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| Perry Archive in Portlaoise Library |
Saunders' News-Letter 23rd May 1868
If you walk down Clanbrassil Street and cross the busy Robert Emmet Bridge over the Grand Canal on the south-side of Dublin then head further south on to Harold’s Cross Road you will pass on your right hand side a row of pleasant-looking brown brick low-rise apartments and some equally plain but inoffensive offices, and behind those a collection of commercial and residential structures that cover most of the site. Early maps label the area as Cherry Orchard (not to be confused with the same-named suburb of west Dublin) which might relate to a larger area stretching in a thin plot further north beyond the canal or may just demark a space where there was once an actual cherry orchard - most likely both. The area is now known as Greenmount and has been for many years, presumably after Greenmount house which was just southwest of this location, with the name is still in use in the warren of lanes and streets around here, and it has been home to much industry and business over the centuries – including a brewing enterprise.
-o-
Greenmount Brewery was a joint venture between the elegantly name Robinson Gale Perry and an enigmatic Mr. Alexander, plus possibly other partners, and traded as Alexander, Perry & Co. Mr Perry was part of the Perry family of brewers, maltsters and businessmen from Laois, being one of the sons of Robert Perry and born in 1833 in Rathdowney. His unusual middle name is in fact his mother’s maiden name, an Elenor Gale also from Laois. There is no doubt that there is a bigger story that should be told regarding the Perry family and their various enterprises, including the brewery in Rathdowney which lasted into the 1960s, but for now we will focus just on Greenmount brewery site and history. Regarding the Mr. Alexander whose surname is also on the company name there appears to be very little trace but there was an Edward Alexander of Greenmount listed in Thom’s Almanac from 1870, which could be the missing joint owner. Indeed, there are Alexanders connected with the well-known Pim family who owned the nearby clothmaking company and all - including the Perry family - were Quakers so there seems to be a strong likelihood that this is the correct family at least. (A curious note on the company name is that many in the past and present seem to think the owner’s name was ‘Alexander Perry’ due to the comma being misplaced in the company title, with corrections appearing in newspapers such as times where donations were given by the brewery to various causes.)
-o-
There is a relatively full description of the brewery featured in The Irish Times on the 12th of December 1867, eighteen months or so after the brewery was started, which gives some detail of the building and its operations.
GREENMOUNT BREWERY.
We have pleasure in laying before our readers the following short description of the brewery lately erected by Messrs. Alexander, Perry and Co., at Greenmount, Harold's-cross-bridge.
This brewery was commenced on May 1st, 1865. A rough sketch of the proposed position of the different utensils and the necessary dimensions of the building was furnished by Mr. Robinson Perry, one of the partners, to Mr. John McCurdy, the eminent architect, in Leinster-street. After severe competition the contract we awarded to Mr. S. H. Bolton, of South Richmond-street, and the construction reflects great credit on both architect and builder, for its superior style and finish.
In the lower portion of the building is the malt-room, where the process of brewing first commences. The malt Is drawn from air-tight bins, and emptied into a hopper, from which it is elevated and discharged into a separator and joggler; the former removes all the dust and small grains, the latter retains all the stones, &c. The malt falls on to metal rollers and is crushed, then elevated to a large hopper placed over be mash tun.
The upper portion of the building is occupied with the next operation, which is to boil the water for the mash. This is dine in large wooden backs, lined with copper, the water being heated by passing steam at a high pressure through copper coils lying on the bottom of each vessel. The hot water is conveyed to the next stage, and through a mashing machine, on entering which the malt Is allowed to fall on to it, and the two are mashed up by a series of rakes revolving at great speed inside this machine, discharging the two into the mash tun, where they are allowed to stand for some time. This tun is fitted with a false bottom, which permits the extract from the malt to pass through, leaving the "grains" behind. This extract, now called worts[sic], runs direct into the coppers, where the hops are added. The worts[sic] are then boiled a sufficient time to imbibe the flavour and bitter of the hop, and are discharged direct into a hop-back. This is a square vessel, supplied with a false bottom, which permits the liquor to ran off to a large cooler, leaving the hops behind, where it is rapidly cooled by a fan, and is then allowed to pass over one of Morton and Wilson's patent refrigerators, which quickly cools It down to the temperature desired by the brewer; the wort lastly rubs into the fermenting tuns. The fermentation being completed, the beer runs down into swan-necks or puncheons in the cleansing cellars. The barm being all worked out of the drink in these vessels, the clear beer racked into casks, where it is left to arrive at maturity.
There are two large cleansing for this process, also a large store, where piles of the different ales and beers are ready for delivery. In the cask department the casks are all washed by machinery, then steamed, and dried by heated air.
The boiler-houses and engine-room are situated at one side of the brew-house, from whence all the shafting, &c., is driven. All the iron work and the large pillars were erected by the eminent firm of Courtney, Stephens and Co., and the shafting by Mr. Edward Toomey, of the Phoenix Works, all of which are a credit to both these Dublin firms.
The brewery is capable or turning out 1.000 barrels a week, and for compactness and economic principles cannot be surpassed; the use of pumps, requisite in other breweries, being dispensed with hastens the process, thereby ensuring [the] keeping quality in the beer.
The mild ale and bitter beer brewed by this firm are of an excellent quality, finely flavoured, and have a good body; and we believe that before long to Greenmount Bitter Beer" will be as well known and appreciated in Ireland as Bass and Allsopp are in England.
It is thanks to descriptions such as this that we can get an inkling of the internal workings of the lost breweries of Ireland and, as flawed and weighted as many newspaper reports can be, at least we can have some record and proof that these places existed and how they operated. (A later write-up in the same newspaper related to a different enterprise on the site mentions a description of the actual building as being ‘five stories high and 100ft long’ with an average ‘depth of 213 feet’ and two stores running parallel to the main building 100ft long and 30 or 40ft wide. It appears not to have been altered externally for the new business.)*
We also get a possible start date of 1st May 1865 for the enterprise and it appear it was newly built at that time, plus early maps show virtually no structures on the site. The first newspaper mention is in an advertisement dated exactly a year later on the 1st of May 1866 in The Freeman’s Journal for the sale of an adjacent premises which is said to be ‘adjoining the Greenmount Spinning Mills and Brewery’ so we can be relatively sure it existed by this time at least.
The second part of a write-up on the brewery on the 1st of June 1868 in Saunders' Newsletter very much repeats the Irish Times article regarding the brewery itself to the point of near plagiarism, but it does add the snippets that the brewery gave employment to sixty men at this time and that the site covered three statute acres. The opening section of the article reads like an advertisement - which it probably was – but it does supply us with more information such as how the brewery had an ‘extensive trade in their Irish ales [..] in the west of England, Scotland, and Wales’ which we shall confirm later. The piece also rails against the Irish ale retailers love of Bass and Allsopp’s ales and how Greenmount now 'supplies private families themselves to the extent of nearly three hundred [quarter?] casks per week.’ This can perhaps give us a snapshot of the retail trade in ale in Ireland at this time and how difficult it was for smaller, newer breweries to compete with established brands on the grocery floor or public house counter - plus ça change!
The article goes on to mention what was being brewed at the time, with the pale ale being ‘fully equal to Burton’ only cheaper, there is also a bitter beer that is ‘not so strong, but finely flavoured, bright and sparkling, with good tonic qualities.’ The piece goes on to say that there are two kinds of stout made there, an Imperial and an XX porter, ‘with the latter possessing a good body, and equal to any we have ever tasted.’ The Imperial was thought of as ‘very fine, but expensive’ but it ‘is becoming celebrated, and is one of the most popular drinks in Liverpool and other seaport towns in the west of England, where extra strength is looked for.’ This 'stout' may be being confused with the Imperial Ale because as we shall see there are no other mentions of an Imperial Stout elsewhere, and might show that the writer might not be fully versed in the beers of the brewery after all! The only other fact of note is that the malt for their bitter beer was supplied by Giltrap and Sons, Newark in England – whether it was only used for this beer is not totally clear but it certainly reads as so.
To add to the above descriptions the brewery incorporated an extra element of cooling in 1870 with the installation of an ice machine made by Messrs. Siebe Brothers of Lambeth, London, which as well as making blocks of ice ‘as clear and solid as the “Wenham Lake” ice,’ was utilised in ‘cooling the worts[sic] by sending the half-frozen water in air-tight tubes passing through the vessels.’
-o-
We can add more information to the beers listed above. and perhaps a little clarification too. by looking at some newspaper advertisements from the period.
The label facsimile - which is used like a logo on a financial record held in the Perry archives in the local studies department of Portlaoise Library - shows that at one time the brewery was selling pale ale, extra stout and imperial ale and this can be verified by newspaper advertisements from 1869 and very early 1871. The quote at the beginning of this article is part of an advertisement for ‘Greenmount Pale Ale” which ties in with the label facsimile and gives us a reasonable description of its qualities, albeit from what was probably a paid source.
There is a particularly nice advertisement in The Monmouthshire Merlin of the 13th of February 1869 which shows that Greenmount Brewery were selling “Dublin Imperial Ale” in Newport, Wales from an agent called Robert Perry, who is quite possibly a relation of the brewery owner.
Prior to that, according to The Bristol Mercury, the brewery was looking for a local agent as early as January 1867 to sell ‘”Mild” and “Pale” ales; also, “Single” and “Double Stouts” in the city, and in the same month they were soliciting trials of their East India Pale Ale in The Freemans’ Journal in Dublin. From November 1867 they were advertising a ‘Bitter Beer’ for sale at 1s a gallon in various editions of Dublin newspapers which was ‘not so strong a Pale Ale’ and had ‘a light tonic quality.’ The word ‘beer’ at this time meant a lighter and cheaper type of malt-based beverage in Ireland.
More confirmed export evidence can be seen in The Croydon Chronicle from the 28th of May 1870 where an agent took out a reasonably large advertisement complete with exclamation marks for their ‘Dublin Pale Ale’ and which was claimed ‘for flavour and quality this ale surpasses any other offered in the district.’
By 1872 an agent advertising in The Wexford Independent could offer Pale Ale, XXXX Strong Mild Ale and Dublin Porter in hogsheads, barrels, half barrels, and quarter casks from the October brewings of the previous year, plus there were advertisements in other parts of the country in other years too, showing that their beers were relatively widespread in parts of Ireland.
Interestingly, by January 1872 in another advertisement for their pale ale in The Freeman’s Journal that contains yet another positive report from Robert Galloway, the company name of ‘Robinson G. Perry, and Co.’ is used, which suggests the recent departure of Mr. Alexander from the business.
-o-
But by the end of 1872 a new enterprise – The Irish Whisky Distillery Company – had been formed with a view to converting the brewery into a distilling entity, and among the directors is ‘Robinson G. Perry, Merchant, Rathdowney Brewery, Queen’s County’ along with a William James Perry and some other high-profile business people. The abridged prospectus published in papers in December 1872 state that on the 15th of October of that year that Fredrick William Zurhorst agreed to purchase the ‘premises, known as the Greenmount Brewery, for the sum of £36,000, to be handed over to the company, with all the necessary appliances in complete condition for the Distillation of Whisky, within three months from the incorporation of the Company, capable of turning out 200,000 gallons of Whisky annually.’ The conversion from brewery to distillery was fully completed by 1874 and another of Ireland's breweries disappeared from view.
So it would seem that there was more money projected to be in whisky than in pale ale, and although there is a further chapter that involves the history of the distillery, including a fire and a conversion to an oil company, our interest in the site as part of our lost brewing history ends here.
Robinson Gale Perry died in Brentford in England in 1917 at the age of 83.
-o-
For an epilogue we will go back to June 1868 and a response by Samuel Haughton to that article that appeared in Saunders’ News-Letter quoted from above that sang the praises of the brewery. Carlow born Samuel Haughton was a priest, doctor and writer on scientific subjects. Amongst other things, he is gruesomely known for ‘The Haughton Drop’ - the calculation needed for a humane and swift end for those about to be hanged, but he was thought of generally in good terms. He was a supporter of temperance and Father Mathew so it comes as no surprise that his comments regarding Greenmount brewery are less than flattering. He speaks of the evils of ‘Seductive Liquors’ and ‘deplores that money and intelligence are so freely employed in a business that creates much of the misery and crime that exists around us.’ But his real issue is with the comments by way of the Galloway quote used in the original piece which stated that intoxicating beverages are nutritious, plus that sales of said products are good for the country as a whole, as implied in said article. He takes a huge swipe at Galloway saying, ‘I doubt if there be one intelligent man now to be found among scientific men to maintain that this poison can afford any nutriment to the human frame.’ He goes on to berate the press by saying, ‘Let not then the editors of our public press any more give currency to the idea that alcoholic liquors of any description aid men in the performance of their bodily or their mental labours.’ Lastly he aims his well-spoken words at the brewers, refusing to agree that they are manufacturers - as stated in the piece - and saying that ‘a manufacturer is one who takes raw materials of little previous value, and by art makes them into things of great value. The brewer, and the distiller also, does exactly the reverse of this. He takes articles of the first necessity, and of the highest value to man, and transforms them into poison, injurious to the health, and ruinous to the happiness of man.'
He must have went apoplectic when he saw the brewery - by far the lesser of two evils for many temperance people - converted into a distillery in his lifetime.
But at least he had shuffled off his mortal coil before the ‘Guinness is Good for You’ campaign began …
(Here's the link to object #9)
Liam K
(There is a photograph of the oil company set up by the artist Louis le Brocquy’s grandfather here which is on the same site, and the entrance and the five-story building are probably from the original brewery site, even allowing for damage caused by an 1877 fire.)
*The description above is from an article on the distillery in The Irish Times on the 18th of November 1873, and again the implication is that there was very little change to the external parts of the building but that floors were added internally and a new chimney.
