Solved - A Mystery 'Brewery in Ireland' & Guinness's Plea

'THE HUMBLE recorders of the scene all too often pass unsung and even unrecognised. One whose skill is today becoming more appreciated is James Malton, who lived from approximately 1766 to 1803. The illustration is entitled "Brewery in Ireland." Perhaps a reader may be able to identify the subject, as possibly the round tower with lancet windows may still be standing and even some of the buildings in the background.

Craftsmen of the quality of Malton who leave behind them a series of obviously accurately observed pictures have a great value for the historian. In this alone, which measures just over nine by twelve inches, there is a wealth of contemporary information. In the foreground the broad-tracked barrel-cart, with small details of fittings clearly indicated, dominates the scene; an interesting point with this is that although the surface of the road appears soft and muddy the big wheels are not sinking in very far, which could indicate underlying cobbles or hard surface. At the top of the tower there is a strange piece of balustrade, heading what seems to be some form of vent or chute.'

On the 31st of October 1967 the above write up appeared in The Irish Times in the ‘Art Forum’ section by artist and writer of John FitzMaurice Mills concerning a small watercolour* painting that had been sold that year by The Fine Art Society, London. As you have read, the author asked readers with help to identify the subject of the brewery in the picture, hoping that someone would recognise the distinctive round tower. What appear to be two barrel loaded brewery drays were also captured in the picture, trundling onwards towards a archway in a building in the distance.

This plea was taken up by non-other than ‘The Harp - The Journal of the Home of Guinness,’ a magazine ostensibly published for the workers in the James’s Gate brewery but read by many others as the magazine found its way around the country via the breweries many employees. The following plea and offer of a reward appeared in an edition of the publication:

REWARD FOR INFORMATION SUPPLIED

This is a Malton engraving of an Irish brewery. Its situation is unknown to us and we offer a three guinea voucher to any reader who may be able to provide this information. Perhaps some of our older readers in the country may recollect this unusual looking tower. Information may be sent to The Editor, 'The Harp', St. James's Gate, Dublin 8.

No one appears to have come forward with information of the brewery so there the matter died and appears to have been forgotten, and the reward unclaimed …

But towards the end of 2019 the question of this enigmatic Irish brewery resurfaced again thanks to John Fitzgerald via Twitter who tagged me in a post, practically challenging me to solve the mystery and attaching the above page from The Harp magazine showing Guinness offering that reward for information along with an image of the artwork. A number of people got involved in the discussion and although I did find out that it had since been attributed to a Michael ‘Angelo’ Rooker on the Sotheby’s website, we didn't discover much more about the illustration apart from confirmation that there seemed to be no response to either query at the time and that the reward appeared to remain unclaimed.

Shortly after I started digging through images of old Irish towers and spending too much time searching for that quite distinctive structure. I even bought a book about the artist - Rooker - to see if that helped pin down where he visited in Ireland but to no avail. I though I was on to something in Louth at one point but that too came to nothing, so eventually I took a break from my searching - but never quite admitted defeat in the hope that the tower would appear somewhere, somehow in some of my other brewery research.

In the intervening years I would revisit the subject on occasion and look again for anything that would finally let me scratch that unreachable itch of not being able to solve this conundrum, but I always ended up in a dead end. Of late I had almost resigned myself to never solving the mystery but also hoped that at some point I’d find something during my research that would give me that ‘Ah ha!’ moment, although in truth I had almost given up.

-o-

But then it happened …

I was scrolling through a website when a painting’s image jumped off the cover of an old book at me. It was an angled photo but it was unmistakably ‘my’ Irish brewery. There it was, with the dray carts and tower, impossible for me to mistake for anything similar as I had spent so much time studying it …

The arresting issue was the title of the book. It was a 1980s printed facsimile of ‘A History of Southampton’ by Reverend John Silvester Davies.

Southampton? In England? So not Ireland?

And with just a little further research I discovered that this so called ‘Irish Brewery’ picture seemed to be a relatively well-known image of the Polymond Tower in the North-East corner of the old defensive city walls of Southampton. The tower still exists now but it is hugely truncated from what it once was and had been rebuilt many times since its foundations were originally laid many centuries ago. Looking more closely at the image with the benefit of knowing the position of the tower in the streetscape of old Southampton I now saw that what I took to be trees behind the building seemed to be the ivy-covered walls that abutted the tower on the right of the picture, and the faint remaining edge of a long-gone wall on the opposite side was there too.

More research was required, as I needed to assure myself that the painting was what it claimed to be. The top storeys of ‘our’ tower had been removed in 1828 as they were deemed unsafe, and although there was a brief mention in one of the building's online histories of a sketch of this demolition as it was happening, which would surely be the proof I needed, it seemed to be unpublished in any form. That was until by I came across a paper called 'The Military Organisation of Southampton in the Late Medieval Period 1300-1500' by Randall Moffett** that discusses the Polymond tower and includes two telling images. One being a version of our painting from the Southampton Art Gallery storeroom which tells us that the painting is actually by Edward Dayes and - equally importantly - its title is given as ‘Tower near York Buildings, Southampton’ from c. 1794. Somewhat different from the artist and title that was attributed to it in the flawed history from the sixties that I had been lead to believe.

Crucially for my much-needed confirmation, the second sketch was that missing image of the tower’s demolition titled ‘North view of the North-East tower of the old wall, Southampton as it appeared Dec 3rd 1828.’ It can be clearly seen that it is the same building right down to the ivy on the adjoining city wall. There are a few differences with the window style but not enough to make me doubt that it truly is the Polymond tower that is featured in our original painting - not that I should have doubted Southampton’s historians of course! (The paper is copyrighted but I have included its online link details and the page number of the image below.)

How it came by its earlier misattribution and erroneous title might need to remain a minor mystery, as is the puzzle that there appears to be two of these watercolours in existence. It is possible that ‘our’ version came to be looked at as Irish given the original attribution of it being by James Malton, who was lived and worked most of his life in this country. Somebody saw the drays and barrels in the picture and just assumed it was an Irish scene featuring and Irish brewery and christened it as such.

Regardless, I think we can now repeat the more likely painter and its true depiction and title - ‘Tower near York Buildings, Southampton’ by Edward Dayes c. 1794.

-o-

And what of that brewery? To claim that three guineas Guinness voucher I still need to name the brewery, even if it is an English one.

And I can - sort of - as down through that opening seen in the distance on the left of the picture stood a brewhouse that became known as The East Street Brewery which according to the one brewery history site*** was founded c. 1786 - eight years before our watercolour was created. There is also note of a R & W Saunders supplying beer from their brewery on East Street in 1809, and a John Sanders was known to be a brewer in Southampton according to a 1790 trade directory along, with 5 other individuals admittedly. Is it too much to suggest that the drays and barrels were heading into the Sa[u]nders’ brewery? Absolutely, but I think it’s fair to say that they were heading to a brewery and there was very likely to be one there at the time of our painting, as such sites tend to change hands and be reused over the years, and this was a perfect location for one along East Street, tucked in nicely just outside what was the city walls. (Although other online resources**** state that there were three brewers operating on East Street up to the 17th century at least so those brewer's names I suggest as being on site - although real - are pure conjecture.)

We can even see inside that opening to the brewery buildings - although it's from a century later when it was Cooper’s Brewery - in an 1895 watercolour by the unrelated William Marshall Cooper*****. Look at the lower archway through which yet another dray cart is coming or going and the structure of the building and roof over it. That’s surely the opposite side of our original picture, leading back up to the tower - meaning we can literally seen through the matching archway at the end of our original picture. It is also quite likely that some if not all of these buildings are from the previous century, so perhaps here finally is our brewery, and certainly their footprint is the same in Ordnance Survey maps from almost 50 years before in 1846 which also show a brewery exactly here by the way.

John FitzMaurice Mills was right about the invaluable recording that was done by artists before the age of photography but as we can see we need to treat these sketches and paintings with a little scepticism, especially those with faltering or missing provenance, but I think we can finally put this one to bed - and at long last I’ve almost completely scratched that nagging itch.

Only one serious question still remains …

With The Harp magazine no longer around, where do I claim my three guinea voucher? Although given its value now I think I'd prefer three gold guineas ...

Liam K

The original Tweet that started this is here.

*Watercolour image was shareable via https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/Cheffins/97/726497/H0328-L293576612.jpg

** Moffett, Randall (2009) - The military organisation of Southampton in the Late Medieval Period 1300-1500.  University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 279pp - Page 28 - https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/436604/1/Moffett.pdf

*** That date is mentioned on the Brewey History site here but I can't find verify it - http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=William_Cooper_%26_Co._Ltd

****Brewers' Tales: making, retailing and regulating beer in Southampton, 1550-1700 James R. Brown - http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/135/BrewersTales.pdf

***** The Cooper brewery watercolour is from the Sotonopedia site and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License: http://sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:cooper-s-brewery

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 - sources are as credited. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #14 – Guinness Bottle Opener (1970s?)

‘My sealing-caps are so strong, so constructed, and so firmly applied to bottles that some form of lever or a cork-screw must be employed for detaching them, and my caps are also the first which when applied to a bottle and locked thereto, as described, have the edge of the flange so projected as to afford a reliable shoulder, with which a detaching-lever may be engaged, for enabling a cap to be promptly removed as a result of a prying or wrenching action.’

William Painter - Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 468,258, dated February 2, 1892. Application filed June 16, 1890, Serial No. 355,603, (No model.)

There is a relatively famous (in certain circles at least) archive film* from RTE that reports on the ceasing of the cork-bunged Guinness bottle by orders of the brewery, as it was to be completely replaced by a seemingly unpopular bottle closer - the metal cap. In that piece of recorded Irish beer history from 1969, which incidentally shows both the insertion and extracting of corks, there are a few stout drinkers quite unhappy with this change from what was seen as the traditional method of sealing beer bottles in this country. The interviewees argued that cork-sealed stout bottles tasted better than those using a metal cap, with one drinker being shown to be able to pick out the one corked bottle from a row of poured stouts, allegedly based on taste alone. Whether there was an actual difference between corked bottles and metal capped versions is impossible to know, as we are far removed from those times with no real way of doing a similar comparison, but those punters in that bar in Drogheda were convinced that corks were better than crown caps. Regardless of their outrage and unhappiness, Guinness got its way of course and as a secondary consequence those wonderful, levered, cork extractors that existed on most bars in the country disappeared, replaced by the now familiar cap removers which were much simpler to operate although far less theatrical and ritualistic …

-o-

When William Painter received his patent for his improved bottle sealing device in 1892 it was unlikely that he would have foreseen the impact it would make around the world and just how enduring his simple-but-clever patent would be. Hailing from Baltimore in America, Painter was a prolific inventor who appears to have had an obsessive fascination with the sealing and opening of bottles if the sheer number of patents he filed is anything to go by - over eighty in total - although some of those were on subjects such as counterfeit coin detectors and a magnet-based signalling device for telephones. Regardless of these other inventions it is for the design of this bottle closer - soon after called the ‘Crown Cork’ - that beverage suppliers will be grateful to him for, even if most of them have probably never heard his name and certainly don't appreciate the cleverness of an ingenious little device that most people take for granted these days.

Before his invention there were other methods of closing bottles, one of the most popular and historic being the plain cork bung of course, and other metal closer had existed but none were quite as strong and easy to apply as Painter’s. His crimp-edged, strengthened metal caps clamped on the edge of specially made bottles with a cork liner between the cap and bottle rim ensuring an airtight fit. These caps were easy to apply and remove and would go on to revolutionise the drinks industry around the world. They were also disposable - they were never designed for reuse - a clever way of ensuring a steady income for those involved in their manufacture.

His patent, or patents as there were two for this type of bottle closure device, show how the caps would be used and he goes into extreme detail on how they were developed and how they worked in the accompanying submission to the patent's office. To say he invented these closing devices is somewhat of a mistruth, as he points out in his description that similar versions existed at this time but none were quite as good as those he proposed in his application, and indeed he states the following:

'I do not presume them to be novel as to form and construction. I do believe they are the first caps composed of hard sheet metal which are adapted to the service indicated and that they involve radical and valuable novelty when considered in combination with a sealing-disk and bottle having a locking-shoulder.'

So as with most inventions it involved improvement on an existing design more so that a completely radical new idea. although clearly his were unique enough that his patent was accepted.

Also in his submission he states that the caps can be removed by the user with a ‘hook shaped’ lever that would fulcrum off the top of the capped bottle (Fig. 6 above), or by the use of a ‘forked opener or leaver which will freely receive the head of the bottle between its prongs’ with the bottle head serving as the fulcrum for displacing the cap. He also goes on to say that specific bottle openers of his own devising will be the subject of a separate patent application.

And he was true to his word, as on June the 5th 1893 he filed for a Capped-Bottle Opener, his second such application. (He had previously filed for another type of opener for a different bottle seal design where a concave disc was positioned in a groove inside the rim of the bottle and needed to be plucked out - that sealing method was also been invented by Painter.) This new version is quite familiar to us and is shown in four versions, one which included a clever bung as the handle to seal the bottle after some of its contents were poured, the hook on the other end means that the opener can also be used like his previous opener to remove those internal bung-like seals mentioned above.

Here in Fig 6 we see the basic shape of the design we know, and in the dotted outline something even more familiar given the object we are discussing. Whether he adapted his design from older, existing openers is unknown but it is quite likely that he was the sole inventor in this case.

William Painter went on to form ‘The Crown Cork and Seal Company’ and designed machines and equipment to make the process of applying is bottle caps quicker and more expedient - hence his many patents on the subject - and his business became a huge success and there has been much written about him**, although not quite so much in recent years.

The Crown Cork made its way to Ireland by 1895 where it is being advertised as used on mineral waters in a Cork-based newspaper - coincidentally. And just a couple of years later these caps were being advertised as being suitable for all bottled beverages including beer, with one advertisement even using the fact they were easy to open by ladies as a selling point! An English version of the Crown Cork Company came into being in 1897, having acquired the European rights for the patent, and there were Irish companies in Dublin, Drogheda and Belfast manufacturing the caps by the middle of the 20th century by which time the patent had possibly expired.

These caps could also be pre-printed with the drink company’s name almost from their introduction - as the many avid collectors will know - and were probably being used for stouts and ales here - even if in just a small way - for many decades before Guinness finally called a halt to the practice of corking bottles and forced the change completely to Crown Caps. There of course bottlers using these metal sealers before that and indeed, according to David Hughes in his book “A Bottle of Guinness Please” there were five official Guinness logo Crown Cork designs approved from 1934, and it is possible, and probable, they were being used long before then.

-o-

The invention of the Crown Cork meant that a whole new industry sprang up for bottle openers, one that continues to this day with a multitude of designs and methods for the removal of these now almost universal bottle sealers. The object shown at the top is just one of those designs and although it isn’t quite as iconic as the older, heavier official Crown Cork opener (see the 1920s' version below) with its registered number on the rim that can be found in many an old cutlery drawer, it is a more fitting version to be used in this series given the brand it advertises. These newer versions have proven difficult to date but they were probably promotional items sold or given away in the 1970s or perhaps the 1960s or even earlier. They were manufactured by John Watts who was based in Sheffield in England and the same design was used for Newcastle Brown Ale and others which just carried the maker's name. Very similar designs bearing the logos of Bass and Carlsberg were also available, although the manufacturer of those is unclear.

Based on the printed design*** on the bottle caps shown above with the opener, Guinness appear to have been using cork-lined caps until at least the 1990s before finally changing to plastic seals and removing the last vestiges of their cork-bottled past.

Given the finickiness of Guinness drinkers we can only assume they were unhappy about this small change too.

One wonders did anyone do a taste test then ..?

Liam K

*That piece of film can be seen here.

** There is a book about William Painter viewable here.

*** This typeface was used in early Guinness labels but revived in the late 1990s. The design with those two dots look like the later use but the caps could be from the earlier period.

This post really deserved more research and effort to fill in more details, but time restrictions and a need to not make it too long-winded means it's lacking some finer details..

Patents referenced and sources of diagrams:

WILLIAM PAINTER, OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND. BOTTLE-SEALING Device. SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 468,258, dated February 2, 1892. Application filed June 16, 1890, Serial No. 355,603, (No model.)

WILLIAM PAINTER, OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND. BOTTLE-SEALING DEVICE. SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 468,226, dated February 2, 1892. Application filed May 19, 1891, Serial No. 393,293, (No model.)

WILLIAM PAINTER, OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, ASSIGNOR TO THE CROWN CORK AND SEAL COMPANY, OF SAME PLACE. CAPPED-BOTTLE OPENER. SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 514,200, dated February 6, 1894. Application filed June 5, 1893, Serial No. 476,638, (No model.) 

All via Google Patents

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. Both photographs are the authors 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!