The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
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Dimensions : 20x 35cm 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.
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
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A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Poster with the history and battle honours of the storied regiment. Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 23cm x 32cm Glazed The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.History
Origins
Before the regiment was reformed as part of a reorganization of the British Army in 1881, the Royal Munster Fusilier's historic background went back as far as 1652 with the formation of the Bengal European Regiment by the Honourable East India Company.This regiment would eventually become the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), or the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. The East India Company formed the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), or 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, from this regiment in 1765. Both regiments, which were composed exclusively of white soldiers, not Indian sepoys, played pivotal roles in the British conquest of India throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As well as the Royal Munster Fusilier's origins as part of the East India Company, the regiment's reserve battalions also traced their lineage to the Militia of Munster (namely the South Cork Light Infantry Militia, the Kerry Militia and the Royal Limerick County Militia, which became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, respectively). While both the fusilier regiments had originated and served as "European" regiments of the East India Company, they were transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
A painting depicting the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), a predecessor regiment of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, marching to Delhi during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.Formation
The second half of the 19th Century saw the beginning of widespread reforms in the British Army which would eventually result in the formation of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. The first of these reforms saw the localisation of recruiting districts in Britain and Ireland between 1873 and 1874 under the Cardwell Reforms. Five of the historic East India Company's European infantry battalions were given Irish territorial titles under the Childers Reforms of 1881. The former Bengal Fusilier regiments were merged into a single regiment to become the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, while the 3rd, 4th and 5th Royal Munster Fusilier battalions were the militia units. The Reforms linked regiments to recruiting areas – which in case of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. Militarily, the whole of Ireland was administered as a separate command with Command Headquarters at Parkgate (Phoenix Park) Dublin, directly under the War Office in London. The regimental depot was located at Ballymullen Barracks, Tralee, Co. Kerry.Second Boer War
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in South Africa in October 1899, a number of regiments from areas containing large centres of population formed additional regular battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers were announced to be among those regiments set to form 3rd and 4th regular battalions in February 1900, but they do not appear to have done so.The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers embarked for South Africa in 1899, and would serve there throughout the entire Second Boer War. Initially, the battalion took part in Lord Robert's advance into the Orange Free State. Following this, the battalion was attached to the 20th Brigade and fought at the Battle of Belmont. With the beginning of the war's guerrilla warfare phase, the battalion took part in numerous pacification campaigns against the Boers in Pretoria and Western Transvaal. The 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, formerly the South Cork Light Infantry, was embodied in early December 1899, and 435 officers and men embarked the SS Sumatra for South Africa on 23 February 1900. The 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, arrived in South Africa from India in December 1901 and served during the closing stages of the campaign, garrisoning blockhouses in the northeast of the Orange River Colony. Following the end of the war in 1902 the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers were sent to India. More than 520 officers and men left Cape Town on the SS Lake Manitoba in September 1902, arriving at Bombay the following month and were then stationed at Multan in Punjab. They would later take part in actions against the tribes of the North-West Frontier in 1908. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers left South Africa soon after their sister battalion, and 450 officers and men returned to Cork Harbour on the SS Orient in early November 1902.
The 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in South Africa during the Second Boer War, 1901.First World War
Prior to the First World War, the Royal Munster Fusiliers were an established strength of two regular service and three reserve battalions. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, the need for further divisions resulted in the creation of a New Army made up of volunteers who would serve for the duration of the war. This rapid expansion of the British Army would significantly increase the size of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who between their regular, reserve and volunteer battalions would have a combined strength of 11 raised battalions throughout the war. At the outbreak of war the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was acting as a regular garrison in Rangoon, Burma, having being based in the Far East since they had left Fermoy in 1899 to fight in the Second Boer War. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were based at Aldershot, England as part of the 1st Army Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division at the outbreak of war.At the outbreak of war the Royal Munster Fusiliers three reserve battalions were all mobilised on 4 August 1914 and the regimental colours were sent to Tralee for safekeeping there until after the ArmisticeRegular Army
1914: Arrival in France and the Great Retreat
At the outbreak of war, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was under strength, and reservists were called up from the regimental depots at Tralee and Fermoyamid much local cheering, to join the battalion at Aldershot which brought the battalion up to a strength of 27 officers and 971 other ranks before its departure to France on 13 August 1914. As part of the British Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers took part in the Battle of Mons and on 27 August were given the arduous task of forming the rearguard to cover the retreat of the 1st Division in the face of the German advance, with instructions to retreat only if ordered. The Munster's made an epic stand in a renowned rearguard action during the defence of Etreux, losing 9 officers and 87 other ranks killed while holding out,with most of the rest of the battalion being surrounded and taken prisoner after running out of ammunition. The Munster's had stemmed the Germans, who were five or six times their strength, for over a day, allowing their division to escape. The loss on an entire battalion so early in the war was a disaster for the regiment. When the scattered battalion reassembled on 29 August it was down to a mere 5 officers and 196 other ranks. The remnants of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were withdrawn to be recuperated before returning to battle, seeing action most notably at Langemarck, Belgium on 22 October. By 5 November, recruits from home brought its strength up to over 800 men. The battalion next saw action near Zillebeke, Belgium on 12 November and helped to defend against the last great German effort in the First Battle of Ypres. From 15 November, as snows began, they drove off further attacks, with trench warfare now becoming dominant. In early December they aided in the evacuation of the Ypres Benedictine Convent, whose occupants subsequently established Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland. The battalion was moved south to the Festubert sector in France, after a 36-hour march were ordered on 22 December to fill a gap by taking two lines of trenches. There were 200 casualties in the first 10 minutes of heavy fire. Withdrawing in total exhaustion on the next day, many wounded drowned in water-filled shell holes. Throughout Christmas and New Year they were fully occupied maintaining the trenches. On 25 January, the Kaiser's birthday the Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through with terrific shellfire. There then followed three months of rebuilding and training the battalion when it numbered 28 officers and 700 other ranks in May. Only four of the officers were pre-war.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in Aldershot just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, 1914.1915: Gallipoli and the Second Battle of Ypres
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, who had been stationed in Burma, arrived back at Avonmouth, UK in January 1915, and were entrained for Coventrywhere it was assigned to the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division (United Kingdom). In March it sailed for the Dardanelles, Turkey, when it numbered 28 officers and 1,002 other ranks. Turkey had joined the Central Powers's side in November 1914, the object of the landing on the Dardanelles peninsula was to open the Dardanelles Strait in the Battle of Gallipoli to enable Allied relief convoys reach Russia. Aboard the SS River Clyde, a converted collier with a capacity for over 2,000 men, they arrived on 25 April together with the 1st Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers and some companies of the Royal Hampshires. The SS River Clyde ran gently ashore, its exit bows facing the beach, for what was to be the troubled British landing at Cape Helles. Small boats first carried companies of Dubliners to the beach, however four hidden Turkish machine gun posts opened fire and decimated them. Lighters to the shore were roped together and two companies of Munsters poured out on to the bow's gangway but were also hit by machine gun fire, with one survivor saying they were 'literally slaughtered like rats in a trap'. Many of the Munsters jumped from the gangway in the face of the withering fire and some drowned under their heavy equipment. Those men who continued down the gangway were mown down until all the boats and lighters were filled with dead and wounded. The ship's commanding officer, Captain Edward Unwin, on being informed that they were not succeeding, replied "in British military tradition, offensives once begun are never called off". Unwin was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions that day. At daybreak the next day, just three companies of Munsters, two companies of Hampshires and one company of Dubliners had made it to the shelter of some dunes. On 26 April they took fort Sedd-el-Bahr overlooking the bay, charging and taking the village behind and held off several Turkish counterattacks. It was in this attack that the heroic actions of William Cosgrove won the regiment's first Victoria Cross. The 28 April saw a renewed attack in the Battle for Krithia village, but the survivors of the landing were withdrawn by 29 April due to heavy losses and amalgamated with the surviving Dublin Fusiliers, to form the "Dubsters" battalion of 8 officers and 770 men.
The SS River Clyde holds dead of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who were killed while attempting to get ashore at Sedd el Bahr during the Gallipoli Campaign.The Turks launched a renewed attack on the night of 1 May, with one Royal Munster Fusilier saying "they crept up in the dark into our trenches bayoneting our men before we knew it had begun. Bayoneting on both sides was terrible. At dawn the Turks were mowed down, and heaps of bodies and streams of blood remaining everywhere."The battalion was reduced to 4 officers and 430 men, with the Turks attempting further attacks the following days only to be driven off once again, but the combined force of Munster and Dublin Fusiliers were down to 372 men by 11 April. Both the Munsters and Dubliners received new drafts on 29 May and became separate units again. By 4 June, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 40 officers and 500 other ranks, but many the new recruits were young and inexperienced. The Munsters withheld a further Turkish attack on 17 June, killing over 300 Turks. The arrival of further new drafts replenished the battalion to 23 officers and other 588 ranks. The Munsters took part in the Division's assault on 28 June which secured five trench lines. This provoked a general attack by the Turkish side along the Cape Helles front on 5 July, but the Turks were repulsed after suffering heavy losses. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers participated in limited actions into the middle of July. A month's rest was promised on 15 July, but by 22 July the battalion were back in action, their strength around 500 of whom only 3 officers and 314 men remained from those who first landed on 25 April. The climax of the Gallipoli came with the Suvla attack on 21 August in the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the Turks inflicted severe casualties. The unsuccessful attack cost the Munsters 3 officers and 79 men that day alone. There was little further action other than holding front lines from September through to November, when the weather worsened. Late in November, gales swept over the peninsula, hundreds were drowned in the flooded trenches or from exposure and frostbite. Faced with defeat, the British decided to withdraw from the peninsula and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was evacuated as it arrived, on the River Clyde, sailing on 2 January 1916 for Alexandria. From there it sailed with the rest of the 29th Division and arrived in France on 22 March. 3 years of warfare still remained for the battalion on the Western Front, but the battalion had already suffered 45% of its total losses for the entire war at Gallipoli, and numbered just 24 officers and 287 men when disembarking in France.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois administered by their chaplain Father Francis GleesonWhile their sister battalion had been fighting on the shores of Gallipoli, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers had continued to serve on the Western Front and faced their first major action of 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which they fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The day before the attack was to be launched on 9 May, the battalion received Absolution from their chaplain, Father Francis Gleeson,an event which would become depicted in the famous "Rue du Bois" painting by Fortunino Matania.The British bombardment began at 5 a.m. and the Munsters then pressed forward with extraordinary bravery, with German fire sweeping no-mans-land. Some of the Munsters audaciously charging ahead through the German lines, briefly waving a green flag on its breastwork, then moved beyond until cut off by the British artillery bombardment that followed, which killed many men sheltering in shell craters. By 11 a.m. the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was withdrawn with only 3 officers and 200 men remaining, having lost 19 officers and 370 men killed, wounded or captured. The Munsters was one of only two British battalions to reach the German lines but they had suffered the regiment's highest loss of any one day of the war, with 11 officers and 140 men killed in action. It was an unsuccessful day for the British forces overall, with casualties exceeding 11,000, the devastating losses exposing the British forces weakness in artillery. The summer was relatively quiet for the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers after the battalion moved to the Loos sector in June, with casualties in July and August occurring from shelling. With other forces being withdrawn to reinforce the Gallipoli Campaign, no reinforcements or recruits arrived during the summer, keeping the battalion weak as the Loos offensive began on 25 September 1915. The Munsters were held in reserve at first but they were soon tasked with holding the line and suffered over 200 casualties, leaving the battalion with around 350 soldiers all ranks, which further reduced to 250 by the time the battle died down on 13 October. John Redmond M.P., the Irish leader, visited the battalion a month later on 15 November and promised to fill the depleted 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers with Irish recruits. There followed three months of bitter winter weather in appalling trench conditions. New recruits began arriving over the winter, but in the relative inactivity, 65 men were hit by harassing random fire while 40 men went down with frostbite and trench fever in the Arctic weather before the winter had ended.
Certifying attendance at Father Gleeson's Mission, 1915.1916: The Battle of the Somme
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the front lines in France for the first time on 23 April 1916 at the Somme sector, where they slowly built up strength to 26 officers and 476 men. On 29 May, the battalion was assigned to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division at Béthune and they were reinforced by members from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing the Battalion up to full strength. The Munsters remained in the area of the Loos salient into August with only intermittent casualties.When the 16th Irish Division was ordered south of the Somme battlefield, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the line facing the strategic town of Ginchy on 5 September, having suffered over 200 casualties by gas-shelling on the way. The Munsters took part in the ensuing attack and triumphant capture of Ginchy by the 16th Division but at a high cost for the battalion which was reduced to 5 officers and 305 other ranks. A London newspaper headlined How the Irish took Ginchy – Splendid daring of the Irish troops In May, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers received many of the personnel from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing it up to strength for the summer campaign. The battalions' first noteworthy operation was the carefully planned Liévin raid on 25 June. It was during this action that Lieutenant Arthur Batten-Pooll would win the regiment's second Victoria Cross, although losses were heavy for the battalion with 5 officers and 60 other ranks killed or wounded. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were transferred with its division down to the Somme sector in July for the opening of the Battle of the Somme, entering the lines on 14 July and capturing its objectives two days later. The battalion repulsed the German counterattack on 18 July, with an officer and 26 men killed, 127 wounded and 50 gassed. The Munsters were in reserve until 20 August, when they entered the lines once again for steady fighting but ran into heavy off-target and ineffective British artillery bombardment, killing 4 officers and 29 other ranks. A continual toll of casualties made September a costly month for the battalion. After a month's break in October, the 2 Royal Munster Fusiliers returned to the Somme for maintenance duties, then went into the mud filled front-line trenches from 27 November onwards, with a steady stream of casualties from frostbite and raids continuing to the end of December. Throughout the Somme campaign the 2RMF retained its local and Irish character. Following the end of their involvement in the Battle of the Somme, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was moved northwards to Ypres in Belgium and also absorbed the remnants of the 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers on 23 November to bring it up to a strength of 48 officers and 1,069 men by 1 December. The Munsters spent Christmas 1916 in the trenches, but as the New Year arrived, an official report relates "as if by mutual consent both sides ceased fire a minute or two before the close of the old year. On the stroke of midnight the pipers tuned up and gave us The Old Year out and the New Year in, A Nation Once Again ,God Save Ireland, and a few more songs of the old country, N.C.O.s and men joining lustily in the choruses".
An illustration depicting men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers returning victoriously from their capture of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.1917: The Battle of Messines and Passchendaele
Old Royal Munster Fusiliers insignia
Following a period of rest in January 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were returned the front trenches again in February at Barleux, with the thawing weather resulting in extremely muddy conditions in the trenches. In March, the first major event was the German withdrawal from the old Somme battlefield to the newly constructed Hindenburg Line. The battalion followed across the Somme, but was held up into May removing mines and booby-traps and repairing communications. The Munsters then moved to near Nieuwpoort in Flanders for an intended amphibious landing, with an impressive strength of 43 officers and 1,070 men, which was aborted following a surprise German attack on 10 July. The Munsters were then moved with their division to Dunkirk for another amphibious attempt near Zeebrugge to link with a land offensive through Passchendaele, but this was also cancelled when the land offensive did not gain enough footing. For the men of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, rotating routine trench duties continued up to the middle of March with light casualties (2 officers and 20 men killed). The battalion rehearsed special training during April and May for the assault on the strategic Messines Ridge. The Flanders offensive began at 3.10am on 7 June 1917 with the detonation of nineteen huge mines previously burrowed under the German lines. This was followed by the advance of the 16th Irish Division opposite the village of Wytschaete, to the right the 36th (Ulster) Division opposite the village of Messines, the largest ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers took all its objectives on schedule despite the loss of nearly all of its supporting tanks. The subsequent battle was a complete success militarily for the British, with the two Irish divisions showing great fortitude, advancing over two miles in a few days with minimal losses, which was exceptional by Western Front standards. The battalion was then relieved, and returned to the Ypres salient front section in August. Continuous rain turned the battlefront into a sea of mud causing a multitude of casualties and failure to take specific positions, reducing the battalion to 37 officers and 701 men. The Munsters were moved with its Division back south into France where it built up to 1,089 all ranks. The 16th (Irish) Division, and with it the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, took up positions north of the main attack during the first Battle of Cambrai which opened on 21 November with the use of over 450 British tanks. The Munsters advanced with such speed that only one enemy machine gun post was manned in time to open fire, which was taken with one loss. Considering the success of capturing a difficult objective without tank support and taking 170 prisoners, losses were light, and followed previously unsuccessful attempts by other units during the summer. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers final front tour of 1917 ended on 2 December when the Division was moved south to take over a French section. By 6 November 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbered 20 officers and 630 other ranks when it arrived at "Irish Farm" in the Ypres salient. The ground was a quagmire full of water-logged shell-holes following four months of battle. It was to be the last British effort of the Passchendaele campaign. The Munsters were to be one of two battalions leading the 1st Division's attack at 6 a.m. on 10 November. Weighed down with equipment, they waded waist deep through mud and water, initially taking all objectives within 45 minutes. Seeing the progress by the Canadians on the right, the men of the Munsters pressed on. However, the South Wales Borders advance had left a gap the Germans made use of to cut off most of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers who then had to fight their way back to the British lines. A roll call took three hours later saw only 7 officers and 240 other ranks present with 12 officers and 393 other ranks having become casualties. The battalion was moved out to Brieulles for reforming for the rest of the year.The Kaiser knows each Munster, by the Shamrock on his cap, and the famous Bengal Tiger, ever ready for a scrap. With all his big battalions, Prussian guards and grenadiers, he feared to face the bayonets of the Munster Fusiliers.— Verse from a song published during the Great War1918: The German Spring Offensive and Final Victory
From January through to March, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was involved in various engagements in snow, frost and mud. By St. Patrick's Day 1918, it became clear that the Germans were gaining the initiative and their forecast "Big Move" was awaited. By the end of January 1918 the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 44 officers and 823 other ranks, and was then transferred to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division on 3 February near Peronnewhere it entered the lines a week later. The division was now under the command of General Hubert Gough. The British front was at its lengthiest when the German Spring Offensive opened with a devastating bombardment early on 21 March 1918, after which a fierce attack by fresh troops was launched. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered badly from the shelling but held the Germans up all night, before they broke through and overwhelmed the Munsters who dashed to retreat, with some making it to a high ridge trench where they were driven out and retired to Epehy by dark, fog having allowed the Germans to infiltrate easily. The next day the battalion was withdrawn to Tincourt where the depleted 16th (Irish) Division was concentrated, with the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbering only 290 other ranks, from 629 the day before. On 22 March, the battalion crossed back over the Somme at Péronne.By 25 March, the battalion had lost 27 officers and 550 men, as the rest tried to reform, holding off several attacks and near encirclements. The Munsters formed a 400-man column and attempted a night retreat, half reaching friendly positions next morning at Hamel. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was fortunate to be in reserve as the Germans opened the offensive with a gas-bombardment. By the next day, the battalion was heavily engaged, the enemy using a new zigzag attack strategy. The battalion retaliated but was forced to withdraw and were quickly down to 7 officers and 450 men. There was then a general withdrawal across the Somme at Peronne, by which time the battalion was reduced to just 290 men. The German offensive had decimated the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers to a shadow of its previous strength. The 16th (Irish) Division was reduced to cadre, having suffered the heaviest losses of any British division during the March retreat. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was transferred to the 57th (2nd W.Lancs) Division which had not seen action since its arrival in February 1917.The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was largely destroyed by the German offensive, losing 36 officers and 796 other ranks since 21 March. The battalion moved northwards to amalgamate with the equally hard hit 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers at Inghem on 14 April, with the resulting unit numbering 28 officers and 896 other ranks. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was then reduced to a training cadre of 11 officers, who left the 16th (Irish) Division to provide instruction for newly arrived American Expeditionary Force. In May, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the lines again at Gommecourt, a quiet sector during the summer. On 27 August, the battalion again entered the line for an attack near Croisilles, taking enemy support trenches on the Hindenburg Line in half an hour with minimal losses. This was followed by the assault of 2 September when Martin Doyle won the battalion's third Victoria Cross on the Drocourt–Queant Line south of the river Scarpe, with the battalion suffering 350 casualties. The battalion was then relieved and received replacements and trained in preparation for the assault on the Cambrai to St. Quentin line. With a 3,000-yard advance on 27 September, Graincourt was captured by the Munsters. The Germans counter-attacked, recapturing many positions. The battalion remained under shellfire even behind the lines and was reduced to 7 officers and 261 men by 3 October.The battalion supported the final attack of the Battle of Cambrai on 8 October, which was found to be evacuated the following day as the Germans were in disorganised retreat. The 57th Division was then sent north to Armentières, with the Munsters entering the line on 17 October, with no resistance. Lille was captured the following day and the battalion provided a guard of honour for the French President's visit to the city on 21 October. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was billeted in Lille until the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers began reconstruction on 7 June 1918 when most of the 6th Royal Munster Fusiliers who had returned from Palestine were transferred to the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers. The battalion made its last transfer to the 150th Brigade of the 50th Division at Arras for the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 1 October, the battalion was transported to Épehy, which had been the scene of its Spring Offensive experiences back in March, and it was again ordered into the lines on 4 October, to capture Le Catelet. The Munsters largely gaining their objective, however, they had to retire after encountering heavy counterattacks and failures elsewhere on the line, losing many 6st Royal Munster Fusiliers pre-war veterans who had survived Gallipoli. The 50th Division's advance was resumed on 10 October, and the battalion was reduced to 13 officers and 411 men by 16 October. The Battle of Épehy began on 18 October to drive the Germans behind the river, with the Munsters going in next day in fog surprising the Germans and taking many prisoner as well the objectives. The Munsters overran their objectives and were caught in another Division's barrage, with heavy losses experienced. They were then withdrawn and reorganised for what to be their final operation of the war, successfully taking a large area around Haute Noyelles on 4 November, the number of prisoners taken indicative of the low state of German morale. After a counter-bombardment on 7 November the battalion was withdrawn for the remaining days up until the Armistice.
Two officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers man a machine gun on the Western Front.New Army
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the immediate need for a considerable expansion of the British Army resulted in the formation of the New Army under Lord Kitchener. The war target was seventy divisions in all, the New Army to have thirty volunteer divisions separate and under Army Order 324, as additional from the Regular Army, with a planned period of service of at least three years. On 7 August a general United Kingdom-wide call for 100,000 volunteers aged 19–30 was issued. The battalions were to be distinguished by the word 'Service' after their number. The first new battalions were raised as units of Kitchener's new K1 Army Group, which led to the formation of the 6th and 7th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers which were a part of the 30th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division, under the command of General Bryan Mahon. The 8th and 9th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers followed as units of the 16th (Irish) Division's 47th and 48th Brigades, part of Kitchener's second new K2 Army Group. The 16th Division was placed under the command of Major General William Hickie.In the course of the war heavy losses suffered by the two Regular Royal Munster Fusilier Battalions caused the new service battalions to be disbanded and absorbed in turn by the regular battalions, the last on 2 June 1918 when the 8th (Service) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. -
Very rare example of a Jameson led advertising campaign extolling the delights of Ireland,in particular Bunratty Castle,the Shannon River as well as Jamesons old Irish Whiskey obviously! This delightful print demonstrates the unique old world charm of Ireland in the 1950s. 420cm x 60cm (unframed -limited edition poster form) John Jameson was originally a lawyer from Alloa in Scotland before he founded his eponymous distillery in Dublin in 1780.Prevoius to this he had made the wise move of marrying Margaret Haig (1753–1815) in 1768,one of the simple reasons being Margaret was the eldest daughter of John Haig, the famous whisky distiller in Scotland. John and Margaret had eight sons and eight daughters, a family of 16 children. Portraits of the couple by Sir Henry Raeburn are on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. John Jameson joined the Convivial Lodge No. 202, of the Dublin Freemasons on the 24th June 1774 and in 1780, Irish whiskey distillation began at Bow Street. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business that year and for the next 41 years, John Jameson II built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3rd in 1851. In 1901, the Company was formally incorporated as John Jameson and Son Ltd. Four of John Jameson’s sons followed his footsteps in distilling in Ireland, John Jameson II (1773 – 1851) at Bow Street, William and James Jameson at Marrowbone Lane in Dublin (where they partnered their Stein relations, calling their business Jameson and Stein, before settling on William Jameson & Co.). The fourth of Jameson's sons, Andrew, who had a small distillery at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the grandfather of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson, Andrew’s daughter. John Jameson’s eldest son, Robert took over his father’s legal business in Alloa. The Jamesons became the most important distilling family in Ireland, despite rivalry between the Bow Street and Marrowbone Lane distilleries. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey. Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canada–US border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years.The introduction of column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid-19th-century enabled increased production that the Irish, still making labour-intensive single pot still whiskey, could not compete with. There was a legal enquiry somewhere in 1908 to deal with the trade definition of whiskey. The Scottish producers won within some jurisdictions, and blends became recognised in the law of that jurisdiction as whiskey. The Irish in general, and Jameson in particular, continued with the traditional pot still production process for many years.In 1966 John Jameson merged with Cork Distillers and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. In 1976, the Dublin whiskey distilleries of Jameson in Bow Street and in John's Lane were closed following the opening of a New Midleton Distillery by Irish Distillers outside Cork. The Midleton Distillery now produces much of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland under the Jameson, Midleton, Powers, Redbreast, Spot and Paddy labels. The new facility adjoins the Old Midleton Distillery, the original home of the Paddy label, which is now home to the Jameson Experience Visitor Centre and the Irish Whiskey Academy. The Jameson brand was acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1988, when it bought Irish Distillers. The old Jameson Distillery in Bow Street near Smithfield in Dublin now serves as a museum which offers tours and tastings. The distillery, which is historical in nature and no longer produces whiskey on site, went through a $12.6 million renovation that was concluded in March 2016, and is now a focal part of Ireland's strategy to raise the number of whiskey tourists, which stood at 600,000 in 2017.Bow Street also now has a fully functioning Maturation Warehouse within its walls since the 2016 renovation. It is here that Jameson 18 Bow Street is finished before being bottled at Cask Strength. In 2008, The Local, an Irish pub in Minneapolis, sold 671 cases of Jameson (22 bottles a day),making it the largest server of Jameson's in the world – a title it maintained for four consecutive years.
Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork -
Absolutely superb, massive poster from 1996 depicting some of the most famous past and present pubs of Co Limerick.A brilliant keepsakes for anyone with firm Limerick connections and memoris of the halcyon days of the 1990s! 85cm x 60cm -
Beautiful abstract print of a perfectly poured pint of Guinness Dimensions : 23cm x 32cm 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 -
Guinness Retro advert fashioned from the blood, sweat,tears and spillage of well used Irish Bar Trays & enamel advertising 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 : 35cmx 30cm 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.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm -
Framed photo of a vintage Guinness delivery lorry parked in Thomas Power's Dungarvan Co Waterford.Its number plate ZL 6621 indicates the lorry was registered in 1951! Dimensions : 25cmx 30cm 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 -
Vintage ticket for the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes 1949 Epsom Derby Dublin 35cm x 20cm The Irish Hospital Sweepstake was a lottery established in the Irish Free State in 1930 as the Irish Free State Hospitals' Sweepstake to finance hospitals. It is generally referred to as the Irish Sweepstake, frequently abbreviated to Irish Sweeps or Irish Sweep. The Public Charitable Hospitals (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1930 was the act that established the lottery; as this act expired in 1934, in accordance with its terms, the Public Hospitals Acts were the legislative basis for the scheme thereafter. The main organisers were Richard Duggan, Captain Spencer Freeman and Joe McGrath. Duggan was a well known Dublin bookmaker who had organised a number of sweepstakes in the decade prior to setting up the Hospitals' Sweepstake. Captain Freeman was a Welsh-born engineer and former captain in the British Army. After the Constitution of Ireland was enacted in 1937, the name Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake was adopted. The sweepstake was established because there was a need for investment in hospitals and medical services and the public finances were unable to meet this expense at the time. As the people of Ireland were unable to raise sufficient funds, because of the low population, a significant amount of the funds were raised in the United Kingdom and United States, often among the emigrant Irish. Potentially winning tickets were drawn from rotating drums, usually by nurses in uniform. Each such ticket was assigned to a horse expected to run in one of several horse races, including the Cambridgeshire Handicap, Derby and Grand National. Tickets that drew the favourite horses thus stood a higher likelihood of winning and a series of winning horses had to be chosen on the accumulator system, allowing for enormous prizes.The original sweepstake draws were held at The Mansion House, Dublin on 19 May 1939 under the supervision of the Chief Commissioner of Police, and were moved to the more permanent fixture at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in Ballsbridge later in 1940. The Adelaide Hospital in Dublin was the only hospital at the time not to accept money from the Hospitals Trust, as the governors disapproved of sweepstakes. From the 1960s onwards, revenues declined. The offices were moved to Lotamore House in Cork. Although giving the appearance of a public charitable lottery, with nurses featured prominently in the advertising and drawings, the Sweepstake was in fact a private for-profit lottery company, and the owners were paid substantial dividends from the profits. Fortune Magazine described it as "a private company run for profit and its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy. Waterford Glass, Irish Glass Bottle Company and many other new Irish companies were financed by money from this enterprise and up to 5,000 people were given jobs."[3] By his death in 1966, Joe McGrath had interests in the racing industry, and held the Renault dealership for Ireland besides large financial and property assets. He was known throughout Ireland for his tough business attitude but also by his generous spirit.At that time, Ireland was still one of the poorer countries in Europe; he believed in investment in Ireland. His home, Cabinteely House, was donated to the state in 1986. The house and the surrounding park are now in the ownership of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council who have invested in restoring and maintaining the house and grounds as a public park. In 1986, the Irish government created a new public lottery, and the company failed to secure the new contract to manage it. The final sweepstake was held in January 1986 and the company was unsuccessful for a licence bid for the Irish National Lottery, which was won by An Post later that year. The company went into voluntary liquidation in March 1987. The majority of workers did not have a pension scheme but the sweepstake had fed many families during lean times and was regarded as a safe job.The Public Hospitals (Amendment) Act, 1990 was enacted for the orderly winding up of the scheme which had by then almost £500,000 in unclaimed prizes and accrued interest. A collection of advertising material relating to the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstakes is among the Special Collections of National Irish Visual Arts Library. At the time of the Sweepstake's inception, lotteries were generally illegal in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In the absence of other readily available lotteries, the Irish Sweeps became popular. Even though tickets were illegal outside Ireland, millions were sold in the US and Great Britain. How many of these tickets failed to make it back for the drawing is unknown. The United States Customs Service alone confiscated and destroyed several million counterfoils from shipments being returned to Ireland. In the UK, the sweepstakes caused some strain in Anglo-Irish relations, and the Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 was passed by the parliament of the UK to prevent export and import of lottery related materials. The United States Congress had outlawed the use of the US Postal Service for lottery purposes in 1890. A thriving black market sprang up for tickets in both jurisdictions. From the 1950s onwards, as the American, British and Canadian governments relaxed their attitudes towards this form of gambling, and went into the lottery business themselves, the Irish Sweeps, never legal in the United States,declined in popularity. Origins: Co Galway Dimensions :39cm x 31cm
F. F. Warren, the engineer who designed the mixing drums from which sweepstake tickets were drawnThe Irish Hospitals Sweepstake was established because there was a need for investment in hospitals and medical services and the public finances were unable to meet this expense at the time. As the people of Ireland were unable to raise sufficient funds, because of the low population, a significant amount of the funds were raised in the United Kingdom and United States, often among the emigrant Irish. Potentially winning tickets were drawn from rotating drums, usually by nurses in uniform. Each such ticket was assigned to a horse expected to run in one of several horse races, including the Cambridgeshire Handicap, Derby and Grand National. Tickets that drew the favourite horses thus stood a higher likelihood of winning and a series of winning horses had to be chosen on the accumulator system, allowing for enormous prizes.
The original sweepstake draws were held at The Mansion House, Dublin on 19 May 1939 under the supervision of the Chief Commissioner of Police, and were moved to the more permanent fixture at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in Ballsbridge later in 1940. The Adelaide Hospital in Dublin was the only hospital at the time not to accept money from the Hospitals Trust, as the governors disapproved of sweepstakes. From the 1960s onwards, revenues declined. The offices were moved to Lotamore House in Cork. Although giving the appearance of a public charitable lottery, with nurses featured prominently in the advertising and drawings, the Sweepstake was in fact a private for-profit lottery company, and the owners were paid substantial dividends from the profits. Fortune Magazine described it as "a private company run for profit and its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy. Waterford Glass, Irish Glass Bottle Company and many other new Irish companies were financed by money from this enterprise and up to 5,000 people were given jobs."By his death in 1966, Joe McGrath had interests in the racing industry, and held the Renault dealership for Ireland besides large financial and property assets. He was known throughout Ireland for his tough business attitude but also by his generous spirit. At that time, Ireland was still one of the poorer countries in Europe; he believed in investment in Ireland. His home, Cabinteely House, was donated to the state in 1986. The house and the surrounding park are now in the ownership of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council who have invested in restoring and maintaining the house and grounds as a public park. In 1986, the Irish government created a new public lottery, and the company failed to secure the new contract to manage it. The final sweepstake was held in January 1986 and the company was unsuccessful for a licence bid for the Irish National Lottery, which was won by An Post later that year. The company went into voluntary liquidation in March 1987. The majority of workers did not have a pension scheme but the sweepstake had fed many families during lean times and was regarded as a safe job.The Public Hospitals (Amendment) Act, 1990 was enacted for the orderly winding up of the scheme,which had by then almost £500,000 in unclaimed prizes and accrued interest. A collection of advertising material relating to the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstakes is among the Special Collections of National Irish Visual Arts Library.
F. F. Warren, the engineer who designed the mixing drums from which sweepstake tickets were drawnIn the United Kingdom and North America[edit]
At the time of the Sweepstake's inception, lotteries were generally illegal in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In the absence of other readily available lotteries, the Irish Sweeps became popular. Even though tickets were illegal outside Ireland, millions were sold in the US and Great Britain. How many of these tickets failed to make it back for the drawing is unknown. The United States Customs Service alone confiscated and destroyed several million counterfoils from shipments being returned to Ireland. In the UK, the sweepstakes caused some strain in Anglo-Irish relations, and the Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 was passed by the parliament of the UK to prevent export and import of lottery related materials.[6][7] The United States Congress had outlawed the use of the US Postal Service for lottery purposes in 1890. A thriving black market sprang up for tickets in both jurisdictions. From the 1950s onwards, as the American, British and Canadian governments relaxed their attitudes towards this form of gambling, and went into the lottery business themselves, the Irish Sweeps, never legal in the United States,[8]:227 declined in popularity. -
Iconic artwork of the famous tackle by Roy Keane on Marc Overmars at the start of the 2001 World Cup Qualifier between the Republic of Ireland and Holland at Lansdowne Road. 34cm x 30cm Limerick Roy Maurice Keane (born 10 August 1971) is an Irish football manager and former professional player. He is the joint most successful Irish footballer of all time, having won 19 major trophies in his club career, 17 of which came during his time at English club Manchester United. He served as the assistant manager of the Republic of Ireland national teamfrom 2013 until 2018. Regarded as one of the best midfielders of his generation, he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players in 2004.Noted for his hardened and brash demeanour, he was ranked at No. 11 on The Times' list of the 50 "hardest" footballers in history in 2007. Keane was inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2021. In his 18-year playing career, Keane played for Cobh Ramblers, Nottingham Forest, and Manchester United, before ending his career at Celtic. He was a dominating box-to-box midfielder, noted for his aggressive and highly competitive style of play, an attitude that helped him excel as captain of Manchester United from 1997 until his departure in 2005. Keane helped United achieve a sustained period of success during his 12 years at the club. He then signed for Celtic, where he won a domestic double before he retired as a player in 2006. Keane played at the international level for the Republic of Ireland over 14 years, most of which he spent as captain. At the 1994 FIFA World Cup, he played in every Republic of Ireland game. He was sent home from the 2002 FIFA World Cup after a dispute with national coach Mick McCarthy over the team's training facilities. Keane was appointed manager of Sunderland shortly after his retirement as a player and took the club from 23rd position in the Football League Championship, in late August, to win the division title and gain promotion to the Premier League. He resigned in December 2008,and from April 2009 to January 2011, he was manager of Championship club Ipswich Town. In November 2013, he was appointed assistant manager of the Republic of Ireland national team by manager Martin O'Neill. Keane has also worked as a studio analyst for British channels ITV's and Sky Sportsfootball coverage. -
The Irish Rugby Football Union is the body managing rugby union in the island of Ireland. The IRFU has its head office at 10/12 Lansdowne Road and home ground at Aviva Stadium, where adult men's Irish rugby union international matches are played. Initially, there were two unions: the Irish Football Union, which had jurisdiction over clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster and was founded in December 1874, and the Northern Football Union of Ireland, which controlled the Belfast area and was founded in January 1875.The IRFU was formed in 1879 as an amalgamation of these two organisations and branches of the new IRFU were formed in Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The Connacht Branch was formed in 1900. The IRFU was a founding member of the International Rugby Football Board, now known as World Rugby, in 1886 with Scotland and Wales. (England refused to join until 1890.) Following the political partition of Ireland into separate national states, the Republic of Ireland (originally the Irish Free State then Éire) and Northern Ireland (a political division of the United Kingdom), the then Committee of the Irish Rugby Football Union decided that it would continue to administer its affairs on the basis of the full 32 Irish counties and the traditional four provinces of Ireland: Leinster (12 counties), Ulster (9 counties), Munster (6 counties), and Connacht (5 counties). This led to the unusual,but not unique, situation among international rugby union teams, where the Irish representative teams are drawn from players from two separate political, national territories: Ireland (an independent, sovereign state) and Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). To maintain the unity of Irish rugby union and the linkages between North and South, the IRFU purchased a new ground in 1923 in the Ravenhill district of Belfast at a cost of £2,300.The last full International at Ravenhill involving Ireland for more than a half-century took place in 1953–54 against Scotland who were victorious by 2 tries (6 points) to nil. Australia played Romania in the 1999 World Cup at the ground. The next full International played at Ravenhill was the Rugby World Cup warm-up match against Italy in August 2007 due to the temporary closure of Lansdowne Road for reconstruction. The four provincial branches of the IRFU first ran cup competitions during the 1880s. Although these tournaments still take place every year, their significance has been diminished by the advent of an All-Ireland league of 48 Senior Clubs in 1990. The four provincial teams have played an Interprovincial Championship since the 1920s and continue to be the focal point for players aspiring to the international level. These are Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht. All four provinces play at the senior level as members of the United Rugby Championship.Logos and emblems
The Irish Rugby Football Union represents the island of Ireland and the emblems and symbols it uses have reflected its association with the whole of the island of Ireland since its formation. Some elements have changed since 1874, but what has remained consistent throughout the history of the union is the use of the shamrock in its emblems. Originally the Shamrock was a 5 sprig emblem covering most of the lefthand side of the jersey and this was used until the 1898 game against England in when it was replaced with a white shield with a sprig of 4 similar sized shamrocks. In 1927 a new crest was introduced, with the shamrock design altered to a sprig of 3 shamrocks of a similar size within a smaller white shield. This was the official crest until 1974 when the centenary logo was used, and which continued to be used with only a slight modification made in 2010.
The 1887 Ireland side sporting the 5 sprig shamrockLogos used on the official match programmes from the 1920s to 1954, showing a single shamrock surrounded by an oval had no relation to the official jersey emblem. The only time an Irish jersey had a single shamrock was when the Ireland side toured Chile and Argentina in 1952 and Argentina in 1970, and in both series no caps were awarded. Although the use of the shamrock has been a constant, albeit with modifications to design, other elements of symbology have changed. In the early twenties, when the Irish Free State was established, the union was left in the position of governing a game for one island containing two separate political entities. A controversy ensued as to what flag should be flown at international matches. For a side that played both in Dublin and Belfast (the former being in the Free State, the latter being politically part of the United Kingdom) this posed a significant issue. In 1925 the union designed their own flag, incorporating the arms of the four provinces.
S.J. Cagneyon a Will's Cigarette card and the triple sprig (1929)Although it had the same elements as the Flag of the Four Provinces, it was not identical, instead having them separated on a green background with the IRFU logo in the centre. Even so, the call to fly the Irish tricolour at Lansdowne Road continued. In 1932, despite the IRFU insisting that only the IRFU flag was flown at home internationals, pressure continued such that the Minister for External Affairs in the Free State asked to meet with the president of the Union. The result was that on 5 February 1932, the IRFU unanimously voted to fly both the flag of the union and the national flag at Lansdowne Road at all international matches in Dublin. The IRFU flag, as designed in 1925, is that which is still used by the Ireland rugby union side, albeit with the logo updated in the middle. At the 2011 Rugby World Cup, the Ireland team entered the field of play at the beginning of their matches with the Irish tricolour and the Flag of Ulster.
Flag of the IRFU with the centenary logoAffiliation
There are currently approximately 95,000 rugby players in total in Ireland. There are 56 clubs affiliated to the Ulster Branch; 71 to the Leinster Branch; 59 to the Munster Branch and 23 to the Connacht Branch. In addition, there are 246 schools playing rugby: Ulster (107), Leinster (75), Munster (41) and Connacht (23). The IRFU also has an Exiles branch tasked with developing "Ireland-qualified" players (i.e., eligible to play internationally for Ireland through ancestry) living in England, Scotland and Wales. Volunteers provide coaching, administration and development under the supervision of a paid development manager. -
55cm x 45cm Luke Kelly (17 November 1940 – 30 January 1984) was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Becoming known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Postand other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers. Early life Luke Kelly was born into a working-class family in Lattimore Cottages at 1 Sheriff Street.His maternal grandmother, who was a MacDonald from Scotland, lived with the family until her death in 1953. His father who was Irish- also named Luke- was shot and severely wounded as a child by British soldiers from the King's Own Scottish Borderers during the 1914 Bachelor's Walk massacre.His father worked all his life in Jacob's biscuit factory and enjoyed playing football. The elder Luke was a keen singer: Luke junior's brother Paddy later recalled that "he had this talent... to sing negro spirituals by people like Paul Robeson, we used to sit around and join in — that was our entertainment". After Dublin Corporation demolished Lattimore Cottages in 1942, the Kellys became the first family to move into the St. Laurence O’Toole flats, where Luke spent the bulk of his childhood, although the family were forced to move by a fire in 1953 and settled in the Whitehall area. Both Luke and Paddy played club Gaelic football and soccer as children. Kelly left school at thirteen and after a number of years of odd-jobbing, he went to England in 1958.[6] Working at steel fixing with his brother Paddy on a building site in Wolverhampton, he was apparently sacked after asking for higher pay. He worked a number of odd jobs, including a period as a vacuum cleaner salesman.Describing himself as a beatnik, he travelled Northern England in search of work, summarising his life in this period as "cleaning lavatories, cleaning windows, cleaning railways, but very rarely cleaning my face".Musical beginnings
Kelly had been interested in music during his teenage years: he regularly attended céilithe with his sister Mona and listened to American vocalists including: Fats Domino, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. He also had an interest in theatre and musicals, being involved with the staging of plays by Dublin's Marian Arts Society. The first folk club he came across was in the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne in early 1960.Having already acquired the use of a banjo, he started memorising songs. In Leeds he brought his banjo to sessions in McReady's pub. The folk revival was under way in England: at the centre of it was Ewan MacColl who scripted a radio programme called Ballads and Blues. A revival in the skiffle genre also injected a certain energy into folk singing at the time. Kelly started busking. On a trip home he went to a fleadh cheoil in Milltown Malbay on the advice of Johnny Moynihan. He listened to recordings of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He also developed his political convictions which, as Ronnie Drew pointed out after his death, he stuck to throughout his life. As Drew also pointed out, he "learned to sing with perfect diction". Kelly befriended Sean Mulready in Birmingham and lived in his home for a period.Mulready was a teacher who was forced from his job in Dublin because of his communist beliefs. Mulready had strong music links; a sister, Kathleen Moynihan was a founder member of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and he was related by marriage to Festy Conlon, the County Galway whistle player. Mulready's brother-in-law, Ned Stapleton, taught Kelly "The Rocky Road to Dublin".During this period he studied literature and politics under the tutelage of Mulready, his wife Mollie, and Marxist classicist George Derwent Thomson: Kelly later stated that his interest in music grew parallel to his interest in politics. Kelly bought his first banjo, which had five strings and a long neck, and played it in the style of Pete Seeger and Tommy Makem. At the same time, Kelly began a habit of reading, and also began playing golf on one of Birmingham's municipal courses. He got involved in the Jug O'Punch folk club run by Ian Campbell. He befriended Dominic Behan and they performed in folk clubs and Irish pubs from London to Glasgow. In London pubs, like "The Favourite", he would hear street singer Margaret Barry and musicians in exile like Roger Sherlock, Seamus Ennis, Bobby Casey and Mairtín Byrnes. Luke Kelly was by now active in the Connolly Association, a left-wing grouping strongest among the emigres in England, and he also joined the Young Communist League: he toured Irish pubs playing his set and selling the Connolly Association's newspaper The Irish Democrat. By 1962 George Derwent Thomson had offered him the opportunity to further his educational and political development by attending university in Prague. However, Kelly turned down the offer in favour of pursuing his career in folk music. He was also to start frequenting Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's Singer Club in London.The Dubliners
In 1961 there was a folk music revival or "ballad boom", as it was later termed, in waiting in Ireland.The Abbey Tavern sessions in Howth were the forerunner to sessions in the Hollybrook, Clontarf, the International Bar and the Grafton Cinema. Luke Kelly returned to Dublin in 1962. O'Donoghue's Pub was already established as a session house and soon Kelly was singing with, among others, Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna. Other early people playing at O'Donoghues included The Fureys, father and sons, John Keenan and Sean Og McKenna, Johnny Moynihan, Andy Irvine, Seamus Ennis, Willy Clancy and Mairtin Byrnes. A concert John Molloy organised in the Hibernian Hotel led to his "Ballad Tour of Ireland" with the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group (billed in one town as the Ronnie Drew Ballet Group). This tour led to the Abbey Tavern and the Royal Marine Hotel and then to jam-packed sessions in the Embankment, Tallaght. Ciarán Bourke joined the group, followed later by John Sheahan. They renamed themselves The Dubliners at Kelly's suggestion, as he was reading James Joyce's book of short stories, entitled Dubliners, at the time.Kelly was the leading vocalist for the group's eponymous debut album in 1964, which included his rendition of "The Rocky Road to Dublin". Barney McKenna later noted that Kelly was the only singer he'd heard sing it to the rhythm it was played on the fiddle. In 1964 Luke Kelly left the group for nearly two years and was replaced by Bobby Lynch and John Sheahan. Kelly went with Deirdre O'Connell, founder of the Focus Theatre, whom he was to marry the following year, back to London and became involved in Ewan MacColl's "gathering". The Critics, as it was called, was formed to explore folk traditions and help young singers. During this period he retained his political commitments, becoming increasingly active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Kelly also met and befriended Michael O'Riordan, the General Secretary of the Irish Workers' Party, and the two developed a "personal-political friendship". Kelly endorsed O'Riordan for election, and held a rally in his name during campaigning in 1965.In 1965, he sang 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' with Liam Clancy on his first, self-titled solo album. Bobby Lynch left The Dubliners, John Sheahan and Kelly rejoined. They recorded an album in the Gate Theatre, Dublin, played the Cambridge Folk Festival and recorded Irish Night Out, a live album with, among others, exiles Margaret Barry, Michael Gorman and Jimmy Powers. They also played a concert in the National Stadium in Dublin with Pete Seeger as special guest. They were on the road to success: Top Twenty hits with "Seven Drunken Nights" and "The Black Velvet Band", The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968 and a tour of New Zealand and Australia. The ballad boom in Ireland was becoming increasingly commercialised with bar and pub owners building ever larger venues for pay-in performances. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on a visit to Dublin expressed concern to Kelly about his drinking.[citation needed] Christy Moore and Kelly became acquainted in the 1960s.During his Planxty days, Moore got to know Kelly well. In 1972 The Dubliners themselves performed in Richard's Cork Leg, based on the "incomplete works" of Brendan Behan. In 1973, Kelly took to the stage performing as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. The arrival of a new manager for The Dubliners, Derry composer Phil Coulter, resulted in a collaboration that produced three of Kelly's most notable performances: “The Town I Loved So Well”, "Hand me Down my Bible", and “Scorn Not His Simplicity”, a song about Phil's son who had Down Syndrome.Kelly had such respect for the latter song that he only performed it once for a television recording and rarely, if ever, sang it at the Dubliners' often boisterous events. His interpretations of “On Raglan Road” and "Scorn Not His Simplicity" became significant points of reference in Irish folk music.His version of "Raglan Road" came about when the poem's author, Patrick Kavanagh, heard him singing in a Dublin pub, and approached Kelly to say that he should sing the poem (which is set to the tune of “The Dawning of the Day”). Kelly remained a politically engaged musician, becoming a supporter of the movement against South African apartheid and performing at benefit concerts for the Irish Traveller community,and many of the songs he recorded dealt with social issues, the arms race and the Cold War, trade unionism and Irish republicanism, ("The Springhill Disaster", "Joe Hill", "The Button Pusher", "Alabama 1958" and "God Save Ireland" all being examples of his concerns).
Luke Kelly on stage in 1980Personal life
Luke Kelly married Deirdre O'Connell in 1965, but they separated in the early 1970s.Kelly spent the last eight years of his life living with his partner Madeleine Seiler, who is from Germany.Final years
Kelly's health deteriorated in the 1970s. Kelly himself spoke about his problems with alcohol. On 30 June 1980 during a concert in the Cork Opera House he collapsed on the stage. He had already suffered for some time from migraines and forgetfulness - including forgetting what country he was in whilst visiting Iceland - which had been ascribed to his intense schedule, alcohol consumption, and "party lifestyle". A brain tumour was diagnosed.Although Kelly toured with the Dubliners after enduring an operation, his health deteriorated further. He forgot lyrics and had to take longer breaks in concerts as he felt weak. In addition following his emergency surgery after his collapse in Cork, he became more withdrawn, preferring the company of Madeleine at home to performing.On his European tour he managed to perform with the band for most of the show in Carre for their Live in Carre album. However, in autumn 1983 he had to leave the stage in Traun, Austria and again in Mannheim, Germany. Shortly after this, he had to cancel the tour of southern Germany, and after a short stay in hospital in Heidelberg he was flown back to Dublin. After another operation he spent Christmas with his family but was taken into hospital again in the New Year, where he died on 30 January 1984.Kelly's funeral in Whitehall attracted thousands of mourners from across Ireland.His gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, bears the inscription: Luke Kelly – Dubliner. Sean Cannon took Kelly's place in The Dubliners. He had been performing with the Dubliners since 1982,due to the deterioration of Kelly's health.Legacy
Statue on South King StreetLuke Kelly's legacy and contributions to Irish music and culture have been described as "iconic" and have been captured in a number of documentaries and anthologies. The influence of his Scottish grandmother was influential in Kelly's help in preserving important traditional Scottish songs such as "Mormond Braes", the Canadian folk song "Peggy Gordon", "Robert Burns", "Parcel of Rogues", "Tibbie Dunbar", Hamish Henderson's "Freedom Come-All-Ye", and Thurso Berwick's "Scottish Breakaway". The Ballybough Bridge in the north inner city of Dublin was renamed the Luke Kelly Bridge, and in November 2004 Dublin City Council voted unanimously to erect a bronze statue of Luke Kelly. However, the Dublin Docklands Authority subsequently stated that it could no longer afford to fund the statue. In 2010, councillor Christy Burke of Dublin City Council appealed to members of the music community including Bono, Phil Coulter and Enya to help build it. Paddy Reilly recorded a tribute to Kelly entitled "The Dublin Minstrel". It featured on his Gold And Silver Years, Celtic Collections and the Essential Paddy Reilly CD's. The Dubliners recorded the song on their Live at Vicar Street DVD/CD. The song was composed by Declan O'Donoghue, the Racing Correspondent of The Irish Sun. At Christmas 2005 writer-director Michael Feeney Callan's documentary, Luke Kelly: The Performer, was released and outsold U2's latest DVD during the festive season and into 2006, acquiring platinum sales status. The documentary told Kelly's story through the words of the Dubliners, Donovan, Ralph McTell and others and featured full versions of rarely seen performances such as the early sixties' Ed Sullivan Show. A later documentary, Luke Kelly: Prince of the City, was also well received. Two statues of Kelly were unveiled in Dublin in January 2019, to mark the 35th anniversary of his death.One, a life-size seated bronze by John Coll, is on South King Street. The second sculpture, a marble portrait head by Vera Klute, is on Sheriff Street. The Klute sculpture was vandalised on several occasions in 2019 and 2020, in each case being restored by graffiti-removal specialists.
Sculpture of Luke Kelly on Sheriff Street by Vera Klute. Unveiled in 2019 -
Superb poster depicting the myriad of Irish literary greats throughout the ages -to name but a few,Thomas Moore,JM Synge,WB Yeats,Joyce,Oscar Wilde,Patrick Kavanagh,G.B Shaw etc 84cm x 54cm Irish Literature comprises writings in the Irish, Latin, and English (including Ulster Scots) languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from the seventh century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish. In addition to scriptural writing, the monks of Ireland recorded both poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny. The English language was introduced to Ireland in the thirteenth century, following the Norman invasion of Ireland. The Irish language, however, remained the dominant language of Irish literature down to the nineteenth century, despite a slow decline which began in the seventeenth century with the expansion of English power. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English in the greater part of the country. At the end of the century, however, cultural nationalism displayed a new energy, marked by the Gaelic Revival(which encouraged a modern literature in Irish) and more generally by the Irish Literary Revival. The Anglo-Irish literary tradition found its first great exponents in Richard Head and Jonathan Swift followed by Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. At the end of 19th century and throughout the 20th century, the Irish literature get an unprecedented sequence of worldwide successful works, especially those by Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, C.S. Lewis and George Bernard Shaw, prominent writers who left Ireland to make a life in other European countries such as England, France and Switzerland. The descendants of Scottish settlers in Ulster formed the Ulster-Scots writing tradition, having an especially strong tradition of rhyming poetry. Though English was the dominant Irish literary language in the twentieth century, much work of high quality appeared in Irish Gaelic. A pioneering modernist writer in Irish was Pádraic Ó Conaire, and traditional life was given vigorous expression in a series of autobiographies by native Irish speakers from the west coast, exemplified by the work of Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Peig Sayers. The outstanding modernist prose writer in Irish was Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and prominent poets included Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Prominent bilingual writers included Brendan Behan (who wrote poetry and a play in Irish) and Flann O'Brien. Two novels by O'Brien, At Swim Two Birdsand The Third Policeman, are considered early examples of postmodern fiction, but he also wrote a satirical novel in Irish called An Béal Bocht(translated as The Poor Mouth). Liam O'Flaherty, who gained fame as a writer in English, also published a book of short stories in Irish (Dúil). Most attention has been given to Irish writers who wrote in English and who were at the forefront of the modernist movement, notably James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses is considered one of the most influential of the century. The playwright Samuel Beckett, in addition to a large amount of prose fiction, wrote a number of important plays, including Waiting for Godot. Several Irish writers have excelled at short story writing, in particular Frank O'Connor and William Trevor. In the late twentieth century Irish poets, especially those from Northern Ireland, came to prominence with Derek Mahon, John Montague, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Other notable Irish writers from the twentieth century include, poet Patrick Kavanagh, dramatists Tom Murphy and Brian Friel and novelists Edna O'Brien and John McGahern. Well-known Irish writers in English in the twenty-first century include Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Sebastian Barry, Colm Toibín and John Banville, all of whom have all won major awards. Younger writers include Paul Murray, Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Donal Ryan and dramatist Martin McDonagh. Writing in Irish has also continued to flourish. Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 90cm x 60cm 8kg
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