Opinion: On Pubs & Provenance

My local town has history.

It has a castle that dates to the early 13th century, which probably replaced a structure from before that period. The town sprang up just east of the castle on a piece of high ground that rose above the boggy land by the river that separated it from the fortress on its hill that gave the town its name. A community grew and developed around the intersection of two roads, that eventually turned into busy streets as it became a prosperous place, and a stopping place for travellers heading west and south from Dublin and back again. It was once protected by walls and guarded gates that have long since disappeared leaving no trace apart from some lines in recorded history and perhaps the occasional unearthed foundation stones.  

The land for miles around the town is littered with megalithic structures dating back to a time before we as a people could record anything in any real or modern sense of the term. The pre-history of this area was most likely passed on orally from generation to generation until that too was lost, misunderstood or mistranslated, and the meanings and true purpose of the dolmens, raths and standing stones that erupt from the earth was corrupted and changed over time into places where the fairies, magic - and sometimes evil - dwelt. That invented history remained for centuries around these sites and became actual history in the mouths of the storytellers and the ears of those who listened - and then repeated it.

These days we know better, and archaeology, research and rationality have replaced folklore, fear and myth for the majority of our people. Although we do still have a love for a good story, as do the visitors who travel to this island, to our towns, streets and buildings, and many – just like those who live here – are particularly drawn to public houses and the tales that are stored in their walls and floors, having seeped in over lots of years of telling and retelling by many generations.

-o-

A part of me has always wanted to own an old pub. Not the clever part, not the financially astute part, not the curmudgeonly introvert part - but another part that every so often rises up in a fit of manic enthusiasm while I preach my own tales of pub and brewing history from the altar of cool marble that doubles as a bar countertop. I have written about my perfect pub* before. but this would be somewhat different as this would be a place I would own and run, not just visit to sate an appetite for company or reclusiveness depending on my mood, safely ensconced on the right side of that counter.

And it would need to function as a living entity in order to be a viable business.

True public houses really do live in the truest meaning of the term, although we function within them in a symbiotic relationship of a sort and give them that life. We receive sustenance, plus succour and fulfilment and in return the public house can grow and change and be gainful, an evolving being that functions as part of our interdependency. These places are as real as those stone and earth structures from our prehistory that had purpose because of us, because of people. We cause these things to exist, not the stones, bricks, and timber of which they are composed.

So then why do we judge these component parts to be important? Why is the date of an old brick significant? Why if a carved name on a timber windowsill the reason for a place being worthy? Why would a supposed ancient section ceiling and a few found old coins mean that one public house is superior to another?

In truth these features matter little, as a public house's history can be invented, skewed and moulded into a marketable commodity where that history – whether true or false - is sold as the living thing, not the place itself. That ‘thing’ grows as more myths and legends are stuck upon the body until it becomes a hideous monstrosity that just serves its own purpose and has become detached from the actual place in history where its real story began, to the point where the myth is the thing that lives and grows - and exists. 

It is a curious thing to me that in a country with such deep and interesting real history that businesses feel the need to create or embellish a heritage of mistruths – crafting fakelore from folklore. Why do they feel the need to do so? Perhaps it is because of a love for that existing rich history, much of which is lost and needs 'finding' in one way or another? Therefore our love of myths and legends allows and encourages us to do so?

Or perhaps, as the more cynical among us might assume, it is for more mercenary reasons …

-o-

But back to the imaginary pub I’d like to own, and what if I wanted to create a history to wrap around it? How could I do so if I was so inclined?

It’s quite easy really …

There is a pub in my town whose foundations literally sit on the ashes of a previous public house, a place that was called the Red Cow Inn. That establishment faced on to two right-angled streets and is recorded on street maps in the late 17th and very early 18th century right down its exact frontage length on both of those streets, and the document even records who owned the inn in this period. There also exists a merchant token of the kind issued by many businesses in the 17th century, and said token is dated 1657 and reconfirms the name of the inn’s owner as John Masters. Some of the buildings on the street burned down on a couple of occasions after this time so the existing public house structure probably dates to the 19th century - as do the huge amount of Irish public houses - but its rough frontage on one street corresponds to the older inn so therefore we can surely say that a public house has sat on this site to the mid-1600s. Right?

Estd. 1657, huh?

But we can go back even further …

Mentions in local historical publications can push an inn here into the 1500s – so we are now back 500 years which is a good age for any public house, providing we don’t need to look at the actual footprint or any of the extant building …

But what if we want more?

What if there is a charred piece of timber joist embedded in a wall, found in some rubble on site and used to shore up some subsidence after one of the fires that consumed one of the iterations of a building? Dendrochronology is relatively accurate although it can give varying eras for any given piece of timber. So, if the boffins came back and said the timber was from either 1560-1610 or 1160-1180 then one of those has to be right, and it was found ‘in situ’ so therefore my pub dates from 1160 now, doesn’t it? 

Estd. 1160 AD, imagine that!

(We shall of course discount the known (and actual) fact that timbers were scavenged from the 12th century castle at one time when it fallen into ruin and used in a building right beside our site and these may be the wood that was discovered and dated. Shhhh....)

Is that far enough? No?

We can go further.

There is a lost early Christian monastic community that was known to be in the environs of the town, and if one looked at the lie of the land then it would have been on a place that was unlikely to flood - being close to two rivers - but close enough for those rivers to be useful. Our pub site sits on the high ground and would have overlooked both rivers at that time, not forgetting its proximity to two ancient roads that – probably – led to river crossings, so it was surely here was where this community was built? This site was founded in 634 AD according to one source, and would have provided rest, and indeed drink to weary travellers. It was a place where travellers drank alcoholic beverages (as the monks definitely brewed there) or an inn, or public house by any other name surely?

Est. 634 AD …

This establishment is now the oldest public house in Ireland, or at least can claim to be.

-o-

It isn’t of course, as I’ve just fused some real facts and some conjecture into a story that appears to be believable, although all except the actual act of finding that wooden beam and doing the dendrochronology is based on reports, chronicles and actual history that I've forced into a mythical history, although as you can see it required a fair degree of lubrication.

But this might not be enough for me because having the words ‘Est. 634 AD’ might not hold sway with tourists and the general public unless I plaster the walls with old pictures and memorabilia and cart in a few old columns, wonky chairs, an ancient looking hearth and a battered countertop - and let’s not forget a few holy relics and church pews as a nod to its ecclesiastical past – plus that old charred and precious 12th century beam.

For food we’ll serve Olde Worlde Monk’s Oyster Chowder, then porter and mutton stew with rustic-style bread with bog butter, followed by a seaweed dessert with a shot of sweetened mead.

We shall buy a red nitro ale from a local brewery and sell it as ‘Monks’ Red Ale’ or ‘Curim Naofa’ – plus we need a dark beer so a rebadged nitro stout will be served called ‘John Master’s Black Porter,’ and a whiskey from a ‘found recipe’ distilled to Mr. Masters exacting standards called ‘Ye Red Cow Inne Uisce Beatha,’ which will be recommended to all the tourist who flock here.

As you can see I could turn that pub into a huge marketing-driven, tourist-focussed enterprise that told a skewed and embellished version of the truth that suited the story … but what have we created?

In truth we have just assembled a pub, one that doesn’t live. It would exist for sure but that is not the same thing. It wouldn’t have a life blood, only the transient infusions that tourists would bring, and success based on a history that was stretched so thin that it resembled the wraiths that reportedly lived among the dolmens and standing stones of our long-lost past.

-o-

Fakelore is unfortunately a huge part of our commercial lives, be it Irish pubs or even breweries and it is an ongoing issue, even amongst our newest suppliers and providers of beer. If you tell a story often enough it will spread and take over everything it touches, and you can never take it back. That mistruth, that lie, that embellishment, will always be there sliding into people’s minds and thoughts being constantly repeated, written, rewritten and recorded until the author too believes what they have perpetuated.  Perhaps this is worse than that oral tradition of chronicling the past that came before the written word, as it has a permanence that will never really be rectified by those who rail against it.

We shouldn’t create beer and brewing related history, we should just record facts as best we can at any given time.

And by the way, I’ll never own a pub ...

Liam K

(I wrote this piece in a fit of annoyance and anger a few months back and I was inspired to tidy and publish it after reading James Wright's excellent recent post here.)

* My perfect pub.

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached image is the adapted from an image of the actual John Masters Red Cow token from British Museum website.

Pub Fiction: Cat, Contraption & Mechanism

'Shoo! Git!'

Cat skidded along the counter, its paws losing traction on the shiny surface as it tried to escape the flick of a cloth from the Her, knocking a bottle containing the dregs of the dark bitter stuff over and leaving it bouncing and spinning on the cold marble – a small trail of froth and stickiness in its wake. It was usually less clumsy, but the Her had surprised Cat when she had come up from the Underneath and caught Cat staring curiously at the newly delivered ham that she had left hanging from a hook above the counter while she relayed a message to the Him.

'That bloody cat!'

Cat stopped running when it was out of harm’s way and slinked off towards the other end of the bar, where it sat down and began cleaning itself of the small drops of liquid that had landed on its calico coat while the Her cleaned up the mess on the bar, all the while muttering and throwing annoyed looks at Cat, who stopped its preening every few moments to make sure that the Her was still far enough away not to hit it with anything. From down below in the Underneath came the sounds of clinking and the grunts and groans of the Him and - being by default a curious creature - Cat jumped down from the bar and padded down the worn timber steps, careful to avoid the Her as she headed towards the kitchen with the ham on her shoulder.

Cat sat on a step halfway down and looked at what was happening in the place that it saw as its play- or more accurately hunting-ground. The Him was down here wrestling with a large, heavy wooden barrel that had arrived earlier, while the Himling  - who looked like a younger and less rotund version of the Him - stood with his finger rooting in his ear and a glazed look in his eyes.

'Jaysus, don’t stand there like a gobdaw, help me with this will ya?'

This was a common sight for Cat, with the Him doing the work while the Himling just stood around until forced to move and do something by the shoutings of the Him. Cat didn’t really know what was being said but it was no stranger to the tone being used when he occasionally got under the Him’s feet or just generally got too close.

A similar scene had played out the previous day with Him shouting at the Himling above the dull clinking of glass as the Himling filled a big round tub with the old bottles that had sat in crates down here for the last while. Next the Himling donned a sacking apron and added some cold water from a tap on the side wall to the tub before topping it up with steaming water from a bucket to which he had added some spoons out of a bag labelled ‘Soda Crystals’ - not that Cat knew what the bag contained as it could not read of course.  All the while the Him was shouting at the Himling to hurry up as Cat watched on from its perch on a broad shelf filled with dusty paraphernalia. The Himling then got a brush-like thing with loads of bristles and proceeded to push and twist it around inside the bottles one by one, checking them by holding up towards the bare lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, until all of them had been scrubbed. Next the Himling scraped off the old label from the outside of the bottles and rinsed them all before setting them upside-down in a rack in order to drain and dry.

Today the bottles were still sitting there and Cat came cautiously down the stairs to find its perch once again and watch the ritual he had seen happen many times before, pausing just briefly to distractedly push with its paw a few of the wooden corks that were floating in hot water near to a very low stool.

Him and the Himling ignored Cat, as they were currently rolling the barrel back and forth on the cold slabs, which they did for a short while before placing it on its side - and with some effort - onto a low wooden stand. Cat watched as the Him loosened something with a hiss on what was now the top of the barrel before picking up a brass tap with a perforated tube on one end and a wooden mallet, he then wrapped some folded newspaper around the end of the tap and positioned it at the bung at the bottom of what had been the round top of the barrel, before striking the tap end a few times to drive the bung into the barrel followed by the tapered end, with the paper wrapping forming a tight seal. Cat had watched this process on occasion before and sometimes a jet of black liquid would shoot out of the barrel and hit the Him square in the face, causing a string of words to be uttered that would make the Her come down the steps and tell the Him to shut up as there were gentlemen and ladies present in the Up Above that day. But no accidents happened this day, so the Him got a mug and poured some liquid into it from the now secured tap, tasting it before grunting approvingly.

Cat jumped down on the newly tapped barrel and watched as the Him then took the Contraption with its rectangular bowl and 4 pipes and placed it under the tap and proceeded to fill the bowl with black liquid from the tap that was now in the barrel. The Himling then sucked the ends of each of the four pipes to get the liquid to flow into the four bottles he had just positioned under each of the pipes, spitting mouthfuls of black liquid back into the bowl that was being filled. The Himling would take the empty bottles he had cleaned the previous day from their rack at one side of the Contraption and once filled by one of the four tubes, he'd put them on the ground on the opposite side and put another bottle under the filling pipe and repeat the process.

'Get off of there!'

The Him had dragged the Mechanism towards the barrel beside where the Himling was leaving the bottles and positioned the bucket of corks beside it, he threw a cork at Cat but missed - Cat just looked at the Him curiously and continued his observations. The Him just sighed and inserted a cork from the bucket into a pull-out section on one side of the top of the Mechanism, he slid that section into place, positioned a bottle on a little plate underneath before pulling down on a long lever that forced the cork into the bottle. He then placed the bottle into a crate and repeated the process, the Him and the Himling working in silence apart from the quiet gurgle of the dark liquid in the Contraption and the dull clunk of the lever in action of the Mechanism.

'Oh hello pussycat!'

The Herling had arrived home from wherever she went during the day, and Cat liked the Herling as she gave it little treats of meaty scraps and hard rubs behind the ear, both of which pleased Cat. But today the Herling went to where the Him and the Himling were sitting on the low stools in front of their machines, picked up a crate of filled bottles and carried them over to a table near the back of the Underneath. She opened a brown envelope that was sitting on the table and took out a thick bundle of oval, beige labels tied up with string. She cut the string and left the pile beside the crate of bottles. Then she got a small bowl to which she added a spoonful of white powder from a bag with the word ‘Flour’ written upon it – not that Cat knew that - and mixed them together. Then she used a small paint brush to put some of the mixture on the back of the label and affixed it neatly to a bottle, then she too – like the Him and the Himling – fell into the non-musical rhythm of repetitive work, with the air smelling of hot corks, spilled stout and floury paste, tinged with the greasy metal smell from the Mechanism and the musty odour of the Underneath itself.

Cat wasn’t happy at being ignored, it jumped up beside the Herling and sniffed at the mixture in the bowl before butting her elbow with its head, almost making the Herling drop a bottle.

'Silly puss! Don’t do that.'

The Herling picked up Cat and put her back up on the barrel that was almost empty, much to the annoyance and mutterings of the Him. Soon the tap began to gurgle and the tray in the Contraption that the bottles were being filled from was empty. When he had finished corking the bottles, the Him pried out the brass tap from the end of the barrel and used the mallet to beat back a round piece of timber into the hole to seal the cask tight again. Cat had to jump quickly off the barrel as the Him and the Himling lifted the barrel back upright and set it near a trapdoor to the Outdoors where Cat knew these barrels appeared and disappeared from regularly.

The Herling was finished putting the beige round labels with writing on them on the bottles and the Him and the Himling took the crates, each holding two dozen bottles, and stacked them at the end of the cellar six high, where Cat knew they would sit for a third of a Moon’s Time before being brought a crate at a time up into the Up Above where the people came and the corks were removed from the bottles with a long handled machine that was attached to the bar, before being poured into a glass in exchange for Round Metal Things that clinked as they were tossed into a drawer underneath the counter.

Cat yawned and stretched, then it sniffed the air for any smell of the Grey Squeakers that sometimes wandered into the Underneath, as it was his job to catch, play with, and crunch them. There was no scent of them today but it would return by its secret way later that night to check again, on its nightly patrol of the Underneath.

Just then the Herling appeared beside Cat and picked it up.

'Come on puss, up we go.'

Cat let himself be carried up the stairs purring contently, with Him and the Himling following behind after having cleaned the Contraption, putting away the Mechanism and mopping the slabs.

When everyone was upstairs the Him closed the door into the Underneath, and they headed towards the kitchen and the smell of cooking ham. The Him stopped briefly to gather four glasses before opening  two bottles of stout and two minerals. They had an hour to eat, drink and rest before the doors would be opened and more bottles poured for their thirsty patrons.

And as ever, Cat would watch over all proceedings …

Liam K

'Contraption'

'Mechanism'

[The bottling routine described here is adapted from notes regarding the procedure in the 1950s in “A bottle of Guinness Please” by David Hughes, and supplemented by passages in “3 Score and 10 – A Great Leap” by Cartan Finegan plus parts of Flann O’Brien’s “Myles Away from Dublin.”]

(Cat Photo via rollingroscoe on morguefile.com, and the Contraption and Mechanism photos were taken by the author from the public house display in Carlow County Museum.)

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #13 – Pint & ½ Pint Bottles (1920-1950s)

The words of the rose to the rose floated up to his mind: ‘No gardener has died, comma, within rosaceous memory.’ He sang a little song, he drank his bottle of stout, he dashed away a tear, he made himself comfortable. So it goes in the world.

More Pricks Than Kicks - Samuel Beckett (1934)

In Ireland the pint bottle has achieved a semi-legendary status and is remarked upon and reminisced about it in equal measure as it slowly disappears from the fridges and shelves of the bars in this country. There are still many who appreciate its legacy, history and heritage, even if much of these elements are misunderstood, and there are those who enjoy and savour the taste and flavour of a beer poured the ‘proper’ way from a pint bottle into a ubiquitous flared pilsner glass, or just ‘A Glass’ as it is called in Irish pubs. At this point in time there are just a few beers still available in this Imperial measure and method of serve - the Diageo brands of Guinness, Harp, Smithwicks and Macardles, while Bulmers cider is also offer a pint bottles. These are the last relics of what was a huge industry of the past, where most of the beers consumed on this island were served in pint, half-pint and one-third-of-a-pint bottles, and when bottling companies as well as the publicans themselves bottled huge amounts of the output from Ireland's breweries. There was for sure a trade in draught beer served straight from the cask but this was more limited, and probably more often found, in the busy urban public houses.

So in most of Ireland the bottle was the most common way of drinking beer both at home and in the pub, but our love for the pint bottle is a relatively recent affair, as the half pint version was the most popular way of serving most beers for decades here, and certainly for a long period after the formation of the state in the 1922. It remained so until Draught Guinness and other draught keg beers became popular, and took over the pub beer sales in most of country. So these bottles -especially the smaller size - would have been a familiar sight in pubs, grocery shops and homes throughout Ireland.

Prior to the 1920s there was a mixture of bottle sizes that were known and discussed in the trade by how many of said bottles you could fill from a gallon of beer, so there were ‘12s’, ‘13s’, ‘14s’ and ‘16s’, with the ‘16s’ equating to a half pint (10fl. oz. or 284ml) and the others sizes up to ‘12s’ (13.33 fl.oz or 379ml), and although this latter size were sold as ‘Reputed Pints,’ interestingly there is very little mention of Imperial pint bottles up to this period.*

The newly created government of Ireland finally got around to addressing the issues around bottle sizes a not long after its formation when they published the Intoxicating Liquor (General) Act, 1924, which states the following:

9.—(1) The Minister for Justice may by order prescribe the sizes of the bottles in which any specified intoxicating liquor may be sold, and where any such order is in force it shall not be lawful to sell or supply the intoxicating liquor specified in the order in bottles of any size other than one of the sizes prescribed by the order.

And then in 1925 the following appears in the Intoxicating Liquor (Standardisation of Bottles) No. 1 Order, 1925:

AND WHEREAS it has been deemed expedient to prescribe the sizes of the bottles in which ale, beer, porter and stout may be sold:

NOW I, CAOIMHGHÍN Ó hUIGÍN, Minister for Justice, by virtue of the powers conferred upon me by Section 9 of the Intoxicating Liquor (General) Act, 1924 , and of all other powers enabling me in that behalf, do hereby order and prescribe as follows:—

On and from the 1st day of October, 1925, all ale, beer, porter or stout sold in bottles containing less than one standard quart shall be sold in quarter-pint, half-pint, or pint bottles [...]

This had to be amended on the 30th of December - possibly because the quarter-pint bottle was an error - to read:

(2) On and from the 1st day of January, 1926, all ale, beer, porter or stout sold in bottles containing less than one standard quart shall be sold in bottles containing one-third of a pint [my emphasis], one-half pint, or one pint.

(This piece of legislation was only revoked in 1983, presumably allowing the sale of any size bottle of beer providing the volume was stated on the label and that volume was correct, although this was probably the case anyway thanks to European legislation and regulations from 1977 regarding alcoholic drink volumes.)

This regulations needed to be enforced and further clarification appear to have been needed so we have another piece of legislation added on the 3rd of February 1926 which offered more information in 11 points, the most interesting being:

2. These Regulations shall come into force on the third day of February, 1926.

So a change from the date cited above.

4. The capacity of each bottle shall be defined by a line stamped on the bottle of not less than three-quarters of an inch in length and distant not less than one-and-five-eighth inches nor more than one-and-seven-eighth inches from the brim of the bottle.

This helps us to see why an where the fill lines appear on these bottles.

6. A bottle which is not completely emptied when tilted to an angle of 130 degrees from the vertical shall not be stamped.

This simple piece of wording shows why the sloped ‘shoulders’ on bottles are the shape and size they are!

7. The denomination of a bottle may be indicated by the abbreviated form of " Pt.", " ½ Pt.", or "1/3 Pt." respectively.

Again, we can see this on the bottles shown above.

8. If a maker's or trader's name is stamped on a bottle, it shall be in letters not exceeding one-half the size of the letters indicating the denomination.

On embossed bottles this defines the maxim size the bottler’s name can be appear.

11. In the case of bottles which are in stock or in use for trade on the date when these Regulations come into force, the provisions of Article 8 of these Regulations shall not apply, and the following provisions shall have effect in lieu of the provisions contained in Articles 4 and 5 of these Regulations, that is to say :—

(a) the capacity shall be deemed to be defined by an imaginary line drawn at one and three-quarters inches from the brim of the bottle ;

(b) the allowance for error permissible on verification and inspection shall be, in the case of a pint or half-pint bottle, not more than one-and-a-half drachms in deficiency nor more than one-and-a-half ounces in excess, and in the case of a one-third pint bottle, not more than one drachm in deficiency nor more than three-quarters of an ounce in excess.

Provided that the provisions of this Article shall not have effect after the 31st day of December, 1927, or such later date as may be defined by subsequent Regulations, and that after the 31st day of December, 1927, or such later date, no bottle which has not been verified and stamped pursuant to the provisions of Articles 4, 5 and 8 of these Regulations shall be deemed to be lawfully verified and stamped.

This is a long-winded way of saying that it is permitted to keep using unverified bottles as long as they conform to the legislation regarding volume, and they are destroyed or recycled by the 31st of December 1927 unless new legislation is published - and indeed it was changed on the 7th of January so that said bottles that were stamped or etched according to the legislation could be continued to be used in the trade regardless of their date of manufacturing.

Much of this legislation is tedious and difficult to analyse but Weights and Measures Act of 1928 clarifies much of what had gone before and more importantly gives is some clarity on the mystery of the numbers, letters and writing on the bottles shown here, and most others that are found in the collections of museums and breweriana collectors. It appears it was possible to incorporate verification marks into the manufacturing process of the bottles as part of the mould in which the bottle was formed and this is seen on these examples as ‘DIC’, ‘SE’ and the numbers ‘127.’

We can break these down as follows:

SE stands for ‘Saorstát Eireann’ the Irish translation for the Irish Free State which existed from 1922 until 1937.

The letters ‘DIC’ can appear quite puzzling but its meaning becomes clear if you look at the government body who was in charge of all of this legislation – The Department of Industry and Commerce.

127 is a little trickier but if we read Part 1 section 7 of the above mentioned act  - Verification and stamping of bottles during manufacture – we see the following:

The Minister may, if and whenever he thinks fit, grant in respect of any factory in Saorstát Eireann a licence in the prescribed form authorising all bottles to which this Act applies manufactured in such factory to be stamped in the prescribed manner during the process of manufacture with a stamp of verification under the Weights and Measures Acts, 1878 to 1904, as amended by this Act or with an impression derived from such stamp, and a factory in respect of which such a licence has been granted and is in force is in this section referred to as a licensed factory.

Therefore certain large glass bottle manufactures such as the company who produced those shown above – The Irish Glass Bottle Company – could bypass the need to apply individual etched on verification details by getting this licence. So it appears that this number 127 is the licence number given to this factory, which operated in Ringsend in Dublin.

Indeed the act goes on to say:

The methods of verification and stamping of bottles to which this Act applies authorised under this section shall, in respect of such bottles manufactured in a licensed factory, be in substitution for the methods of verification and stamping required or authorised by or under the Principal Act.

The company still needed inspectors from The Department of Industry and Commerce to check batches of bottles and certain fees needed to be paid, but it made the process simpler than that for drinking glasses for example which needed to be individually etched with the year date and the inspector or area number in the presence of said inspector. Other parts of this general legislation alludes to these inspectors being members of Gárda Síochána (The Irish police force), or at least appointed by them.

(The numbers that appear on the bottom of these bottles alongside the obvious initials ‘I. G. B.’ are a little more enigmatic but presumably stand for the mould numbers and variants.) 

-o-

Much has been written about the rise and fall of The Irish Glass Bottle Co. but our interests are in how it operated and functioned in the period of our concern - the 1920s. In 1928 an article regarding a visit to the company appeared in The Dublin Leader newspaper:

THE IRISH BOTTLE INDUSTRY

It was a Wexford man, Michael Owens, who in America first invented an alternative to mouth blowing in the making of bottles. A bicycle pump suggested the idea to him. The modern machines that developed out of that simple idea are still called after Owens, and to-day on the premises of the Irish Glass Bottle Co., Ltd., Charlotte Quay, Ringsend, Dublin, there is at work one of the largest and most modern Owens Bottle machines.

These bottle works are in full swing now. When we first visited a bottle factory in Dublin many years ago the Owen machines were things of the future, and it was all mouth blowing; in fact we blew a special bottle ourselves and took it home as a souvenir. A modern bottle factory is in parts a very hot place, as the heat in the furnace registers about 1,300 degrees C. Until some time back coal was the fuel used; now oil has superceded[sic] it, though at any time the factory can go back to coal if desirable. The main raw material is sand which is got from the Sutton-Malahide district, and needless to say the lime used is also a native product.

The furnace is going since November 1st last, for once the extraordinary temperature of about 1,300 is reached you have to keep it up, and so the works are carried on in three shifts of eight hours each, and the furnace never cools. The machine delivers the red-hot bottles in the course of not many seconds and workers take them up with long tongs—when you deal with red-hot bottles you need a long spoon—and place them on a steel belt revolving through another furnace. The latter furnace is 8o feet long and is quite cool at the other end; it takes about six hours for these bottles to travel the 8o feet, and by that time they are cooled. The machine is equal to turning out about 2,000 bottles in an hour.

Many things have occurred with regard to bottles in quite recent times, The tariff on bottles is 33 1/3 %, bottles under five ounces—at the request of this Company—-being admitted free. Our readers can guess the size of a five ounce and under bottle, when they are told that an ordinary beer bottle is ten ounces.

Who pays a tariff and to what extent do various parties pay it ? If a tariff excludes foreign goods and the prices of home goods do not rise, there is obviously nothing to pay; the only change is that the home Country has the whole home-market. There are foreign bottles still coming in from Germany, and from England. The prices of the half pint beer bottles is 20/- per gross and the question as to who pays the tariff is easy seen in this particular case. The imported bottles are now sold at about 15/- per gross, less duty, which practically means that Germans and English pay the tariff. In due time when the outside competitors find that undercutting will not down the Irish factory, they will give up the game and the Saorstát bottle factories will conquer the Saorstát market. The slight advantage which jam, sweets, etc., have, owing to existing taxation, has given a great fillip to jam making and consequentially the bottle industry benefits. One of the great results of any manufacturing industry in a country is the consequential effects on other home industries. Jam making has been very considerably extended in the Saorstat[sic] and the Irish Glass Bottle Company is doing a very big line in glass jars for home manufactured jams.

Some time ago there were a variety of sizes - rather of internal content—of bottles in the stout trade; the capacity of the bottles ranged from twelve up to even seventeen bottles to the gallon. The Government have stopped profiteering in that line and have made it imperative that every stout bottle contains half a pint. There is already—and there must be after a certain date—what we might call a Plimsol mark on the neck of every beer bottle it registers the half-pint contents. At the Base of some of the bottles now being turned out the words “Bottle made in Ireland ” are embossed, and we understand that this will, in due time, appear on all bottles turned out in the factory.

It is only recently—about two years ago—that the manufacture of white bottles and jars has been started. When we were in the factory last, some six years ago, there were no white bottles being made, and we expressed the hope that that development would come in time. It meant new machinery and large capital expenditure. The old Ringsend Bottle Works over the way are now re-organised, and white glass bottles and jar making are going ahead. The old system of mouth blowing is not wholly discarded, as in cases of special and comparatively small orders it is more economical to manufacture by this method than by machine.

This Company has about five thousand customers. It supplies retailers as well as wholesalers and many of its customers have their names embossed on their bottles. We were glad to see such life and bustle about the place. The Company employ about 120 men, and sometimes the number goes up to about 200, and pay wages to the amount of about twenty-three thousand pounds a year-—a valuable industry. 

This is a great insight into the company at this time and it is presented here in full including the comments on jam jars! It reinforces some of the points and observations made above. What is certainly of interest is the comment that stout was only bottled in half-pint bottles at this time, although there probably were exceptions, as has been stated already.

-o-

A helpful advertisement for The Irish Glass Bottle Company appeared in The Dublin Leader on Saturday 8th of July 1939 which shows a half pint bottle and encourages bottlers to use new bottles and not to recycle older ones – a far cry from the current ethos. It shows the prices of all of the legal beer bottle sizes and lists 1/3 pint bottles as ‘24’s’ which harks back to the older way of describing bottles by how many can be filled from a gallon. This size of bottle by the way was used for barley-wine and even for Guinness at one time, where they were called baby bottles - or even ‘Baby Guinness’ by our nearest neighbours, a name that means a different drink these days of course …

-o-

It is unclear precisely when this style of bottle with its ‘licence’ fell out of use but they were still being used in the 40s (The design and verification image were still being used in advertisements in 1944) and probably the 1950s – long after the term Saorstát Eireann was made redundant. 

New regulations issued in 1958 introduced a new verification design and regulations for bottles that was to come into force on the first day of January 1959, and which revoked the older legislation. So this appears to be the end of this style of bottle verification and presumably these were replaced by plainer, less embossed bottles of similar shape, and the half-pint version appears to have lost its shoulders in favour of a sleeker look. These bottles presumably feature the new verification stamp, with the date below and the verification inspector or area above. But according to part 6 and 7 of these new regulations:

(1) The stamp of verification to be used at a licensed bottle factory shall be of the form and design prescribed for the purposes or Regulation 5 of these Regulations, save that it shall not be obligatory to include the figures indicating the year of stamping.

(2) Notwithstanding paragraph (1) of this Regulation, the stamp of verification used at a licensed bottle factory in pursuance of Regulation 6 of the Weights and Measures (Stamps) Regulations, 1928 (S. R. & O. No. 72 of 1928), may continue to be used at such factory.

This would appear to state that the bottle factories can continue to use the older style of verification but could change to the new style - without the date - if they wanted to, but it is unclear when exactly they completely disappeared from the pubs and grocers, although it’s probably fair to assume they were gone by the 1960s.

-o-

It is also unclear when exactly the pint bottle as a serving size began to gain more popularity in Ireland but it was possibly on the rise over this same later period driven by the abovementioned brands, and in 1976 Guinness changed from the old, shouldered bottle like the one shown above to the new rocket-shaped one we are familiar with today. The half pint bottle of Guinness sadly disappeared in 1995**, and all of this size of serve from the other breweries in Ireland were well gone by this stage, as were most of the breweries themselves and the many bottlers both large and small.

We can see that our love for a pint bottle of any beer is quite recent – or at least relatively so - but that pint bottle is still around, and hopefully will be for a while as a last vestige of a bygone industry and trade.

Liam K

* There is more on the subject of bottles here.

** The bottle change is feature in this post.

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached image is the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive and other sources are as credited. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #12 – Colonel Murphy’s Stout Beermat (1969)

 

Goodness! A rival ..!

Top men at the giant Guinness brewing group must be anxiously watching a little experiment which is going on in Manchester. If things go according to plan it could eventually lead to Ireland’s famous stout facing up to a serious rival in this country. […] If Murphy’s stout scores with Britain’s drinkers, then Guinness – Eire’s biggest export* – may find it has a challenger.

The City Editor at The Manchester Evening News - Tuesday 2nd of July 1968

In July 1968 the Watney-Mann brewery group quietly test marketed a batch of Murphy’s draught stout brewed at The Lady’s Well Brewery in Cork on a target audience in 20 of their Manchester pubs.¹ This soft launch must have been a relative success as it in turn led to a bigger campaign in June of 1969 when Watney-Mann were joined by Bass-Charrington - both giants of British brewing at the time - in trialling and marketing that same Irish stout in their pubs in the hope of unseating Guinness’s grip on the bar counters of Britain. Now under the guise of ‘Colonel Murphy,’ it was trialled in 500 of their pubs in Manchester and Brighton, with the hope of launching it in 8,000 pubs across the island in the future.² The name change and choice seems a strange decision, as nitrogenated draught Murphys had just been launched in Ireland the previous year with attractive, trendy branding³. That new branding featured a modern and stylised version of their famous older image of the strongman Eugen Sandow holding up a horse with one hand, which would seem to have been a much more marketable image and story to use and push in Britain. (‘Colonel Murphy’ was presumably named after Lt. Co. John F. Murphy who was the last of the Murphy family to play a direct role in the brewery.)

-o-

A newspaper campaign was launched in The Manchester Evening News over a period of months with the tagline we see on the beermat - ‘If you like draught stout, you’ll love Colonel Murphy’ - hardly the catchiest piece of wording and design ever produced.

The advertisement continues:

In their time, the Irish have produced two great draught stouts.
Colonel Murphy is the one you’ve never heard of before,
Because the Irish have kept it to themselves for the past 113 years.
Now at last it’s being shipped over from County Cork to England.
You won’t find it everywhere, but in many Watney-Wilson and
Bass-Charrington houses. And it’s worth looking for.
It’s dark, smooth and slightly bitter, with a grand creamy head.
A noble drink, if ever there was one.

There are obvious issues with this wording such as the comment that there have only been ‘two great stouts’ produced in Ireland - Beamish & Crawford might disagree for starters, although their stout production was in a state of turmoil at this time - and the implication that Murphy’s never exported stout to England in the past. (They had, and they have done so since too of course.) However, we know from experience that beer marketeers are not the most reliable source, or communicators, of Irish brewing history. ‘Watney-Wilson’ appears to have been referencing the Wilson group of pubs that Watney-Mann had taken over in the early 1960s and who had a considerable number of pubs in Manchester, hence the name use here which would have resonated more with local drinkers presumably.⁴

At the end of August a full page advertisement appeared in the same paper that listed every pub in Manchester and the surrounding area that was stocking Colonel Murphy, a list that ran to 347 different establishments.⁵ The following month in a half page advert under the title ‘England’s Gain’ the marketing was still focusing on its Irish origin saying that ‘naturally enough the Irish are sad to see it go. It’s dark, smooth and bitter with a grand creamy head. A drink fit for heroes.’ It also played with the exclusivity of the beer by saying, ‘It’s here. Not everywhere. But in many Watney-Wilson and Bass-Charrington houses. Try it.’ So it would appear that the brewing companies were putting a relatively sizable marketing budget behind the launch, albeit just at local level.⁶

-o-

Similarly themed adverts ran through October of 1969 but alas it was a short-lived experiment, and commenting on the pulling of the brand from its pubs a spokesperson for Bass-Charrington said in a newspaper report in November that ‘it would have cost too much to get [it] off the ground nationally’ so they had decided that ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ and that both brewing companies would be selling Guinness in their pubs within 12 months. It also quoted a ‘jubilant’ Guinness spokesperson who said that ‘it was the biggest challenge yet to draught Guinness and the fact that these great companies failed will discourage others.’³

Another report regarding Guinness draught’s success in the English market also discussed Colonel Murphy’s demise while noting that both Watney-Mann and Bass-Charrington had breweries in Cork, with the former owning Murphy’s (Lady’s Well Brewery) having acquired 51% of the shares in 1967³, while the latter controlled Beamish & Crawford, both of which were running below profitable capacity, and the hope was that Murphy’s Stout - albeit under a different name in Britain - would change the fortunes of that brewery if the experiment was a success. The article goes on to say that they might have been unlucky with their timing, as it had been ‘a hot summer for their test marketing’ but as it was still on sale up until early winter it’s hard to put much fate in that comment. The reporter also makes the point that ‘the Bass end of Bass Charrington has taken draught Guinness for some time’ so it appears that some of its pubs were already selling it at this time if it wasn't a comment on an older historical connection.⁷ The chairman of Watney-Mann, Peter Crossman, also stated in 1970's The Brewing Trade Review that ‘although we had an excellent beer which achieved reasonable sales levels, the investment and effort required to catch up with the public awareness of draught Guinness would have been less profitable to the group than the sale of a product already marketed.’

It is worth noting that at this time approximately 30,000 drinking establishments in Britain were selling draught Guinness and that figure was growing at a rate of 25% per annum,⁸ but this still seems a strange decision given their abovementioned involvement and investment in The Lady’s Well Brewery which brewed the stout, but perhaps it was a sign of them losing their love for Cork and Ireland despite those adverts they commissioned, where they sang the praises of Colonel Murphy, and indeed by the summer of 1971 they had severed their ties with the brewery and sold their stake in it.

-o-

Very little breweriana seems to have survived of Murphy’s English adventure, but there are - as we can see - some beer mats and there are probably some nice conical pint glasses sitting on the back of a few English collectors’ shelves, but it’s nice to know that at the end of the sixties a Cork brewed stout almost put it up to the biggest player in the stout market in Britain.

It's interesting to think what might have happened if they had succeeded …

Liam K

* Apart from irksome use of ‘Eire,' surely most of the draught Guinness drank in Britain was produced in their brewery at Park Royal in London?

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached image is the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive and other sources are as credited.

¹ The Manchester Evening News - Tuesday 2nd of July 1968

² The Daily Mirror - Tuesday 11th of November 1969

³ The Murphy's Story - The History of Lady's Well Brewery, Cork by Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil and Donal Ó Drisceoil

⁴ The Manchester Evening News - Friday 1st of August 1969

⁵ The Manchester Evening News - Wednesday 20th of August 1969

⁶ The Manchester Evening News - Thursday 11th of September 1969

⁷ The Birmingham Daily Post - Tuesday 11th of November 1969

⁸ The Daily Mirror - Tuesday 11th of November 1969

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #11 – Mountjoy Brewery Cask Return Postcard (1888)

Returning to the larger yard, we crossed over to the cask-washing sheds constructed principally of iron and tiled roofs. […] Three thousand casks can be turned out of these sheds daily, and thirty men are employed at the work. Facing these sheds there is a space of ground, upwards of an acre in extent, which is covered in casks …

Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume II - 1889.

In late January of 1888 some post from the Mountjoy Brewery in Dublin arrived on the premises of James Watford who had a wine and spirits stores at number 76 on the High Street in Bedford in England. The bespoke postcard wasn’t anything special or unusual, and was something that the Mountjoy Brewery probably posted in reasonably large quantities every month, being just another part of the accounting, notification and checks that were carried out by all breweries in this era.

The prepaid halfpenny postcard was dated and posted on the 19th of January 1888 and on the back was printed the following message:

Messrs. FINDLATER & CO., Have to this date received the undermentioned Casks, and placed the same to the credit of your account.

There follows a list of cask sizes from Hogsheads (54 Imperial gallons) down to Firkins (9 Imperial gallons) and it is beside this last size that the number 5 is written and below that a list of the reference numbers of those casks and the words ‘ad[d]ressed 23/11/87 + 28/12/87.’ Additionally there is a diagonal stamp across all of this bearing the words ‘FINDLATER’S MOUNTJOY BREWERY Co., LIMITED.’

This postcard only tells us part of a story, as it just acknowledges the return of casks to the brewery from a delivery of stout to Watford’s drink store in Bedford, which as well as being involved in spirits and wine were ale and stout bottlers at this time, but we can expand at least a little more on the tale this object can tell …

Mountjoy brewery was founded in Dublin in 1852 by a group of Irish and British businessmen and was one of the largest stout exporters in the city - and country - in the late 19th and into the early 20th century. It was a part of the large Findlater mercantile empire that was well known in the food and drink industry in general. In the late 19th century Mountjoy Brewery only brewed porters and stouts according to Barnard’s description of the brewery, and it appears from advertisements in British papers at this time that they were sending Extra XXX Stout, Extra XX Stout and X Stout in that direction and their brewings widely available in many towns. One of the most popular products was called ‘Nourishing Stout,’ which was also marketed as Crown Stout.¹

We will never be sure exactly which stout - or stouts - were being sent to Watford’s but it was likely to have included that Nourishing Stout, as that was extremely popular at this time and for decades after. Indeed back in 1871 Findlater, Mackie & Co. a bottling and drink company based in England and connected to the Dublin firm were sued by Messrs. Ragget for using the term ‘Nourishing Stout’ on their beer. The case was dismissed as the word ‘nourishing’ was not seen as a trademark infringement, just a descriptor. It came out during the hearing that Ragget’s were not brewing the stout themselves, they were sourcing it from Truman’s brewery in London and bottling it under their own label, and it was reported that this was also where Findlater, Mackie & Co. were sourcing theirs!² Why they weren’t using a Dublin brewed version of a ‘nourishing’ stout from their related brewery - if that report is correct - is a mystery, as Mountjoy were exporting to England at this time, but may have just come down to logistics and convenience, or perhaps some other internal issue. It also emerged that Raggets had already stopped a ‘Nourishing Dublin Stout’ from being sold under that description, and newspaper records show there was one being sold in 1869 with no brewery mentioned and one also being sold in 1872 brewed by Jameson, Pim & Co.³

But back to our casks and what is perhaps also of interest is that Mountjoy Brewery claimed in the 1860s to be the ‘only Dublin brewers who send out all sizes of casks in English measure.’⁴ How true this claim is might be difficult to verify but it was certainly true that many Irish breweries were using Irish cask sizes up until at least the turn of the century, and some even longer. An Irish barrel was 40 Irish gallons which was roughly the equivalent of 32 gallons whereas an Imperial ‘English’ barrel was 36 gallons.

What is clear is that there were many casks, regardless of their size, going back and forth across the Irish Sea in the latter part of the 19th century and there was a great deal of logistical work needed to document, trace and return these casks to their rightful owners. This postcard is a literal snapshot of that process and the communication that was needed for tracking individual casks, which would have been recorded on the delivery dockets and invoices sent out by the brewery at the time of dispatch.

To give an idea of the volumes involved the total exports of porter from Dublin in 1888 amounted to the equivalent of 424,205 hogsheads.⁵ Much of this was probably shipped in some smaller sized casks like Mountjoy’s firkins, so the total number of items shipped may have amounted to close to a million perhaps, of which not all would have returned of course. Even still, this is a huge amount of paperwork and organisation, a side of brewing that can be forgotten about compared to the actual ‘glamour’ of the brewing process itself.

Incidentally in 1888 the Mountjoy Brewery were only sending out the equivalent of 11,595 hogsheads, 6th on the list behind D’arcys, Phoenix, Jameson and Watkins, with Guinness topping the list naturally with 330,088 hogsheads by volume. Although it is worth noting that Mounjoy were in a slump in sales at this time compared to the decades before and afterward where they came second on the list at times.

And these casks would also need sniffing, sorting, cleaning, repairing, stacking and host of other jobs performed on them before they were filled and sent out, and the whole process of recording and retrieving would start yet again. A small glimpse at where some of this took place is mentioned by Alfred Barnard in the opening quotation.

Simple, fragile and ephemeral objects like this brewery postcard are important reminders of our brewing heritage, giving us a glimpse into our past, although admittedly not a very exciting one perhaps.

But because this object exists and was kept and passed on through numerous hands it became a tangible record of what a huge brewing city Dublin was in the 1880s, and that Irish brewing history exists beyond those breweries whose beers and history survived.

Liam K

¹ Warrington Examiner 18th September 1875 and Leicester Daily Post 6th June 1889

² The Law Reports : Equity Cases Including Bankruptcy Cases, Before the Master of Rolls, the Vice-chancellors, and the Chief Judge in Bankruptcy · Volume 17 1874 - Editor: George Wirgman Hemming

³ The Shrewsbury Chronicle 29th November 1872

⁴ The Birmingham Daily Gazette 19th May 1868

⁵ The Railway News, Finance and Joint-stock Companies' Journal 1889

More information on the Mountjoy brewery can be found in Findlaters: The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family by Alex Findlater

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached images are the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive and other sources are as credited.

Opinion: On Beer Twitter ...

The beercentric side of Twitter is for me like a favourite pub …

It's one I’ve been going to for quite a while because it’s easy to reach and familiar to me – comfortable perhaps. I’m on at least nodding terms with many of the clientele who frequent it and I interact with all of them a little differently. Some I greet with humour, others with sarcasm and a few with serious replies to their question. Many I can sit beside unbidden to have a chat with and vice versa, some I greet briefly, and a few I just salute. Some I've fallen out with, for now ...

 And of course there are some I ignore completely, as they do me.

I don’t like the politics and opinions that certain other patrons subscribe to - in fact I find their choices dreadful - but I can easily ignore their treatise to join their legions and tend to change the conversation to other topics or just move away to another barstool with a polite excuse. Occasionally a rowdy, group of loudmouths come in and start shouting nonsense but I have the ability to mute them and continue my conversations with others, although sometimes I’ll just sit quietly with my pint, being amused - or often bemused - by their antics and stupidity.

The business changed hands a while ago but it made no real meaningful difference to my visits to the place, even if the new owners did do some odd things like letting back in some of those who were previously barred and limiting the number of drinks for some of their customers. They also created a VIP section that you had to pay to enter, and they changed the furniture around a little, but the fixtures and fittings remained pretty much the same. As did the core clientele, although some folks have left or are threatening to leave, and a few don’t call in quite as often as they used to do.

But for me personally the place operates in the same general way. I can enter through the same front door and choose who to sit with, who to talk to, and who to ignore - although admittedly I'm not on the premises as often as others so perhaps that makes a difference. For me it’s the people within the walls who make the pub - it's only a building after all - and if you enjoy conversing and interacting with them then why leave or change locations? I’ve investigated some other pubs to see what the fuss is about; I’ve even drank in one or two - but they are not quite the same. They feel wrong, they are not a good fit for me and not all of the people I enjoy mingling with are there either. Also, some of the new pubs have too many rooms or are so big that it’s impossible to find others inside, and certainly to hear people speak - and it’s even hard to find a comfortable, familiar-feeling seat.

It’s not a perfect pub by any means but perhaps I’m like one of those shattered old men you see in black and white photographs of a pub from the past, who sit at the bar with their pint and their newspaper and a quizzical expression on their face, and who you can tell needs that place more than it needs them. Who interacts just enough to get enjoyment, who like conversing from the safety of their barstool or that comfortable seat in the snug. Who can preach with the knowledge of never being taken seriously and find a willing pair of ears in moments of acute exasperation or troubled desperation.

Selfish or foolish as it may be, I’ll be staying put until the turn the key in the lock for the very last time, or it burns down around me ...

Cheers.

Liam K

Please note, all content published here is my own unless and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post.

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #10 – The Guinness Waterford Tankard (1960s)

But when a cauliflower-wigged tankard of brown stout crowned the repast, his rapture knew no bounds. He pressed it with ecstasy to his lips, and sang joyously –

Porter! Drink for the noble souls!

Raise the foaming tankard high!

Water drink, you water think –

So said Johnson – so say I!

Merrie England in the Olden Time by George Daniel (Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 7 - J. M. Mason, 1841)

There is probably no piece of vintage, beer-related glassware that is talked about in the same reverential tone as the Guinness Waterford tankard. For many collectors of breweriana finding an absolutely perfect example is akin to discovering The Holy Grail, and almost as hard to acquire. Even those who show indifference to Guinness itself have a fondness for the barrel-like shape, the curvaceous handle, and that gold lettering with the harp sitting above. It has, for many at least, a deserved iconic status in Irish - and British - beer history, much more so than the relatively recent interloper that comes in the shape of the tulip pint glass.

Admittedly, the quotation above by George Daniel is a little out of kilter with the timeline, material and origins of the beer-related item we are focussing on here but it is an evocative piece of prose and poetry in honour of a tankard of stout. The wonderfully described ‘cauliflower-wigged’ and ‘foaming’ description of the head on the vessel in that piece is at odds with how we see draught stout’s image now, but it might be viewed by some as a better manifestation and a more inviting portrayal of that drink than the sterile, domed band of nitrogenated bubbles to which we have become accustomed these days.

-o-

Although our tankard was indeed made in Waterford it is not strictly speaking the ‘Waterford Glass’ that is world renowned for its quality, substance, and appeal, but rather a different quality of product that was being made by the company for domestic and bar use from when the firm started producing glass in Ballytruckle just outside Waterford in 1947. The material used for these items was soda glass which contains no lead or potash as opposed to the crystal glass that the company is well known for producing. This type of glass was being made right up until 1970 in the company’s plant at Johnstown - where they had moved to - in the centre of the city, and was still being sold for a number of years after that. As well as Guinness tankards the company also produced branded glasses for many other drinks such as Carling Black Label, Idea, Harp, Carlsberg¹ and probably Time, Smithwicks, Phoenix, Double Diamond, Celebration and many others. Interestingly, they also produced another iconic piece of glassware, the stemmed glass for Irish Coffee with the gold band on top and a shamrock on the flattened section of the stem, which were exported to North America in large quantities¹ These, along with the barware and the many lines just for domestic use, meant that the Waterford Glass Company were quite a prolific maker of daily-use glassware as well as high-end lead crystal. It is probably fair to say that almost every Irish household of a certain vintage has a piece of ‘Waterford Glass’ in a cupboard or on a shelf, although most owners would not recognise those pieces as such.

Many of these lines were stickered with a rectangular label on their base with the words ‘Waterford Domestic – Made in the Republic of Ireland’  or a lozenge shaped one in silver and black with 'Waterford Barware - Made in the Republic of Ireland.' Those stickers are obviously now quite rare on any glasses used in the pub trade but some examples still exist with the label in place and intact.

Without some insider knowledge of the company's process of making all of these glasses we can only speculate as to how exactly they were created, but they appear to have been mould-blown by mouth rather than by machine and then, in the cases of tankards, the handles were dropped on and shaped by hand afterwards. This would seem to be the most efficient way of producing such a large quantity of relatively uniform products in a cost-effective way - but this is mostly speculation.

-o-

Glass tankards were quite a rare thing in Irish pubs in any part of our history up until the 1960s, with pewter mugs and fluted or plain conical pint glasses (tumblers as they were often called) being used up to that time along with Noniks with their pronounced bump near the top of the glass. In England certainly, and perhaps the rest of Britain, glass tankards were much more in use regionally at least, with dimpled mugs and multi-faceted tankards being relatively popular up to this period. This may be the reason why Guinness decided to launch this style of glass for its new Draught Guinness once they had ironed out any issues with the Easi-Serve dispense of their new stout and were viewing a campaign to install the new system in as many pubs as they could on these islands. Our near neighbours were huge consumers of Guinness in various forms, and the London brewery at Park Royal was in full swing so it would make sense that decisions were made based on that market rather than the Irish one.

The tankards weren’t used at the initial launch of Draught Guinness in 1961 but appear to have been rolled out sometime after 1963, and there are certainly surviving Irish examples of the glasses with verification marks for that year. In fact, early in Draught Guinness’s launch in England it was advertised in dimple mugs, a thought which would horrify and perplex many of today’s most militant Guinness drinkers!

Alan Wood, who took up the position of Guinness Advertising Manager in Britain in 1961 states in an undated note in ‘The Guinness Book of Guinness’ that the tankards ‘just happened’ and were part of that Draught Guinness roll-out ‘throughout Britain’ – and presumably Ireland around the same time. He also implies that the Waterford Glass Company were looking for a line that they could relatively easily produce, which they could use as a starting point to expand into this type of branded, bespoke barware product, and something that would also help with training and apprenticeships. The discussion between the two companies focussed on a lightweight, ‘generous’ looking tankard that would show-off the aesthetics of the beer, and that had a ‘quality feel’ that would suit a pint which would be a little more expensive than the norm. Waterford Glass came up with the design and at a price that very much suited Guinness’s budget. Interestingly, Mr. Wood says in the same note that ‘hundreds of thousands’ were produced and possibly a million!² (There are currently no figures available as to how many were actually produced although the appear to have been packed in boxes of six, and if every pub on these islands received a box or two then the numbers would soon add up ...)

The golden logo applied to the tankards comes in at least two variants, the first being the lettering that had been around for decades with slight changes up until sometime in the mid-sixties when the company changed to the second version, the Hobbs or Hobbs-face stencil-like font with gaps in the narrow points of the letters. (This was first used in 1963 on posters and named after Bruce Hobbs at the SH Benson advertising company, who was allegedly inspired by street signs in Paris and the crude stencilled lettering on hop sacks.³) The earlier font also seems to have a less commonly seen version of the harp logo which differs a lot from the more ornate versions seen on bottle labels and was possibly for ease of printing, although it was replaced by a lightly simplified version on the later glasses and elsewhere. Also of note is that on some earlier versions of the half pint glass the logo faces a right-handed drinker whereas it usually points outward and away from them - and should do from a marketing standpoint on any glass. The tankards came in pint and half pint sizes, as well as a smaller run of three-pint versions for use as displays in pubs. These have become the real Holy Grail of Holy Grails for collectors and feature the word ‘Draught’ above ‘Guinness’ in the early letter and logo style.

In print, the glasses appear to have been first used in advertising Draught Guinness on posters in Ireland in 1963³ and in newspapers in this country by the following year. They first appeared in Britain on advertising posters in 1966 /1967, when ‘the tankard was adopted as the symbol’ for the product.⁴ (Those advertisements also feature the ‘older’ style typeface, which appears to change around the end of the decade to the newer version, as mentioned above.) The tankard falls out of favour with marketing companies around 1980 and rarely appears after that, replaced by the conical glass for a while and then the aforementioned tulip pint glass we are now very familiar with from advertisements and social media.

Verification marks seem to have been applied around the time that the glasses were originally made and before the logo was applied, this can lead to errors and confusion in dating certain glasses. For example there is an officially verified tankard from 1969 which has the logo for Cork city’s 800-year anniversary in 1985 on the side of the glass. Curiously, this version has the Guinness logo on both sides, which wasn’t a common practice and these may have just been commemorative gifts. If it was used in pubs then this Cork version helps to show how long these tankards lasted in the trade, which would have been about two decades. It should be noted that these tankards weren’t universally used for draught Guinness on these islands, as many publicans used some of the more ‘normal’ styles of practical glassware instead or as well.

The design may have been an excellent conception and these glasses were relatively tough but they were notorious for cracking and breaking at their Achilles' Heel where the handle meets the top of the glass - a fault often seen on specimens found for sale today. They were not really suitable for the modern pub – not to mention how unkind dishwashing machines were to gold lettering – so it is unlikely that the publican's who used them mourned their passing, although many have revived or remade the old red Guinness lightbox tap fronts that carries their image, while serving the beer in curvaceous but unhandled pint glasses just to add insult to injury.

Many also disappeared out of pubs by way of theft. In 1978 in Lincolnshire in England two ladies were convicted and fined £25 each for stealing two ‘special and distinctive [half-pint] Guinness mugs’ from a pub having been reported to the authorities by the publican – both women admitted to ‘taking the glasses worth £1.20, out of the pub in their handbags’ according to a local paper. It appears from this that Guinness charged the publican £1.20 for a half-pint tankard.

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There were other, later versions of this Guinness tankard too. A pressed glass edition was available from probably the 1980s with gold or beige lettering and it can be easily identified by its flattened, moulded handle as distinct from the hand-added, rounded handle on the originals. German glass producers Sahm also produced a 400ml similar tankard with the Hobbs typeface in gold in the 1970s. There was also a French-made half pint version with a more rounded handle⁵, and Viners of Sheffield produced an attractive pewter version too, both of these are probably also from the seventies.

After the Guinness tankard was launched it opened the gates for almost every other Irish brand of beer and soon tankards were everywhere in pubs in Ireland in the sixties and early seventies. Time, Smithwicks, Double Diamond, Phoenix, Carling Black Label, Celebration, Bass, Watney’s Red Barrell and Macardles all had glass tankards of various types and designs, many made by the Waterford Glass Company as mentioned above. The Harp tankard, in its second or third version, was the last to be used in pubs, probably in the mid-nineties and long after the other brands had disappeared - or their tankards had at least - or changed to something less cumbersome to suit a changing drinker. [EDIT: The Franciscan Well Brewery were using a branded glass tankard for their beer up until quite recently, and possibly still do - thanks to Keith @j_k357 on Twitter.) Unbranded glass tankards were also used in Irish public houses for a time, before finally falling out of favour in the late nineties apart from the occasional hold-out like J & K Walsh in Waterford who were using a tankard for Guinness and other beers up until relatively recently.

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Perhaps the glass tankard is due a revival here in Ireland? Maybe an enterprising microbrewery will include one in their selection of beer glasses?

So hopefully one day soon we can pour a proper stout into a branded glass tankard again to create that cauliflower-wigged stout, and raise that foaming tankard high …

So say I!

Liam K

¹Waterford Crystal – The Creation of a Global Brand, 1700-2009 by John M. Hearne

² The Guinness Book of Guinness 1935-1985 edited by Edward Guinness

³ The Book of Guinness Advertising by Brian Sibley

⁴ The Book of Guinness Advertising by Jim Davies

⁵ The Guinness Archive Online Collection

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached images are the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive and other sources are as credited.