On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.
James Joyce – The Dead
That colourful description by Joyce of bottles of beer lined neatly on top of a piano in the supper room which was situated upstairs in a tall house on Usher’s Island - a little west of the centre of Dublin city on the south side of the river Liffey - is quite a strong and evocative image, the words conjuring up the formality and neatness of soldiers in uniform on a parade ground in a time long gone. The story is set around the end of the 19th century and at that time there were a number of breweries within the general vicinity of that house, and it is very probable that these unnamed (and of course fictional) beers were the relatively local Guinness stout, plus imported Bass ale from England as both were extremely popular at that time in households in the city and their labelling would fit Joyce’s description.
And although we will be staying around the environs of Usher's Island, it is a uniform other than the military ones alluded to above that is of significance to those with an interest in the history of our country's brewing past.
-o-
When we consider those who work in breweries we tend to focus on the owners and the actual brewers of the beer, but there are a host of other departments in any successful brewing business such as marketing, administration and - very importantly - the logistics of getting the beers from the supplier to the consumer. Nowadays, transportation is often handled by cold-chain distribution in vans and trucks but in the past the delivery of beer would have been literally handled by draymen who drove their horse drawn carts laden with barrels through the cities and countryside, going either directly to the local bottlers and wholesalers, or to canal boats and trains for distribution around the whole country, or perhaps even to ships - starting a journey which might bring those barrels half way around the world.
This small button measuring 3cm (1 3⁄16 inches) in diameter is made of a copper alloy - possibly brass - and shows some green patination where the gilding has worn away to expose the base metal. It is probably from the livery uniform of one of the draymen who worked for the Anchor Brewery of John D’Arcy & Son on Usher Street, not far from where those aforementioned other-uniformed squads lined up. It features the words ‘J. D’Arcy & Son Ltd. Brewery’ and a nicely embossed anchor whose pronged ends appear to resemble demons’ tails. The button must be from between 1896 and 1926 give the date when the brewery became a limited company and when it closed, but it is probably from the earlier part of that period given other examples of the same style date from that era. The reverse is missing the eyelet and shows the name of the supplier ‘Comyns & Son, College Green, Dublin’ who were sellers of livery uniforms too, although there is no indication that they also made any actual uniforms for D’Arcy & Sons - they may have just supplied the buttons to the brewery for use by another maker - but it is certainly possible they did so.
The foundation date of the original brewing concerns that occupied the site of D'Arcy's Anchor Brewery is unknown according to Alfred Barnard in his write-up mentioned above - although other sources such as an advertisement by the brewery in The Sport in May 1897 and a write up from which the above image of an entrance gate is taken in The Freeman's Journal in September 1913 mention a date of 1740 - which we must take with a pinch of salt. Alfred also mentions deeds in the possession of the then proprietor which date back to 1782 when the site was owned by a Kavanagh & Brett, with the brewery coming into the hands of John D’Arcy via a John Byrne in 1818, and was owned by his son Matthew D’Arcy at the time of Alfred’s visit. The brewery was expanded by Matthew with the addition of more land, buildings and equipment and by then the area taken up by the brewery and its operations was seven acres. Of note was the mention of a copper brew kettle of ‘mammoth’ proportions which was said to be the largest in the world at this time – an interesting claim if hard to prove. It held 1,300 barrels, took over a year to make and on its completion ‘thirty people partook of refreshments therein.'
We can add further to that information, as John D’Arcy was in partnership at first with a James McNulty according to Saunder’s Newsletter in October of 1819 when that partnership was dissolved. The earliest mention of a brewery on Usher Street in newspapers is for a porter brewery owned by Samuel Madder & Co. from London who were brewing there in 1785 according to Saunders's Newsletter in April of that year. In 1797 it was owned by a John Ormston who became bankrupt according to Saunder’s Newsletter from June of that same year. A newspaper advertisement in The Hibernian Journal in March of 1806 states the brewery was owned (or operated) by an Edmund Grange & Co., where they produced porter under the Hibernian Anchor Porter Brewery name, and a Leeson - a famous Dublin brewing family name - is mentioned with Grange as an owner in Saunders's News-Letter of March 1809. John Byrne may have been the next owner of the site before then selling it to John D’Arcy. To add further complications the aforementioned Kavanagh & Brett were still brewing together up to 1799 when their partnership was dissolved according to Saunders's News-Letter in October of that year, with John Brett residing in Usher's Island. This is at odds with their mention by Alfred above but they may have been brewing on a different site.
The Anchor Brewery appears to have had quite a convoluted history, not helped by the issue that there may have been multiple breweries on Usher Street and the streets surrounding it, which may muddy the ownership details. It is possible that there were breweries side-by-side that became a single entity in time. There are a number of histories available online and in books but many seem to just repeat parts of Alfred Barnard's history, although some do give a varying account - so reader beware.
-o-
Finally, it is worth mentioning that by 1914, when Joyce’s Dubliners book of short stories that features The Dead was eventually published, Darcy’s brewed ‘O’Connell’s Dublin Ale’ as well as porter, having acquired the brand when the bought The Phoenix Brewery a few years previously. Later examples of the labels from D'Arcy's time of marketing the brand are red in colour so perhaps the original Phoenix label (from around the same period as our button) was also a shade of red? It would be fanciful to think that it was beers from the Phoenix brewery that were in Joyce’s head at the time he wrote those lines, but perhaps I am wrong about Guinness and Bass and there is a - albeit tenuous - connection between the passage quoted above and D'Arcy's brewery on Usher Street ...
Liam K
2 comments:
Lovely little piece of breweriana there. Despite that picture of the brewery gate showing the claim "Est. 1740", there seems to be no evidence, as you say, of anyone brewing there until Samuel Madder in 1785. Alfred Barnard is talking nonsense about Kavanagh and Brett - Madder left the Anchor brewery by September 1788 to start brewing porter at 89 St James's Street, opposite Guinness, and the Anchor brewery was continued by his former partner, John Ormiston. It was after Ormiston went bankrupt in 1797 that the brewery was acquired by Michael Kavanagh and John Brett, and they were only there about three years. It was then owned by Edmond (sic) Grange, in partnership with the Honourable John Leeson, second son of Brice Leeson, third Earl of Milltown, before being acquired by John Dominick Byrne, son of the wealthy Dublin Catholic merchant Edward Byrne, and James McNulty in 1812. John D'Arcy joined the partnership in 1818, McNulty left the following year, and Byrne died in 1824.
Irish Beer History: Thanks for taking the time and effort to post this great history lesson.
J.Darcy
Cleveland, Ohio
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