fit 200-300 people.Castle facts
Kilwaughter Castle, County Antrim- There are quite a number of Patrick Agnews in the family, resulting in a bit of a genealogical headache.
- It was used to billet Americans from the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion in preparation for D-Day.
- It occupies a wild position perched on top of the cliff. In 1639 a section of the kitchen collapsed when the cliff face underneath gave way. The dinner, kitchen tables, and all the silverware fell into the sea below.
- Nine of the kitchen staff fell to their deaths and the kitchen boy only survived by clinging to a corner of the crumbling wall.
- After his father’s death in 1581, David Barry, fifth Viscount Buttevant, set fire to the castle, rendering it unliveable so that Sir Walter Raleigh couldn’t have it.
- In 1751, Richard Barry became the sixth earl when he was six years old. A reckless gambler and drinker, he served briefly in the 9th Regiment of Dragoons before dying of a fever at the age of 28.
- In 1599, four-year-old Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth’s namesake and godchild, inherited the Mallow property. The story goes that the Queen sent her godchild two white deer as a christening gift, and the herd of white deer at Mallow today is descended from this original pair.
- In the eighteenth century, Mallow Castle became fantastically famous for its social goings-on, becoming known as ‘The Bath of Ireland’.
- Sir John Jephson upheld a bizarre ritual of having a white rat on a small chair at his right-hand side during all meals, believing this would keep him free from debt. Apparently, the white rat then often appeared before the head of the Jephson family, predicting their imminent demise.
- The hill upon which it is built is a long extinct volcano.
- ‘Fighting Charlie’ was a mean landlord – he gave just £30 for famine relief but spent £15,000 renovating his home.
- You can see the Isle of Man and Scotland from the tower on a clear day.
- The third Earl of Rosse built the 16-ton telescope called Leviathan, which remained the world’s largest telescope until 1917.
- His wife, Lady Mary, was an accomplished early pioneer of photography and installed a darkroom. It is the oldest surviving example of its kind in the world.
- Their son Charles invented the steam turbine. His company eventually became part of Rolls-Royce and still survives as a division of Siemens.
- Jonathan Charles Darby found three upright skeletons sealed into a wall and bricked them up again because he decided there must have been a good reason to put them there.
- It has a reputation as the most haunted castle in Europe.
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Castiron replica of a signpost to Croke Park, the headquarters of the GAA and one of the most famous sporting venues in the world. Dimensions : 40cm x 10cm 1.25kg Croke Park (Irish: Páirc an Chrócaigh) is a Gaelic games stadium located in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is sometimes called Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Since 1891 the site has been used by the GAA to host Gaelic sports, including the annual All-Ireland in Gaelic football and hurling. A major expansion and redevelopment of the stadium ran from 1991–2005, raising capacity to its current 82,300 spectators. This makes Croke Park the third-largest stadium in Europe, and the largest not usually used for association football. Other events held at the stadium include the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2003 Special Olympics, and numerous musical concerts. In 2012, Irish pop group Westlife sold out the stadium in record-breaking time: less than 5 minutes. From 2007–10, Croke Park hosted home matches of the Ireland national rugby union team and the Republic of Ireland national football team, while their new Aviva Stadium was constructed. This use of Croke Park for non-Gaelic sports was controversial and required temporary changes to GAA rules. In June 2012, the stadium hosted the closing ceremony of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress during which Pope Benedict XVI gave an address over video link.City and Suburban Racecourse
The area now known as Croke Park was owned in the 1880s by Maurice Butterly and known as the City and Suburban Racecourse, or Jones' Road sports ground. From 1890 it was also used by the Bohemian Football Club. In 1901 Jones' Road hosted the IFA Cup football final when Cliftonville defeated Freebooters.
A fireworks and light display was held in Croke Park in front of 79,161 fans on Saturday 31 January 2009 to mark the GAA's 125th anniversaryHistory
Recognising the potential of the Jones' Road sports ground a journalist and GAA member, Frank Dineen, borrowed much of the £3,250 asking price and bought the ground in 1908. In 1913 the GAA came into exclusive ownership of the plot when they purchased it from Dineen for £3,500. The ground was then renamed Croke Park in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the GAA's first patrons. In 1913, Croke Park had only two stands on what is now known as the Hogan stand side and grassy banks all round. In 1917, a grassy hill was constructed on the railway end of Croke Park to afford patrons a better view of the pitch. This terrace was known originally as Hill 60, later renamed Hill 16 in memory of the 1916 Easter Rising. It is erroneously believed to have been built from the ruins of the GPO, when it was constructed the previous year in 1915. In the 1920s, the GAA set out to create a high capacity stadium at Croke Park. Following the Hogan Stand, the Cusack Stand, named after Michael Cusack from Clare (who founded the GAA and served as its first secretary), was built in 1927. 1936 saw the first double-deck Cusack Stand open with 5,000 seats, and concrete terracing being constructed on Hill 16. In 1952 the Nally Stand was built in memorial of Pat Nally, another of the GAA founders. Seven years later, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the GAA, the first cantilevered "New Hogan Stand" was opened. The highest attendance ever recorded at an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was 90,556 for Offaly v Down in 1961. Since the introduction of seating to the Cusack stand in 1966, the largest crowd recorded has been 84,516.Bloody Sunday
During the Irish War of Independence on 21 November 1920 Croke Park was the scene of a massacre by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The Police, supported by the British Auxiliary Division, entered the ground and began shooting into the crowd, killing or fatally wounding 14 civilians during a Dublin-Tipperary Gaelic football match. The dead included 13 spectators and Tipperary player Michael Hogan. Posthumously, the Hogan stand built in 1924 was named in his honour. These shootings, on the day which became known as Bloody Sunday, were a reprisal for the killing of 15 people associated with the Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence officers, by Michael Collins' 'squad' earlier that day.
Bloody Sunday remembrance plaqueDublin Rodeo
In 1924, American rodeo promoter, Tex Austin, staged the Dublin Rodeo, Ireland's first professional rodeo at Croke Park Stadium. For seven days, with two shows each day from August 18 to August 24, sell out crowds saw cowboys and cowgirls from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Australia compete for rodeo championship titles.Canadian bronc riders such as Andy Lund and his brother Art Lund, trick riders such as Ted Elder and Vera McGinnis were among the contestants. British Pathe filmed some of the rodeo events.Stadium design
In 1984 the organisation decided to investigate ways to increase the capacity of the old stadium. The design for an 80,000 capacity stadium was completed in 1991. Gaelic sports have special requirements as they take place on a large field. A specific requirement was to ensure the spectators were not too far from the field of play. This resulted in the three-tier design from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and an upper concourse. The premium level contains restaurants, bars and conference areas. The project was split into four phases over a 14-year period. Such was the importance of Croke Park to the GAA for hosting big games, the stadium did not close during redevelopment. During each phase different parts of the ground were redeveloped, while leaving the rest of the stadium open. Big games, including the annual All-Ireland Hurling and Football finals, were played in the stadium throughout the development.
The outside of the Cusack StandPhase one – New Cusack Stand
The first phase of construction was to build a replacement for Croke Park's Cusack Stand. A lower deck opened for use in 1994. The upper deck opened in 1995. Completed at a cost of £35 million, the new stand is 180 metres long, 35 metres high, has a capacity for 27,000 people and contains 46 hospitality suites. The new Cusack Stand contains three tiers from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and finally an upper concourse. One end of the pitch was closer to the stand after this phase, as the process of slightly re-aligning the pitch during the redevelopment of the stadium began. The works were carried out by Sisk Group.Phase two – Davin Stand
Phase Two of the development started in late 1998 and involved extending the new Cusack Stand to replace the existing Canal End terrace. It involved reacquiring a rugby pitch that had been sold to Belvedere College in 1910 by Frank Dineen. In payment and part exchange, the college was given the nearby Distillery Road sportsgrounds.[19] It is now known as The Davin Stand (Irish: Ardán Dáimhím), after Maurice Davin, the first president of the GAA. This phase also saw the creation of a tunnel which was later named the Ali tunnel in honour of Muhammad Ali and his fight against Al Lewis in July 1972 in Croke Park.Phase three – Hogan Stand
Phase Three saw the building of the new Hogan Stand. This required a greater variety of spectator categories to be accommodated including general spectators, corporate patrons, VIPs, broadcast and media services and operation staff. Extras included a fitted-out mezzanine level for VIP and Ard Comhairle (Where the dignitaries sit) along with a top-level press media facility. The end of Phase Three took the total spectator capacity of Croke Park to 82,000.Phase four – Nally Stand & Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace
After the 2003 Special Olympics, construction began in September 2003 on the final phase, Phase Four. This involved the redevelopment of the Nally Stand, named after the athlete Pat Nally, and Hill 16 into a new Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace. While the name Nally had been used for the stand it replaced, the use of the name Dineen was new, and was in honour of Frank Dineen, who bought the original stadium for the GAA in 1908, giving it to them in 1913. The old Nally Stand was taken away and reassembled in Pairc Colmcille, home of Carrickmore GAA in County Tyrone. The phase four development was officially opened by the then GAA President Seán Kelly on 14 March 2005. For logistical reasons (and, to a degree, historical reasons), and also to provide cheaper high-capacity space, the area is a terrace rather than a seated stand, the only remaining standing-room in Croke Park. Unlike the previous Hill, the new terrace was divided into separate sections – Hill A (Cusack stand side), Hill B (behind the goals) and the Nally terrace (on the site of the old Nally Stand). The fully redeveloped Hill has a capacity of around 13,200, bringing the overall capacity of the stadium to 82,300. This made the stadium the second biggest in the EU after the Camp Nou, Barcelona. However, London's new Wembley stadium has since overtaken Croke Park in second place. The presence of terracing meant that for the brief period when Croke Park hosted international association football during 2007–2009, the capacity was reduced to approximately 73,500, due to FIFA's statutes stating that competitive games must be played in all-seater stadiums.Pitch
The pitch in Croke Park is a soil pitch that replaced the Desso GrassMaster pitch laid in 2002. This replacement was made after several complaints by players and managers that the pitch was excessively hard and far too slippery. Since January 2006, a special growth and lighting system called the SGL Concept has been used to assist grass growing conditions, even in the winter months. The system, created by Dutch company SGL (Stadium Grow Lighting), helps in controlling and managing all pitch growth factors, such as light, temperature, CO2, water, air and nutrients.
Croke Park floodlights in use during Six Nations Championship matchFloodlighting
With the 2007 Six Nations clash with France and possibly other matches in subsequent years requiring lighting the GAA installed floodlights in the stadium (after planning permission was granted). Indeed, many other GAA grounds around the country have started to erect floodlights as the organisation starts to hold games in the evenings, whereas traditionally major matches were played almost exclusively on Sunday afternoons. The first game to be played under these lights at Croke Park was a National Football League Division One match between Dublin and Tyrone on 3 February 2007 with Tyrone winning in front of a capacity crowd of over 81,000 – which remains a record attendance for a National League game, with Ireland's Six Nations match with France following on 11 February. Temporary floodlights were installed for the American Bowl game between Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers on the pitch in 1997, and again for the 2003 Special Olympics.Concert
U2's Vertigo Tour at Croke Park in 2005
U2's 360° Tour at Croke Park in 2009Date Performer(s) Opening act(s) Tour/Event Attendance Notes 29 June 1985 U2 In Tua Nua, R.E.M., The Alarm, Squeeze The Unforgettable Fire Tour 57,000 First Irish act to have a headline concert. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary Wide Awake in Dublin. 28 June 1986 Simple Minds Once Upon A Time Tour Guest appearance by Bono 27 June 1987 U2 Light A Big Fire, The Dubliners, The Pogues, Lou Reed The Joshua Tree Tour 114,000 28 June 1987 Christy Moore, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Hothouse Flowers 28 June 1996 Tina Turner Brian Kennedy Wildest Dreams Tour 40,000/40,000 16 May 1997 Garth Brooks World Tour II 18 May 1997 29 May 1998 Elton John & Billy Joel Face to Face 1998 30 May 1998 24 June 2005 U2 The Radiators from Space, The Thrills, The Bravery, Snow Patrol, Paddy Casey, Ash Vertigo Tour 246,743 25 June 2005 27 June 2005 20 May 2006 Bon Jovi Nickelback Have a Nice Day Tour 81,327 9 June 2006 Robbie Williams Basement Jaxx Close Encounters Tour 6 October 2007 The Police Fiction Plane The Police Reunion Tour 81,640 Largest attendance of the tour. 31 May 2008 Celine Dion Il Divo Taking Chances World Tour 69,725 Largest attendance for a solo female act 1 June 2008 Westlife Shayne Ward Back Home Tour 85,000 Second Irish act to have a headline concert. Largest attendance of the tour. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD 10 Years of Westlife - Live at Croke Park Stadium. 14 June 2008 Neil Diamond 13 June 2009 Take That The Script Take That Present: The Circus Live 24 July 2009 U2 Glasvegas, Damien Dempsey U2 360° Tour 243,198 25 July 2009 Kaiser Chiefs, Republic of Loose 27 July 2009 Bell X1, The Script The performances of "New Year's Day" and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" were recorded for the group's live album U22 and for the band's remix album Artificial Horizon and the live EP Wide Awake in Europe, respectively. 5 June 2010 Westlife Wonderland, WOW, JLS, Jedward Where We Are Tour 86,500 Largest attendance of the tour. 18 June 2011 Take That Pet Shop Boys Progress Live 154,828 19 June 2011 22 June 2012 Westlife Jedward, The Wanted, Lawson Greatest Hits Tour 187,808[24] The 23 June 2012 date broke the stadium record for selling out its tickets in four minutes. Eleventh largest attendance at an outdoor stadium worldwide. Largest attendance of the tour and the band's music career history. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD The Farewell Tour - Live in Croke Park. 23 June 2012 26 June 2012 Red Hot Chili Peppers Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Vaccines I'm with You World Tour 23 May 2014 One Direction 5 Seconds of Summer Where We Are Tour 235,008 24 May 2014 25 May 2014 20 June 2015 The Script & Pharrell Williams No Sound Without Silence Tour 74,635 24 July 2015 Ed Sheeran x Tour 162,308 25 July 2015 27 May 2016 Bruce Springsteen The River Tour 2016 160,188 29 May 2016 9 July 2016 Beyoncé Chloe x Halle, Ingrid Burley The Formation World Tour 68,575 8 July 2017 Coldplay AlunaGeorge, Tove Lo A Head Full of Dreams Tour[25] 80,398 22 July 2017 U2 Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 80,901 17 May 2018 The Rolling Stones The Academic No Filter Tour 64,823 15 June 2018 Taylor Swift Camila Cabello, Charli XCX Taylor Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour 136.000 Swift became the first woman headline two concerts in a row there. 16 June 2018 7 July 2018 Michael Bublé Emeli Sandé 24 May 2019 Spice Girls Jess Glynne Spice World - 2019 UK Tour 5 July 2019 Westlife James Arthur Wild Youth The 20 Touror The Twenty Tour The 5 July 2019 date sold out its tickets in six minutes. Second date released were also sold out in under forty-eight hours. 6 July 2019 Non-Gaelic games
There was great debate in Ireland regarding the use of Croke Park for sports other than those of the GAA. As the GAA was founded as a nationalist organisation to maintain and promote indigenous Irish sport, it has felt honour-bound throughout its history to oppose other, foreign (in practice, British), sports. In turn, nationalist groups supported the GAA as the prime example of purely Irish sporting culture. Until its abolition in 1971, rule 27 of the GAA constitution stated that a member of the GAA could be banned from playing its games if found to be also playing association football, rugby or cricket. That rule was abolished but rule 42 still prohibited the use of GAA property for games with interests in conflict with the interests of the GAA. The belief was that rugby and association football were in competition with Gaelic football and hurling, and that if the GAA allowed these sports to use their ground it might be harmful to Gaelic games, while other sports, not seen as direct competitors with Gaelic football and hurling, were permitted, such as the two games of American football (Croke Park Classic college football game between The University of Central Florida and Penn State, and an American Bowl NFL preseason game between the Chicago Bears and the Pittsburgh Steelers) on the Croke Park pitch during the 1990s.[27] On 16 April 2005, a motion to temporarily relax rule No. 42 was passed at the GAA Annual Congress. The motion gives the GAA Central Council the power to authorise the renting or leasing of Croke Park for events other than those controlled by the Association, during a period when Lansdowne Road – the venue for international soccer and rugby matches – was closed for redevelopment. The final result was 227 in favour of the motion to 97 against, 11 votes more than the required two-thirds majority. In January 2006, it was announced that the GAA had reached agreement with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) to stage two Six Nations games and four soccer internationals at Croke Park in 2007 and in February 2007, use of the pitch by the FAI and the IRFU in 2008 was also agreed.These agreements were within the temporary relaxation terms, as Lansdowne Road was still under redevelopment until 2010. Although the GAA had said that hosted use of Croke Park would not extend beyond 2008, irrespective of the redevelopment progress, fixtures for the 2009 Six Nations rugby tournament saw the Irish rugby team using Croke park for a third season. 11 February 2007 saw the first rugby union international to be played there. Ireland were leading France in a Six Nations clash, but lost 17–20 after conceding a last minute (converted) try. Raphael Ibanez scored the first try in that match; Ronan O'Gara scored Ireland's first ever try in Croke Park. A second match between Ireland and England on 24 February 2007 was politically symbolic because of the events of Bloody Sunday in 1920.There was considerable concern as to what reaction there would be to the singing of the British national anthem "God Save the Queen". Ultimately the anthem was sung without interruption or incident, and applauded by both sets of supporters at the match, which Ireland won by 43–13 (their largest ever win over England in rugby). On 2 March 2010, Ireland played their final international rugby match against a Scotland team that was playing to avoid the wooden spoon and hadn't won a championship match against Ireland since 2001. Outside half, Dan Parks inspired the Scots to a 3-point victory and ended Irish Hopes of a triple crown. On 24 March 2007, the first association football match took place at Croke Park. The Republic of Ireland took on Wales in UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying Group D, with a Stephen Ireland goal securing a 1–0 victory for the Irish in front of a crowd of 72,500. Prior to this, the IFA Cup had been played at the then Jones' Road in 1901, but this was 12 years before the GAA took ownership. Negotiations took place for the NFL International Series's 2011 game to be held at Croke Park but the game was awarded to Wembley Stadium.World record attendance
On 2 May 2009, Croke Park was the venue for a Heineken Cup rugby semi-final, in which Leinster defeated Munster 25–6. The attendance of 82,208 set a new world record attendance for a club rugby union game.[35] This record stood until 31 March 2012 when it was surpassed by an English Premiership game between Harlequins and Saracens at Wembley Stadium which hosted a crowd of 83,761.This was beaten again in 2016 in the Top 14 final at the Nou Camp which hosted a crowd of 99,124Skyline tour
A walkway, known under a sponsorship deal as Etihad Skyline Croke Park, opened on 1 June 2012.From 44 metres above the ground, it offers views of Dublin city and the surrounding area.The Olympic Torch was brought to the stadium and along the walkway on 6 June 2012.GAA Hall of Fame
On 11 February 2013, the GAA opened the Hall of Fame section in the Croke Park museum. The foundation of the award scheme is the Teams of the Millennium the football team which was announced in 1999 and the hurling team in 2000 and all 30 players were inducted into the hall of fame along with Limerick hurler Eamonn Cregan and Offaly footballer Tony McTague who were chosen by a GAA sub-committee from the years 1970–74.New inductees will be chosen on an annual basis from the succeeding five-year intervals as well as from years preceding 1970. In April 2014, Kerry legend Mick O'Dwyer, Sligo footballer Micheál Kerins, along with hurlers Noel Skehan of Kilkenny and Pat McGrath of Waterford became the second group of former players to receive hall of fame awards.
Statue of Michael Cusack outside the Croke Park GAA Museum -
Carrolls Number 1 Virginia Cigarettes Retro advert fashioned from the blood, sweat,tears and spillage of a well used Irish Bar Trays & enamel signs.Using high quality reprographics we have brought every scratch,dent and mark back to life in the shape of this unique series of prints. Dimensions : 35cm x 48cm Glazed
A packet of 20 Carrolls Number 1
A package of 20 MajorP. J. Carroll & Company Limited, often called Carroll's, is a tobacco company in Republic of Ireland. It is Ireland's oldest tobacco manufacturer and is now a subsidiary of British American Tobacco Plc.Its cigarette brands were among the best selling in Ireland in the twentieth century. Its factory was for decades the largest employer in Dundalk. Patrick James Carroll (b. 1803) completed his apprenticeship as a tobacconist in 1824 and opened a shop in Dundalk, later also manufacturing cigars.Patrick James moved to Liverpool in the 1850s. His son Vincent Stannus Carroll expanded the firm in the later 19th century.His son James Marmion Carroll moved to a house outside Dundalk.A second factory was opened, in Liverpool, in 1923. The company went public in 1934. A purpose-built factory opened in 1970. Designed by Ronnie Tallon of Michael Scott and Partners, it was described by Frank McDonald as "way ahead of anything else in Ireland at the time". In 1974 to mark the 150th anniversary of its founding, P.J. Carroll published an illustrated booklet by the writer James Plunkett: P. J. Carroll & Co. Ltd, Dublin & Dundalk - A Retrospect, outlining the development of the company in its historical context. Carroll's was acquired by Rothmans in 1990; Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco Plc in 1998. The company's share of the Irish tobacco market is around 17%. In 2002 the Dundalk site was sold for €16.4m to the Department of Education and repurposed for the campus of Dundalk Institute of Technology. Carroll's rented back a small section for its remaining factory operations, until finally ceasing its Dundalk operations in 2008. Carrolls remains an Irish company with deep connections to hundreds of retirees and nearly 40 staff based in their Dublin offices. PJ Carroll agrees that the Government should regulate on smoking and health issues; this regulation should be informed, evidence-based, and proportionate. PJ Carroll and BAT acknowledge that smoking is a cause of various serious and fatal diseases, including lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and cardiovascular diseases. In 2013,some lawmakers suggested PJ Carroll should be prohibited from speaking with lawmakers on the basis of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). PJ Carroll comes under the definition of Tobacco Industry as set out by the FCTC, but the FCTC does not prohibit engagement between tobacco companies and public representatives, but puts in place strict rules relating to transparency.
20 Sweet AftonBrands
- "Carrolls Number 1", its first filter cigarette, was launched in 1958.
- "Carrolls Additive Free* Red" and "Carrolls Additive Free* Blue" was launched in 2013 as additive free* cigarettes started to gain popularity across Western Europe. (*No additives in the tobacco blend does NOT mean a less harmful cigarette)
- "Pall Mall" is one of PJ Carroll's strongest growing brands.
- Vogue is PJ Carroll's premium cigarette brand.
- "Major",[4] a full flavor cigarette.
- "Sweet Afton", launched in 1919, was named after "'Afton Waters" by Robert Burns, whose sister Agnes was buried in a graveyard opposite the old Carrolls factory in Church Street, Dundalk.[2]Sweet Afton cigarettes were discontinued in the Autumn of 2011.
Sponsorship[edit]
Carroll's was a major sponsor of sport in Ireland until restrictions were imposed on tobacco advertising. The company had naming rights over the GAA All Stars Awards (1971–78);[8] and Irish showjumping horses of the 1970s and 80s, such as "Carroll's Boomerang".[9] In golf, Carroll's was the sponsor of several professional tournaments including the Carroll's International (1963 to 1974), the Carroll's Number 1 Tournament (1965 to 1968), the Carroll's Irish Match Play Championship (1969 to 1982),[10] and most notably the revived Irish Open from 1975 to 1993. -
Fire damaged but still robustly intact cast iron Capel St street sign .This pieced of Dublin history was acquired in the UK where the story goes a former British soldier brought it home as a souvenir after extracting it from the post 1916 Easter rising burning rubble.Whether this anecdote is true or not, we feel this is a unique and once off item not to be missed ! For further information on pricing and shipping costs please contact us directly at irishpubemporium@gmail.com 60cm x 14cm 5kg It is sometimes claimed that the street takes its name from the chapel of St Mary's Abbey; other Capel Streets may be named after chapels, but this one is named after Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1672–1677. Built by Sir Humphrey Jervis in the late 17th century, he also built Essex Bridge (today Grattan Bridge), and the street was known for its mansions and a royal mint. In the 18th century, it became a commercial hub, with two-bay buildings replacing the "Dutch Billy" houses.The Capel Street Theatre also stood there in the 18th century. The Torch Theatre operated on Capel Street in 1935–41. The street declined in the 20th century, before a revival around the 1980s. Today it is known for its variety of restaurants, shops, cafés and pubs; as Panti, the owner of Pantibar put it, "You can buy a lightbulb, sexual lubricant, Brazilian rice, get a pint and go to a trad session." Louis Copeland's tailor is another notable business.-
Berlin Optician, 157 Capel Street -
Site of the Torch Theatre, 114–116 Capel Street -
Slattery's Bar, 129 Capel Street -
Jack Nealon's pub, 165 Capel Street
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Bridget Breens was a renowned public house in the North Tipperary market town of Roscrea.Bridget had a grocery, wine and spirit store on Rosemary St in the town and bottled her own beers and whiskey. Origins ; Roscrea Co Tipperary. Dimensions : 25cm x 35cm Glazed Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” -
Humorous sketch of the enigmatic genius Brendan Began with typical irreverent quote attached. 37.5cm x 25.5cm Dublin BRENDAN BEHAN 1923-1964 PLAYWRIGHT AND AUTHOR Behan was born in Dublin on 9 February 1923. His father was a house painter who had been imprisoned as a republican towards the end of the Civil War, and from an early age Behan was steeped in Irish history and patriotic ballads; however, there was also a strong literary and cultural atmosphere in his home. At fourteen Behan was apprenticed to his father's trade. He was already a member of Fianna Éireann, the youth organisation of the Irish Republican Army, and a contributor to The United Irishman. When the IRA launched a bombing campaign in England in 1939, Behan was trained in explosives, but was arrested the day he landed in Liverpool. In February 1940 he was sentenced to three years' Borstal detention. He spent two years in a Borstal in Suffolk, making good use of its excellent library. In 1942, back in Dublin, Behan fired at a detective during an IRA parade and was sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Again he broadened his education, becoming a fluent Irish speaker. During his first months in Mountjoy prison, Sean O Faolain published Behan's description of his Borstal experiences in The Bell. Behan was released in 1946 as part of a general amnesty and returned to painting. He would serve other prison terms, either for republican activity or as a result of his drinking, but none of such length. For some years Behan concentrated on writing verse in Irish. He lived in Paris for a time before returning in 1950 to Dublin, where he cultivated his reputation as one of the more rambunctious figures in the city's literary circles. In 1954 Behan's play The Quare Fellow was well received in the tiny Pike Theatre. However, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London, that brought Behan a wider reputation - significantly assisted by a drunken interview on BBC television. Thereafter, Behan was never free from media attention, and he in turn was usually ready to play the drunken Irlshman. The 'quare fellow', never seen on stage, is a condemned man in prison. His imminent execution touches the lives of the other prisoners, the warders and the hangman, and the play is in part a protest against capital punishment. More important, though, its blend of tragedy and comedy underlines the survival of the prisoners' humanity in their inhumane environment. How much the broader London version owed to Joan Littlewood is a matter of debate. Comparing him with another alcoholic writer, Dylan Thomas, a friend said that 'Dylan wrote Under Milkwood and Brendan wrote under Littlewood'. Behan's second play, An Giall (1958), was commissioned by Gael Linn, the Irish-language organisation. Behan translated the play into English and it was Joan Littlewood's production of The Hostage (1958) which led to success in London and New York. As before Behan's tragi-comedy deals with a closed world, in this case a Dublin brothel where the IRA imprison an English soldier, but Littlewood diluted the naturalism of the Irish version with interludes of music-hall singing and dancing. Behan's autobiographical Borstal Boy also appeared in 1958, and its early chapters on prison life are among his best work. By then, however, he was a victim of his own celebrity, and alcoholism and diabetes were taking their toll. His English publishers suggested that, instead of the writing he now found difficult, he dictate to a tape recorder. The first outcome was Brendan Behan's Island (1962), a readable collection of anecdotes and opinions in which it was apparent that Behan had moved away from the republican extremism of his youth. Tape-recording also produced Brendan Behan's New York(1964) and Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965), a disappointing sequel to Borstal Boy. A collection of newspaper columns from the l950s, published as Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963), merely underlined the inferiority of his later work. When Behan died in Dublin on 20 March 1964, an IRA guard of honour escorted his coffin. One newspaper described it as the biggest funeral since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell. -
29cm x 36cm. Dublin Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan)9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time. An Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family becoming a member of the IRA's youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. There was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and he was also imprisoned in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara, and also resided in Paris for a time. In 1954, Behan's first play The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television with Malcolm Muggeridge. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller and by 1955, Behan had married Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, with whom he later had a daughter Blanaid Behan in 1963. By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York City, famously declaring, "To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race."By this point, Behan began spending time with people including Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller and was followed by a young Bob Dylan.He even turned down his invitation to the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. However, this newfound fame did nothing to aid his health or his work, with his medical condition continuing to deteriorate: Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. He briefly attempted to combat this by a sober stretch while staying at Chelsea Hotel in New York, but once again turned back to drink. Behan died on 20 March 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar in Dublin. He was given a full IRA guard of honour, which escorted his coffin. It was described by several newspapers as the biggest Irish funeral of all time after those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
O’Donoghue’s Pub (also known as O'Donoghue's Bar) is a historically significant drinking establishment located at 15 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, Ireland—near St. Stephen's Green on Dublin’s south side. Built in 1789 as a grocery store, it began operating full-time as a pub when purchased by the O’Donoghue family in 1934. This pub is closely associated with Irish traditional music and was where the popular Irish folk group, The Dubliners, began performing in the early 1960s. Many other notable Irish musicians—including Séamus Ennis, Joe Heaney, Andy Irvine,Christy Moore, The Fureys and Phil Lynott—have played at O’Donoghue’s, and their photographs are displayed in the pub. Included are portraits of The Dubliners themselves: the five founding members Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, Ciarán Bourke, John Sheahan and Barney McKenna, as well as later members Eamonn Campbell and Seán Cannon; these photographs hang to the right of the entrance, where the nightly sessions are played.O'Donoghue's Pub 
O'Donoghue's pub in central Dublin cityAddress 15 Merrion Row, Dublin 2 Completed 1789 as a grocery store Opened 1934 Andy Irvine wrote the tribute song "O'Donoghue's", in which he reminisces about his early days in Dublin—when he first started frequenting the pub in August 1962. The song was released on the album Changing Trains (2007). Dessie Hynes from Longford bought the bar from Paddy and Maureen O'Donoghue in 1977 and ran the pub with his family for 11 years. In 1988, O’Donoghue’s was purchased by publicans Oliver Barden and John Mahon. Barden is still the proprietor and continues to run the pub with his family and staff to this day.O’Donoghue’sIt was August 1962 When I first set foot in O’Donoghue’s A world of music, friends and booze Opened up before me I never could’ve guessed as I walked through the door Just what the future had in store A crossroads for my life I saw Lying there to taunt me.Origins :DublinDimensions :27cm x 33cm -
Superb original painting from 1964 of the legendary author, playwright,wit,raconteur and bon vivant Brendan Behan and the familar facade of O'Donoghues of Baggott St,often frequented by Behan.The artist attributed is Edward Tomkins . Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan)9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time. An Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family becoming a member of the IRA's youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. There was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and he was also imprisoned in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara, and also resided in Paris for a time. In 1954, Behan's first play The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television with Malcolm Muggeridge. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller and by 1955, Behan had married Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, with whom he later had a daughter Blanaid Behan in 1963. By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York City, famously declaring, "To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race."By this point, Behan began spending time with people including Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller and was followed by a young Bob Dylan.He even turned down his invitation to the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. However, this newfound fame did nothing to aid his health or his work, with his medical condition continuing to deteriorate: Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. He briefly attempted to combat this by a sober stretch while staying at Chelsea Hotel in New York, but once again turned back to drink. Behan died on 20 March 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar in Dublin. He was given a full IRA guard of honour, which escorted his coffin. It was described by several newspapers as the biggest Irish funeral of all time after those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
O’Donoghue’s Pub (also known as O'Donoghue's Bar) is a historically significant drinking establishment located at 15 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, Ireland—near St. Stephen's Green on Dublin’s south side. Built in 1789 as a grocery store, it began operating full-time as a pub when purchased by the O’Donoghue family in 1934. This pub is closely associated with Irish traditional music and was where the popular Irish folk group, The Dubliners, began performing in the early 1960s. Many other notable Irish musicians—including Séamus Ennis, Joe Heaney, Andy Irvine,Christy Moore, The Fureys and Phil Lynott—have played at O’Donoghue’s, and their photographs are displayed in the pub. Included are portraits of The Dubliners themselves: the five founding members Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, Ciarán Bourke, John Sheahan and Barney McKenna, as well as later members Eamonn Campbell and Seán Cannon; these photographs hang to the right of the entrance, where the nightly sessions are played.O'Donoghue's Pub
O'Donoghue's pub in central Dublin cityAddress 15 Merrion Row, Dublin 2 Completed 1789 as a grocery store Opened 1934 Andy Irvine wrote the tribute song "O'Donoghue's", in which he reminisces about his early days in Dublin—when he first started frequenting the pub in August 1962. The song was released on the album Changing Trains (2007). Dessie Hynes from Longford bought the bar from Paddy and Maureen O'Donoghue in 1977 and ran the pub with his family for 11 years. In 1988, O’Donoghue’s was purchased by publicans Oliver Barden and John Mahon. Barden is still the proprietor and continues to run the pub with his family and staff to this day.O’Donoghue’sIt was August 1962 When I first set foot in O’Donoghue’s A world of music, friends and booze Opened up before me I never could’ve guessed as I walked through the door Just what the future had in store A crossroads for my life I saw Lying there to taunt me.Origins :DublinDimensions :27cm x 33cm -
35cm x 50cm Limerickloody Sunday, 21st November 1920
In 1920 the War of Independence was ongoing in Ireland.
On the morning of November 21st, an elite assassination unit known as ‘The Squad’ mounted an operation planned by Michael Collins, Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Their orders were clear – they were to take out the backbone of the British Intelligence network in Ireland, specifically a group of officers known as ‘The Cairo Gang’. The shootings took place in and around Dublin’s south inner city and resulted in fourteen deaths, including six intelligence agents and two members of the British Auxiliary Force. Later that afternoon, Dublin were scheduled to play Tipperary in a one-off challenge match at Croke Park, the proceeds of which were in aid of the Republican Prisoners Dependents Fund. Tensions were high in Dublin due to fears of a reprisal by Crown forces following the assassinations. Despite this a crowd of almost 10,000 gathered in Croke Park. Throw-in was scheduled for 2.45pm, but it did not start until 3.15pm as crowd congestion caused a delay.Eye-witness accounts suggest that five minutes after the throw-in an aeroplane flew over Croke Park. It circled the ground twice and shot a red flare - a signal to a mixed force of Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.), Auxiliary Police and Military who then stormed into Croke Park and opened fire on the crowd. Amongst the spectators, there was a rush to all four exits, but the army stopped people from leaving the ground and this created a series of crushes around the stadium. Along the Cusack Stand side, hundreds of people braved the twenty-foot drop and jumped into the adjacent Belvedere Sports Grounds. The shooting lasted for less than two minutes. That afternoon in Croke Park, 14 people including one player (Michael Hogan from Tipperary), lost their lives. It is estimated that 60 – 100 people were injured.
Dublin Team, Bloody Sunday 1920The names of those who died in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday 1920 were. James Burke, Jane Boyle, Daniel Carroll, Michael Feery, Michael Hogan, Thomas (Tom) Hogan, James Matthews, Patrick O’Dowd, Jerome O’Leary, William (Perry) Robinson, Tom Ryan, John William (Billy) Scott, James Teehan, Joseph Traynor. In 1925, the GAA's Central Council took the decision to name a stand in Croke Park after Michael Hogan. The 21st November 2020 marks one hundred years since the events of Bloody Sunday in Croke Park.
Tipperary Team, Bloody Sunday 1920
Michael Hogan -
Out of stock
Ferns Co Wexford. 30cm x 26cm Bishop's Water Distillery was an Irish whiskey distillery which operated in Wexford, Ireland between 1827 and 1914. The distillery was named for a stream which ran along the back of the distillery, the Bishop's Water, said to possess "various occult properties derived from the blessings of the sainted Bishop of Ferns". Constructed at a cost of £30,000, the distillery was reported to be “reckoned the most perfect and complete of the kind in Ireland”. In 1833, just a few years after it opened, the distillery recorded an output of about 200,000 gallons per annum .However, output had fallen to just 110,000 gallons per annum in 1886, when the distillery was visited by Alfred Barnard, as recorded in his seminal 1887 publication "The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom". This was amongst the lowest output of any distillery operating in Ireland at the time, and far below the potential output of 250,000 gallons per annum reported when the distillery was offered for sale as a going concern in 1909.The distillery's whiskey, Barnard noted, was highly appreciated locally, and in the British cities where it was exported. In the early 20th century, with the Irish whiskey industry in decline, Bishop's Water distillery, like the majority of distilleries in Ireland at the time, suffered serious financial difficulties, and entered bankruptcy. Following its closure, the distillery was initially converted into an iron works (Pierce Ironworks). However, much of the site was later demolished, and little evidence of the distillery still remains. Some mementos can still be found in locals pubs, while a stone archway known to have been extant in 1903 and now bearing the inscription "Casa Rio", possibly in reference to the location of a Pierce ironworks office in Buenos Aires, marks the entrance to the site where the distillery once stood, on Distillery Road.History
In 1827, a whiskey distillery was established on what is now Distillery Road, Wexford by a consortium of businessmen. The consortium which traded under "Devereux, Harvey, and Co., Distillers", comprised a number of local businessmen, including Nicholas Devereux, his father John Devereux, and Maurice Crosbie Harvey. John Devereux had previously operated a small distillery in the area in the late 1700s, but will little success.In 1830, one of the partners, Maurice Harvey, was accidentally killed at the distillery by an excise man who was taking aim at some birds flying overhead.A few years later, in 1836, the partnership was dissolved at the mutual consent of the remaining partners, with Nicholas Devereux taking sole ownership of the distillery, after which the distillery traded under the name Nicholas Devereux & Son.On his death in 1840, operation of the distillery was taken over by his son Richard. Nichloas Devereux's daughter, Mary Anne Therese was also deeply involving in the distilling industry. She married John Locke, founder of the larger Kilbeggan distillery, and successfully took over the business operations of the distillery on his death in 1868. According to Alfred Barnard, the British journalist who visited Bishop's Water in the 1880s, the distillery produced triple-distilled "old pot still whiskey", which was sold locally in Ireland, and also exported to London, Liverpool, and Bristol. At the time of his visit, the Malt Warehouses on-site contained over 16,000 barrels of pure malt. In addition, upwards of 3,000 casks of whiskey were undergoing maturation at the distillery. Whiskey from the distillery is also noted to have been used in the production of blended whiskeys in later years. In the early 20th century, the distillery suffered financial difficulties. In 1907, an attempt was made to appoint a receiver, and in 1909, the distillery was put up for sale, but no takers could be found.In 1914, distilling eventually ceased at the site, and the remaining stocks were sold off.
An 1830 newspaper article reporting on the accidental death at the distillery -
50cm x 45cm x 10cm Co Carlow Sir Alfred James Munnings, KCVO PRA RI (8 October 1878 – 17 July 1959) was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund, he earned several prestigious commissions after the Great War that made him wealthy. Between 1912 and 1914 he was a member of the Newlyn School of artists. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics, the 1932 Summer Olympics, and the 1948 Summer Olympics. Munnings was president of the Royal Academy of Arts from 1944 until his death.Biography
Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk to Christian parents. His father was the miller and Alfred grew up surrounded by the activity of a busy working mill with horses and horse-drawn carts arriving daily. After leaving Framlingham College at the age of fourteenhe was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years, attending the Norwich School of Art in his spare time. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full-time painter. The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsiesand horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood (1888–1914), a young horsewoman and painter. They married on 19 January 1912 but she tried to kill herself on their honeymoon and did so in 1914. Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as 'the house of my dreams'.He used the house and adjoining studio extensively throughout the rest of his career, and it was opened as the Munnings Art Museum in the early 1960s, after Munnings's death. Munnings remarried in 1920; his second wife was another horsewoman, Violet McBride (née Haines). There were no children from either marriage. Although his second wife encouraged him to accept commissions from society figures, Munnings became best known for his equine painting: he often depicted horses participating in hunting and racing.War artists
Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron(1918), Canadian War Museum
Felling a Tree in the Vosges (1918), Canadian War MuseumAlthough he volunteered to join the Army, he was assessed as unfit to fight. In 1917, his participation in the war was limited to a civilian job outside Reading, processing tens of thousands of Canadian horses en route to France — and often to death. Later, he was assigned to one of the horse remount depots on the Western Front. Munnings's talent was employed as a war artistto the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, under the patronage of Max Aitken, in the latter part of the war. During the war he painted many scenes, including in 1918 a portrait of General Jack Seely mounted on his horse Warrior (now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). Munnings worked on this canvas a few thousand yards from the German front lines. When General Seely's unit was forced into a hasty withdrawal, the artist discovered what it was like to come under shellfire.
Study of a Swiss Bull (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumIn 1918 Munnings also painted Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron.After what is known as "the last great cavalry charge" at the Battle of Moreuil Wood, Gordon Flowerdew was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for leading Lord Strathcona's Horse in a successful engagement with entrenched German forces.[11] The Canadian Forestry Corps invited Munnings to tour its work camps in France, and in 1918 he produced drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings, including Draft Horses, Lumber Mill in the Forest of Dreux.This role of horses in the war was critical and under-reported; and in fact, horse fodder was the single largest commodity shipped to the front by some countries. The Canadian War Records Exhibition at the Royal Academy after the Armistice of November 1918 included forty-five of Munnings's canvasses.
Le Comte d'Etchegoyen features Olivier d'Etchegoyen, the headquarters staff interpreter for the Canadian Cavalry Brigade (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumAfter the war, Munnings began to establish himself as a sculptor, although he had no formal training in the discipline. His first public work was the equestrian statue of Edward Horner in Mells, Somerset, a collaboration with his friend Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed a plinth for the statue. This work led to a commission from the Jockey Club for a sculpture of Brown Jack.
Shelters in Smallfoot Wood (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumLater career
Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944. He was made a Knight Bachelor in July of the same year,and was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1947 New Year Honours.His presidency is best known for the valedictory speech he gave in 1949, in which he attacked modernism. The broadcast was heard by millions of listeners to BBC radio. An evidently inebriated Munnings claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso had corrupted art. He recalled that Winston Churchill had once said to him, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming down the street would you join with me in kicking his ... something something?" to which Munnings said he replied, "Yes Sir, I would". In 1950, Munnings, got hold of some of Stanley Spencer's Scrapbook Drawings and initiated a police prosecution against him for obscenity. Munnings died at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, on 17 July 1959. His ashes were interred at St Paul's Cathedral, with an epitaph by John Masefield ('O friend, how very lovely are the things, The English things, you helped us to perceive'). After his death, his widow turned their house in Dedham into a museum of his work. The village pub in Mendham is named after him, as is a street there. Munnings was portrayed by Dominic Cooper in the film Summer in February, which was released in Britain in 2013.The film is adapted from a novel by Jonathan Smith.At auction
His sporting art works have enjoyed popularity in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. As of 2007, the highest price paid for a Munnings painting was $7,848,000 for The Red Prince Mare, far above his previous auction record of $4,292,500 set at Christie's in December 1999. It was one of four works by Munnings in the auction. The Red Prince Mare is a 40 by 60 inches (100 by 150 cm) oil on canvas that was executed in 1921 and had an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000.Writings
Munnings wrote an autobiography in three volumes:- An Artist's Life, London: Museum Press, 1950
- The Second Burst, London: Museum Press, 1951
- The Finish, London: Museum Pres
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Beautiful tribute print to the great Arkle with list of major career victories undeneath.The Legendary gelding is pictured successfully negotiating a fence at Cheltenham with regular jockey Pat Taafe on board wearing the distinctive yellow and black silks of Arkle's owner Anne,Duchess of Westminster. 70cm x 50cm Kilcock Co Kildare Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe. At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes. On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent 1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle. In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year. The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals. The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races. Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again. Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth. In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13. Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'. The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co. Meath in April 2014. -
Beautifully atmospheric Raymond Campbell still life print depicting a familiar scene of an Irish Bar shelf or kitchen dresser.You can almost reach out and touch the bottles of Powers & Jameson Whiskey plus assorted items such as an old hurling sliotar,a sea shell, postcards etc Origins :Bray Co Wicklow. Dimensions : 68cm x 55cm. Unglazed Raymond Campbell has long been known as one of the modern masters of still life oil paintings. Instantly recognisable, his artwork is often characterised by arrangements of dusty vintage wine bottles, glasses and selections of fruit and cheeses. What isn’t so known about Raymond is how he began his working life as a refuse collector and laying carpets. Indeed it was the former which allowed him to salvage many of the vintage bottles which he uses for his subject matter to this day. Born in 1956 in Surrey, Raymond Campbell is now considered by many as the United Kingdom’s pre-eminent still life artist. His works “Second Home”, “The Gamble” and “The Lost Shoe” are among pieces which have been exhibited at The Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy, London. He has had many sell-out one man exhibitions and has also exhibited several times at The Mall Galleries, London and numerous other galleries worldwide. His work can be found in many international private collections, particularly in the USA, Australia and across Europe. -
Beautiful,rare unusual 1960s Guinness ashtray made by Arklow Pottery in Co Wicklow. 23cm x 18cm x 7cm Arklow Pottery was a pottery founded in 1934 and formally opened by Seán Lemass (Minister for Industry and Commerce) 29 July 1935 in South Quay, Arklow, County Wicklow, Ireland. The company produced many decorative earthenware goods and general table crockery. Arklow Pottery ran into financial difficulties in the 1970s and was taken over by Japanese tableware company Noritake in 1977. After losses of more than £7.5 million over a 20-year period, the company ceased production in 1998. At its peak the company had employed 480 people.There is an Arklow Pottery cup and saucer with Tiger stripes, designed by John French around 1950, held and exhibited by the National Museum of Ireland. Arklow pottery is now closed. Origins : Co Wicklow Dimensions :18cm x 23cm -
Beautiful print of the Trinity College Dublin Front Gate from the aspect of College Green by the artist known as Judges. Dublin 27cm x 32cm -
40cm x 34cm LimerickUnfashionably – even eccentrically – bred, and strangely marked, he was a two-year-old of exceptional merit, a champion sire and, despite being sub-fertile and retired early from stud duties, he wielded tremendous influence on the breed. A racehorse of blinding speed, though bred to stay extreme distances. A stallion colossus who proved the cornerstone of an everlasting host of equine celebrities from flying machines to Grand National winners. The supreme nonpareil giant of turf history known as The Tetrarch was truly a freak of nature and, in his esteemed trainer’s words, “there will never be his likes again”.THE TETRARCHEarly Years
Edward "Cub" KennedyBorn in 1911 on April 22nd at Edward “Cub” Kennedy’s Straffan Station Stud in Kildare, not far from where the present Goffs Sales complex is located. The Tetrarch was born chesnut with black “Bend Or spots” (so called after his Derby winning great-grandsire) which later transformed into his famous grey with splotches of white coat, that saddled him with the nickname “The Rocking Horse”. Every grey horse must have at least one grey parent and The Tetrarch inherited his colour from his sire. A direct line of his grey ancestors can be traced, like all grey thoroughbreds, back to one grey stallion in the original Weatherbys Stud Book named Alcocks Arabian, who was born around the turn of the 18th century and had his origins in Syria. When Cub Kennedy hastily arranged liaison of Roi Herode and Vahren in the late spring of 1910, he had been obsessed with the idea of reviving the apparently moribund male line of Herod. Could there be a more aptly named stallion for the job than Roi Herode? It was already nearly three months into the breeding season when Kennedy purchased his new stallion and he had little chance of attracting many outside mares, but he did have a couple due to foal late himself, one being Vahren. Kennedy decided to send the young Tetrarch to the 1912 Doncaster yearling sales and he knew that for make and shape there would be few to match him. Atty Persse duly had to go to 1,300gns to secure the colt for his patron Dermot McCalmont. When his jockey Steve Donoghue first saw him he described The Tetrarch as “a sort of elephant grey with big blotches, as though someone had splashed him with handfuls of wet lime”. However, once his brilliance on the racecourse became apparent, it wasn’t long before “The Rocking Horse” became “The Spotted Wonder”, a name that one hundred years on still resonates with horse racing aficionados around the world.
THE TETRARCHRacing Career
The Tetrarch winning the Woodcote Stakes at EpsomAt the age of two The Tetrarch had developed into a magnificent individual and was showing phenomenal speed on the gallops. He made his first public appearance in a novice plate at Newmarket on April 17th 1913 – just five days short of his birthday and blew his twenty rivals away to win “in a canter” by 4 lengths. His second appearance was in the Woodcote Stakes at Epsom, traditionally the first six furlong juvenile race of the season, occurred the day before suffragette Emily Davison was fatally injured in the Derby. The Tetrarch took the race in hand rounding Tattenham Corner and won easily by three lengths, according to the British Bloodstock Review, “It was generally agreed that not since the days of Pretty Polly had a two-year-old accomplished a more impressive performance.” The Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot was next, then run at five furlongs, and The Tetrarch won pulling up “with his mouth open”, his closest competitor trailed in 10 lengths behind. On July 19th to packed stands, he lined up for Britian’s richest two year old race, the National Breeders’ Produce Stakes (now the National Stakes) at Sandown. This was the only time The Tetrarch came close to defeat, scrambling home by a neck conceding 17 lbs to the runner-up. What onlookers didn’t know, as poor visibility obscured the view from the stands, was that The Tetrarch was severely hindered at the start. This is an account from jockey Steve Donoghue’s biography, “As the tapes went up, The Tetrarch got some of them tangled in his mouth, causing him to rear. On coming down he cannoned against another horse and fell to his knees. Although his plight had seemed hopeless, Steve set off in pursuit. The Tetrarch almost lifted him out of the saddle with his supercharged power as he came nearer and near his rivals with every stride”. Just twelve days later The Tetrarch stepped back up in distance to six furlongs at Glorious Goodwood for the Rous Memorial Stakes where he easily accounted for subsequent 1,000 Guineas and Oaks winner Princess Dorrie (in receipt of 13 lbs). He went on winning, the Champion Breeders Foal Stakes at Derby by four lengths, and what transpired to be his swansong in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster by three lengths, where The Tetrarch treated Stornoway, his only credible rival for two-year-old honours, with contempt. Stornoway had previously won the Gimcrack and Norfolk (now Flying Childers) Stakes. His season was not meant to end there, but on the day before his intended start in the Imperial Produce Stakes at Kempton he struck into his off-fore fetlock joint, and was retired for the season. Crowned the Champion 2yo of 1913 and rated an unprecedented 10 lbs clear his nearest rival – that season’s Middle Park Stakes winner – The Tetrarch is still considered the greatest juvenile runner of all time. This view is backed by noted turf historians Tony Morris and John Randall, who rated the best juveniles of the 20th century in their book A Century of Champions, and have no doubt about which horse was top. Nearest to The Tetrarch, were Tudor Minstrel and The Tetrarch’s own son Tetratema.
THE TETRARCHStud Career
The Tetrarch was retired in 1915 to stand at his specially-built stallion box and covering shed at an initial fee of 300 guineas. However, due to the meditative state he would enter into when presented a mare, his owner eventually described the champion as “monastic in the extreme”. He only got 130 foals altogether, of which 80 were winners, but with such a dearth of opportunity, it is truly remarkable the number of brilliant racehorses The Tetrarch sired. Champion Sire in 1919, with only two crops of racing age, he was third on the list in 1920 and 1923. As might have been expected, a majority of his best progeny were outstanding two-year olds and sprinters such as: Tetratema Champion Sire and Champion Racehorse at 2, 3 & 4 years Winner of 13 races including 2,000 Guineas, Middle Park Stakes, King’s Stand Stakes and July Cup Mumtaz Mahal Champion 2yo Winner of 10 races including the Nunthorpe Stakes, King George Stakes, Champagne Stakes, Queen Mary Stakes and Molecomb Stakes (both by 10 lengths) The Satrap Champion 2yo Winner of 4 races including Chesham Stakes, July Stakes and Richmond Stakes Moti Mahal Champion 2yo Filly Winner of 6 races including the Coronation Stakes Paola Winner of the Cheveley Park Stakes and Coronation Stakes Stefan the Great Champion Broodmare Sire in Great Britain & Ireland Winner of 2 races including the Middle Park Plate
Caligula, the St. Leger winner of 1920The Tetrarch was also capable of siring top class winners over longer distances: Snow Maiden Winner of 6 races including the Irish Oaks and 3rd Irish Derby Caligula Winner of 3 races including the St. Leger, Ascot Derby (now King Edward VII Stakes) and 3rd St James’s Palace Stakes Polemarch A leading sire in Argentina with 6 Classic winners Winner of 5 races including the St. Leger, Gimcrack Stakes and 3rd Middle Park Plate Salmon Trout A leading sire in Brazil Winner of 6 races including St. Leger, Princess of Wales’s Stakes, Dewhurst Stakes and 2nd Gold Cup The Tetrarch was also the sire of : Chief Ruler Twice Champion Sire in New Zealand Tractor A leading sire in New Zealand Arch-Gift Sire of Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Double Arch Ethnarch Sire of the ancestresses of Mill Reef and Blushing Groom
Mumtaz MahalLegacy
Mumtaz MahalThe Tetrarch’s greatest legacy is undoubtedly through his daughter Mumtaz Mahal, purchased as a yearling for 9,100 guineas – the second highest price ever at the time – for the Aga Khan, such was her brilliant speed, she later became known as “The Flying Filly”. A champion 2yo on the track, she was to become one of the most influential broodmares of the 20th century. Her daughter Mumtaz Begum produced champion racehorse Nashrullah, who was a Champion sire in both Europe and the USA. His sons include Never Say Die, Nashua, Bold Ruler, Never Bend, Grey Sovereign and Red God. Her other efforts include champion 2yo filly Dodoma, who became the 4th dam of Shergar and Sun Princess, the dam of influential sire Royal Charger. Another daughter produced Abernant, champion 2yo and the greatest sprinter of modern times. Mumtaz Mahal best son was the Mirza, winner of the July and Coventry Stakes, who was seized by the Germans during invasion of Normandy in 1940, went on to numerous stakes winners including Skylarking ancestress of important sires Rahy, Singspiel and Devil’s Bag. Her other daughters Mah Mahal and Mah Iran, were also hugely influential. Mah Mahal’s son Mahmoud won the 1936 Derby in record time before being exported to America for stallion duties and becoming Champion Sire. His lasting legacy will be as the broodmare sire of Almahmoud – grandam of Northern Dancer. Her other descendants include French Champion Sire Arctic Tern, American Champion Sire Halo – sire of Japanese Champion Sire Sunday Silence, and Champion Australian and European Sire Danehill. Mah Iran was the second best two-year-old filly of 1941 and became the dam of Migoli, winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Eclipse Stakes, Champion Stakes, and second in the Derby. Migoli’s full-sister, Star of Iran produced the grey filly Petite Etoile, winner of the 1,000 Guineas, Oaks, Sussex Stakes, Champion Stakes and Coronation Cup. She is the fifth dam of Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Zarkava. Other exceptional racehorses that descend directly from Mumtaz Mahal include Fillies’ Triple Crown winner Oh So Sharp, Champion Sprinter and Champion 3yo Habibti and Australian Champions Octagonal and Danewin.THE TETRARCHTetratemaLegacy
Tetratema, in his paddock at BallylinchBorn at Ballylinch in 1917, Tetratema was a winner of all his twelve starts over sprint distances but also won the 2,000 Guineas for good measure. After an incredible debut in the National Breeders’ Produce Stakes, he took in the Molecomb Stakes, Champagne Stakes, Imperial Produce Plate and Middle Park Stakes on the way to being crowned Champion 2yo. He began his 3yo career as the first grey to win the 2,000 Guineas since 1838, but failed to stay in both the Derby and Eclipse Stakes. Dropping back to sprint distances he won the (now discontinued) Fern Hill Stakes at Royal Ascot and the King George Stakes at Glorious Goodwood, where he accounted for 1,000 Guineas winner and exceptional sprinter Diadem. As a four year old he won the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot, before taking the July Cup at Newmarket and repeating his win in the King George Stakes. Tetratema made his swansong in the five furlong Snailwell Stakes at Newmarket before retiring to Ballylinch in 1922 at the same initial fee as his sire, 300 guineas.THE TETRARCH
Mr. JinksIn 1929, he emulated his sire by becoming Champion Sire – the same year his daughter Tiffin became Champion 2yo and his son Mr. Jinks was the highest rated colt. In all, Tetratema was a top 7 sire on 11 occasions. Tiffin Champion 2yo Winner of the Cheveley Park Stakes and July Cup Mr Jinks Champion 2yo Colt Winner of the July Stakes, 2,000 Guineas and St. James’s Palace Stakes Myrobella Champion 2yo Winner of the Champagne Stakes, King George Stakes and July Cup Foray Champion 2yo Winner of the July Stakes, Champagne Stakes and King’s Stand Stakes Fourth Hand Winner of the Windsor Castle Stakes and Irish 2,000 Guineas Royal Minstrel Winner of the St. James’s Palace Stakes, Cork and Orrey (now Diamond Jubilee) Stakes and Eclipse Stakes Four Course Winner of the July Stakes, Richmond Stakes, Gimcrack Stakes and 1,000 Guineas Theft Five time Champion Sire in Japan Winner of the Windsor Castle Stakes and Jersey Stakes -
Beautiful print of the Royal College of Surgeons on St Stephens Green Dublin by the artist Judges. Dublin. 27cm x 32cm -
Beautiful artwork depicting the ultra talented but ill fated Derby Winner Shergar. Origins :Naas Co Kildare. Dimensions: 45cm x 55cm Glazed Shergar was an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse. After a very successful season in 1981 he was retired to the Ballymany Stud in County Kildare, Ireland. In 1983 he was stolen from the stud, and a ransom of £2 million was demanded; it was not paid, and negotiations were soon broken off by the thieves. In 1999 a supergrass, formerly in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), stated they stole the horse. The IRA has never admitted any role in the theft. The Aga Khan, Shergar's owner, sent the horse for training in Britain in 1979 and 1980. Shergar began his first season of racing in September 1980 and ran two races that year, where he won one and came second in the other. In 1981 he ran in six races, winning five of them. In June that year he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths—the longest winning margin in the race's history. Three weeks later he won the Irish Sweeps Derby by four lengths; a month after that he won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes by four lengths. In his final race of the year he came in fourth, and the Aga Khan took the decision to retire him to stud in Ireland. After Shergar's Epsom Derby win, the Aga Khan sold 40 shares in the horse, valuing it at £10 million. Retaining six shares, he created an owners' syndicate with the remaining 34 members. Shergar was stolen from the Aga Khan's stud farm by an armed gang on 8 February 1983. Negotiations were conducted with the thieves, but the gang broke off all communication after four days when the syndicate did not accept as true the proof provided that the horse was still alive. In 1999 Sean O'Callaghan, a former member of the IRA, published details of the theft and stated that it was an IRA operation to raise money for arms. He said that very soon after the theft, Shergar had panicked and damaged his leg, which led to him being killed by the gang. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph concluded that the horse was shot four days after the theft. No arrests have ever been made in relation to the theft. Shergar's body has never been recovered or identified; it is likely that the body was buried near Aughnasheelin, near Ballinamore, County Leitrim. In honour of Shergar, the Shergar Cup was inaugurated in 1999. His story has been made into two screen dramatisations, several books and two documentaries. -
Beautiful print of the Bank of Ireland ,College Green (formerly the old House of Parliament,built in 1729 and the worlds first purpose built bicameral Parliament House.) Origins: Dublin Dimensions :27cm x 32cm -
Beautiful print of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art at Charlemont House in Dublin. Dublin 27cm x 32cm
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