More Rare Old Dublin Beer Labels - Manders' Brewery

If you mention a brewery on James' Street in Dublin to most people they will automatically think of Guinness and probably just of them. But back in the late 19th century the street, and this general area of Dublin, was home to quite a few breweries. Indeed Alfred Barnard noted in his famous history-recording books on the breweries of these island back in 1889 that from the top of the nearby-ish Anchor brewery he 'could distinguish half-a dozen-breweries', and almost certainly one of those was the Manders' site, although it had been bought a couple of years previously by its near neighbour The Phoenix Brewery . (Phoenix relaunched Manders as an ale brewery in the middle of 1896.)

Robert Manders & Co. (known as Manders & Powell until 1851) operated from 112-116 James' Street - quite close to its more famous rival - and these stout labels were registered in 1876 and were in use for 'more than 15 years previous' according to to their source - The Brewers' Guardian from June 21st 1881. They show the breweries trademark of a dove and olive branch and also - seemingly - Robert Manders' signature. They pay more that a passing resemblance to Guinness's labels but in truth many labels looked quite similar at that time.

They are yet another nice find and again worth pulling back into our lost brewing history, Manders brewery itself deserves more of its own history to be recorded too but that's a subject for another post ...

Liam K

The referenced volume was sourced via Google Books. 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. In other words, don't be that guy ...