The Red Cow Inn - A Carlow Merchant's Token

© The Trustees of the British Museum

From stumbling around in the local history of pubs, taverns and inns I'd previously come across mentions of The Red Cow Inn in Carlow, but by chance today I came across this photograph of a related merchant token on the British Museum website (plus a second one shown below). It is from 1657 and was struck for a gentleman call John Masters who seemingly owned said inn in town, the site of which wrapped around the corner of Dublin Street into Tullow Street in Carlow, excluding it actual corner itself.

I had first come across the coin as mentioned in Carlow: The Manor and Town, 1674-1721 by Thomas King and a previous online dig brought up a more detailed commentary in On Merchants' Tokens Struck in the Towns of Carlow, Bagnalstown and Tullow published by Robert Malcomson in 1869, so it is a well known black and white woodcut image to local historians but I'm unsure how many people have seen a photograph of it in the virtual flesh, so to speak.

It reads 'JOHN MASTERS 1657' and '1 D' (1 Penny) on one side and 'IN CARTHELOUGH' [sic] and an image of a horned red cow on the other. It was made from brass according to Malcomson.

John Masters was 'portrieve' (portreeve) of Carlow -  a kind of high-ranking town official - again according to Malcomson, and we know from Thomas King's book that Masters owned the Red Cow Inn, so although that looks a bull like I'm pretty sure it's meant to represent a cow.

I wonder did Mr Masters also have a brightly painted or carved sign with a red bull hanging from his premises? I would like to think so...

Liam

Please note this image is © The Trustees of the British Museum and shared via Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) from The British Museum website. please don't use it without proper attribution and a link back to my site if you've found it first here.

© The Trustees of the British Museum

Pub Tales: First Encounter...

Childhood memory is a curious thing...

For most of us it's full of the selective memory of summer sunshine, the smell of hot tarmac or freshly cut meadow grass, and snatches of possible misremembered events which, for some obscure reason, have become lodged in our psyche. I often wonder why we can clearly remember the banality of the mundane but can't quite precisely remember the funeral of a grandparent or some seismic world event. Perhaps the answer lies in markers left by our senses in our memories, where touches, smells, sights and tastes combine to form a half remembered puzzle of a particular moment.

My first memory of being in a public house was in the very early seventies when I was five or six years old. We lived in the rural hinterland and travelled each Saturday morning to the local mini-metropolis to do our weekly shopping. This task in itself was carried out efficiently by my mother but we would all make the journey in to town anyway, for moral support and a chance to walk paved streets for a change I guess. I was the youngest of four and being the only boy I was probably watched more closely than my sisters, especially as my parents had lost twin boys some years before. This perhaps explains the tight hold my father held of my wrist as we walked down the main street with my older sisters in tow, having been shooed away by mother from helping with the shopping. I can still recall that almost too tight grip of his left hand and the warmth and security it provided.

I looked up to see a man approach my father with a huge grin, hands were shook and greeting exchanged, garbled and unclear in my head now but genuine and heartfelt. I vaguely remember a mention of long nights travelling and music so I assume this stranger to me was a member of one of the showbands from the fifties in which my father played before settling down to have a family, and sadly having to pawn his trumpet. A drink must then have been mentioned as I can recall being led through a clattering swinging door and into a dark, smoky place - cooler and quieter than the street outside.

I can remember being hoisted by the armpits on to a bar stool, and a well dressed man behind the counter looking sternly at us, a somewhat scary authoritative figure to my young eye. I have no recollection of what my father drank but my best guess is a small bottle of Guinness, as he wasn't a big drinker, preferring ludicrously strong tea to alcohol at home. I can recall the cold counter top but could not tell you what it was made off, although when I close my eyes now I imagine it to be grey speckled marble with shiny brass fitting and twice as deep as any bar counter today, but I do remember we were surrounded by dark timber that clad most of the surfaces in the bar. As my ears and eyes became used to the space I could hear the low murmur of others around us and how bright the outside world seemed through the huge, glass windows that looked out on to the busy street. As romantic as it might sound I can see specks of dust floating in that light that shone in on the tables by the windows, tiny stars drifting dreamlike in slow motion.

Next there was a clink - so perhaps it was a marble counter top - as an orange mineral in a glass bottle was plonked in front of me, the image of a castle on the label rotated to face me and a straw dropped in, with the same ritual being repeated for my sisters as we perched on those stools legs dangling, with my father's voice droning beside us as he reminisced with his long lost friend. We sucked on the straws and the sweet taste of over-sugared orange nectar coated our tongues, as we sat quietly making no sound until we eventually found the bottom of the bottle and that final slurp marked an end to our treat.

There was a sense of contentment there and then that I've found hard to recollect in any other youthful experience. I am not sure why that would be as I had a very pleasant childhood when I look back on it now, uneventful more so than boring. Perhaps it was just that shared experience of being in a bar sitting quietly as the voices of others washed over us, or perhaps it was the coalescing of remembered sensations of pipe smoke, those motes dancing in the sunlight, the sweet taste of our drinks, and the cold counter. Maybe it was the ritualistic experience of sitting at at bar with our legs dangling over the stools, the stern look and the clink of glass and its ceremonial placement.

Or maybe it was the combined affect of the whole experience along with the fact that it was a rare treat...

I don't remember leaving that pub but it would have just been a short visit before meeting up with my mother and making the trek back home, laden with shopping bags and what I presume was the disappointed feeling of that lost contentment, as unappreciative as that may sound.

That same ritualistic feel is what still appeals to me about the pub, like some transferred religious experience for a non-believer. It's not just a place to procure a drink, as that makes a pub sound too functional and clinical even though that is a part of it of course. Good pubs are a triumph of the whole experience over the sum of its deconstructed parts, and any misspent afternoon in one still for me relives part of that first contact from so far in my past. The sounds, smells and sights are not quite the same for sure, and that childhood version is probably embellished by misremembering and tainted by nostalgia but even if my mind has made some of it up, to me it was true and is still true today.

I wonder was the seed for my love for a good pub sown on that day?

By the way, I'm fairly sure that first pub I visited all those years ago is the same one I call my local now ... so perhaps fate - if real - is a curious thing too.

Liam

Beer History - Carlow: Incident at Casey's Brewery

Working in a brewery in the 19th century probably wasn't an easy task given the heat, physical work itself and the varied workload. Having said that, this incident from 1833 looks like it was driven by more than just work issues...

The Carlow Sentinel -1833

John Casey's brewery was situated where Dunleckney Maltings - or just 'The Maltings' as it is locally known - now stands, on the banks of the Barrow just outside of Bagenalstown in county Carlow. Indeed some of the existing structure is possibly part of the earlier brewery, which was there from the late 18th century. It changed hands a number of times before it was converted to solely a maltings and I will post more about it at a later date. It may even turn full circle given its current owners...

I'm not sure if Mr. Lynch ever recovered but it seems unlikely, nor do I know if Mr. Keating was ever found...

Not a nice way to go, so all of you current brewery workers with axes to grind might want to wander outside before you start any fights!

Thanks as ever to the local studies room in Carlow library.

Liam

(All written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and can not be reproduced elsewhere without full credit to its source and a link back to this post.)

Beer History: Guinness Depot Carlow, c. 1900...

(Tweet-to-Blog-Conversion-Project)

Back in March 2017 I posted these tweets...

'Guinness depot on the Barrow in Carlow - late 1800s(?)

[via NLI Photo Collection - Cropped]'

'...Here's a better photo from the same source. If you look through the gate you can see the delivery system post-barge! More likely c. 1900.'

---

The original images are from The Lawrence Photograph Collection on the NLI website are here and here, and you can see St.Anne's church on the Athy road (before it was moved to Graigue to become St. Clare's), and a malthouse and the gasworks chimney in the background. I think this is the building (under the C) via GioHive on the OSI's historic 25inch map.

It would be great to get a name for the gentleman inside that archway!

Edit: Thanks to Charlie Roche (@charleymcguffin on Twitter) here's a photo of the same building from 1948 via the Britain from Above website. I've added the arrow to make it clearer.

Part of my Tweet-to-Blog-Conversion-Project to give a slightly more permanent and expanded home to some of my previous Tweets.

(My original thread is here)

With thanks to OSI, GeoHive and NLI websites

Food History: Hams! Hams! Hams! Christmas in Carlow - 1891

As I've mentioned previously, Carlow was a pretty cosmopolitan and prosperous place back in the 1800s and here's a nice advert from 1891 showing the range and variety of food and drink available at this time. Perhaps it's also testament to the sheer number of people who could afford these items within the town environs and in the many Big Houses a little beyond.

And this was just one shop of a few that sold these kind of products ... some lucky local people were going to have a good Christmas that year...

The Carlow Vindicator 1891 - Local Library

Morris's stood on the corner of Burrin Street and Bridewell Lane, on part of the site where the town's hideous post office now lurks. Judging from the maps at this time, it was quite a large establishment - as it would need to be to stock such a range. Calling itself an 'Italian Warehouse' - with the subtitle of 'The Marsala House' with fancy-shmancy script - is a superb piece of marketing exoticism that would appeal to the landed gentry returning from trips abroad back in the day.

I will draw your attention to some of the lines listed:

• Coffee roasted and ground on site daily
• Doomvera tea - 'The Tea of the Future' (Nope, I have no clue either...)
• Whiskey, scotch ... even old Islay malt
• Old Cognac in wood and 21 year old brandy
• Large range of champagnes, plus Hock and Moselle wines
• Gin, rum and liqueurs
• Guinness's stouts, Bass and Allsopp's ales and Royal Pilsener
• Fruits and nuts - fresh, tinned, preserved and crystalised
• Rices, spices, jams and jellies
• Cossaques [sic] (Christmas crackers), biscuits, chocolates (Cadbury's and Fry's) and other confectionary
• Meat, fish and cheese ... including Gorgonzola
• Those special Hams! Hams! Hams! (No turkeys of course...)

...and much more as you can see.

Part of me would love to have seen this place at Christmas ... busy with customers, packages being loaded up for delivery around the town, plus new lines arriving from far flung places...

Perhaps it's no different to shopping in any supermarket now in a way, but my romantic, nostalgic - and possibly naive - side makes me think I'm somehow missing something special, like some kind of food-focussed time-traveller's FOMO.

I'll leave you to mull over the stock with this last bit of 19th century marketing blurb that's stuck on to the end of the advert...

'Whiskey that needs no eulogy.'

What does that even mean?

Liam

Travel: Urban Brewing, Dublin - The Return of the Famous Carlow Ale?

Way back in 1799, Saunders's Newsletter carried an advertisement for Carlow Ale, available from Grand Canal Harbour in Dublin for the princely sum of 23 shillings a barrel. As to what type of ale this was we can only speculate, although it's the second time I have come across the words 'Carlow Ale' being used as if it were a specific, local style. The other mention, in a new brewery advertisement in a local paper from 1817 with the phrase 'as it used to be' makes me think that there was perhaps something special about the beer brewed locally in the 18th and early 19th century in Carlow...

Mr. Green's brewery stood on Castle Street in Carlow town and there's a story to be told about it if I ever get my research finished and fill in the blanks in the history of this and the other local breweries. Unfortunately the recipes for the beers these breweries made have long since disappeared so it will be impossible to know with any certainty what it tasted like, although with the county's rich farmland and the noted quality of the malt it produced - and still produces - we can speculate that it was quite good, especially if it warranted shipping to Dublin.

The last brewery appears to have closed in the town in the late 1870s (and strictly speaking that was across the river in Graigue) and for many years after all the beer that was poured in the town was imported from various parts of the country and further afield, although Corcoran & Co conditioned and bottled a few different types for a while in the mid-20th century...

Then along came O'Hara's - Carlow Brewing Company - in 1996 and once more there was a brewery operating in the town, brewing in The Goods Store near the train station. As part of its expansion the brewery moved to Bagenalstown, they added an O'Hara's-centric pub to the Kilkenny bar scene and have since gone from strength to strength - acquiring Craigies Cider and the old Minch-Norton malthouse outside Bagenalstown.

Their latest (joint) venture is a stylish and sleek brewhouse and restaurant in the CHQ Building on Custom House Quay, across the Liffey ([Edit - see comments] and further west) from where Mr. Green was storing his ales 220 odd years ago. His beer came from Carlow via the canal but I arrived on this side of the river via a quicker train and Luas, having been kindly invited to the official opening of Urban Brewing. The entrance to the brewhouse is a little anonymous in a way but that suits the general feeling of classy-chic meets urban-modernity that the ground floor level of the bar exudes. Brick and grey metal combine with the wonderful glass roof hung with Edison-style bulbs to give a stark but comfortable feel. On a gantry above the bar sits the brewhouse where the house beers are made before being dropped to storage tanks downstairs where the beer is then pumped to the taps at the bar.

As well as these in-house beers they also stock the full O'Hara's range from the Carlow brewery, some guest brews and also a huge bottle list - plus cocktails, wine and spirits. Foods run from tapas for those wanting to graze a little, to a full restaurant offerings. (I was very happy to see rabbit on this menu!) We got to sample some tapas including a fantastic swordfish carpaccio and some beautifully cooked prawns from the 23 listed on the interesting tapas menu. The vibe and buzz in the place was great, helped by the army of liggers like me who had turned up, but I could also see myself sitting here - equally happy - on a quiet afternoon with a beer, a book and a bowl of something tasty.

And of course I tried the four here-brewed-beers on offer - Urban Wit is a bog standard Belgian wheat beer, that didn't excite or disappoint; Paradisi, a grapefruit IPA, tasted - well - like grapefruit juice and was a little harsh for my palate, as it's not a style of which I am overly fond; Denali IPA was a strange one ... I thought I had been given the wrong beer, as it tasted very like milder version of O'Hara's Freebird a wheat IPA, but after a brief argument discussion with the barman we decided to agree to disagree about it and I just enjoyed it for what it was ... or what I thought it was.

My favourite was The Forager's Wife, a saison with elderflower. I'm not sure I really picked up the elderflower but I did get a lovely dose of barnyard funk up my nose and a really nice meaty, hop-floral taste that I quite liked.

All the beers were fine really if a little hazy but as it's a pretty new system I think the brewer is still finding his feet with it, as you would expect ... and from what I hear the place is very busy so the beers are not getting much time to rest and condition. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what's produced over the coming months, and I'm hoping quietly for a brown ale to appear...

It's pretty much impossible to describe in words or show in pictures how wonderful the subterranean part of the brew pub is ... but I'll give it a shot. A gorgeous corridor stretches off into the distance with large alcoves running off from it filled with seating areas, a room for wooden barrels full of sleeping beers, and another full bar. It's all moodily lit with low level strip lighting and uplights showing off the vaulted brick ceiling. It reminded me of somewhere in Belgium or France, or some Kellerbar somewhere in Germany - it really did put a huge smile on my face as I poked around.

As I made my way back up the stairs it struck me that this was a place to be experienced not just visited...

So, it's great to see some Carlow Ale back on the quays of Dublin and I'll be back in Urban Brewing as a paying punter fairly soon. It's a fantastic spot and as I ran off once again to catch yet another stupidly early last train back home, I felt a little pride that maybe Carlow brewing had come almost full circle...

Liam

(Please Note: At the opening all the food and beers were free, although I didn't overdo it. I haven't been paid to write any of this, and as usual I paid for my own train ticket. Yes I live in Carlow, and yes I sort-of-know the O'Hara's - take all of that into account if need be, but remember I am an honest guy!)

The history bit is with thanks to the local studies room, Carlow library.

Beer History: Strength of Liquors - 1837

STRENGTH OF LIQUORS - The liquor which contains most of the pure spirit of alcohol is Scotch whiskey [sic], being upwards of fifty-four per cent. Contrary to what is generally supposed, the proportion of alcohol in rum is greater than that contained in brandy; the former being 53.68 and the latter 53.39. the next liquor in order of strength is gin, which contains about fifty-one and a half percent of alcohol. Port and Madeira contain much about the same quantity, namely, twenty-two per cent. Cider contains nearly twice as much as London porter, being 7.54 to 4.20; brown stout and Scotch ale contain  each about six and a half; while Burton ale can boast of nearly nine per cent.

{The Carlow Sentinel - 1837 via the local studies room, Carlow library}

Here's an interesting list of the alcohol levels of various beverages from 1837, although unfortunately it gives no reference as to where the original information came from...

It also hasn't referenced exactly whose beverages were measured but it seems to have been lifted from an English report give the mentions of London and Burton.

Nevertheless I thought I should put it up on the Blog as a point of discussion if nothing else!

Liam

History-ish: Imperial India Pale Ale - What's in a name anyway?

I tweeted this previously but I felt it needed a more permanent position on the web, as it's the first mention I've come across in old local newspapers of Imperial India Pale Ales, which are supposedly a new invention but I'll let wiser minds than mine argue that point and tell you more about McNellan & Co ... feel free to Google both.

(The Carlow Sentinel - March 1868)

But perhaps there is a point to be made about expecting too much from beer descriptors and some of the more official style guidelines. A time traveller from our current beer obsessed world might be sorely disappointed by the above mentioned beer if he walked into a public house and order one in 1868. Style guides can give an idea of roughly what to expect from a product we are about to drink but do they have any place outside of homebrew competition? And even in those are good beers being overlooked as they are 'not to style'?

The word imperial here is just a marketing ploy meaning the best of its kind, and I've come across it before in relation to perry, so perhaps we read too much into certain words and let them taint our appreciation of a good drink.

Can beer not just be beer, judged on whether you like it or not? Are there not enough taste influencers around without adding style parameters to our poor deluded tastebuds?

I'm not suggesting we label all beer as 'BEER' by the way, I'm just wondering do we get a bee in our bonnet about what a brewer calls their beer at times?

And don't get me started on IBUs...

Liam

{With thanks as usual to the local history room in Carlow library}

Beer History: What's your Poison?

I jumped ahead 50 years in my research out of an interest in seeing how the paper I am currently trawling through - The Carlow Sentinel - had changed in the interim, and to see what beer was being advertised in the town. I landed in January 1901 to be greeted by the following advertisement:

[The Carlow Sentinel January 1901]

According to an excellent article on the arsenic-in-beer epidemic of 1900-1 by Matthew Copping on The Brewery History Society website, the poisoning was traced back not only to the sugar production process but also to arsenic transmitted onto the surface of malt during the kilning process.

Either way it seems that scaremarketing was being used to sway consumer purchasing habits then as now.

I'd love to read Professor McWeeney's book but sadly I can't find it online...

[With thanks to the Local Study Room at Carlow Library]

History: Brilliant Beverages from The Saracen's Head?

To Brewers, Retailers of Beer, Ale, Cider, &c.

A BRILLIANT ARTICLE IN A FEW HOURS.

THE ADVERTISER has invented FININGS that will cause the article of Beer, Ale, Cider, &c., to become immediately transparent, without violating the law or injury to the article.

The RECIPE is for sale or contract for a supply. A Sample Bottle will be sent to any address, made from this Recipe, on the receipt of 2s 6d, or, in powder, at 8s per cannister, with proper directions for use.

Address - ANDREW WOOD, 5, Snow Hill, London.

(The Carlow Sentinel -  November 1847)

As Isinglass had been around for a long time, was this is a new product? Or at least a new process? With the recipe available too, it must have been made from a raw material that was relatively freely available ... gelatin based perhaps?

There's also an interesting footnote in the fact that the given address was The Saracen's Head Inn, a quite famous establishment in Snow Hill, London that was demolished in 1868 and is now the site of a police station. One assumes that Mr. Wood had lodgings there? Or perhaps it was used as we use PO boxes today...

So not hugely interesting or exciting but ... lots of questions and very few answers!

Liam

[With thanks once again to the local history room in Carlow library]

History: IPA in Carlow in the 1840s - Approved by the Surgeon General!

When we last met Henry Birkett in 1842 he was having a bit of a to-do with Guinness regarding the quality of their porter, and as I trawl through old editions of The Carlow Sentinel in my local library looking for more information on the breweries that dotted the town up to the mid 1800s, his later advertisements catch my eye on occasion. They seem to have put aside their disagreement, as he is continuing to sell Guinness's product in 1844 along with a few other beers, plus a perry and a cider, as the below advertisement shows.

This version is similar to the one I posted before regarding the Guinness dispute and that I flagged on Twitter as the first mention of 'East India Pale Ale' for sale in the town (1842) but what was interesting this time were the prices...

Perry 7s per dozen

Devonshire Cider 6s per dozen

Cairnes' Drogheda Ale 4s per dozen

Guinness's XX Porter 3s 6d per dozen

East India Pale Ale 3s per dozen

The pale ale was the cheapest. 

Admittedly the perry and cider were imported, but this surprised me as I thought  the East India Pale Ale would be offered as a new, premium product at a premium price, even if it was brewed - I suspect - in Dublin as an earlier advert from 1842 (below) seems to show that Pim's offering was the bitter beer of choice in the town, and available across Market Cross in another grocery establishment. This advert sang its praises as a medical fix-all - endorsed by the 'Surgeon General' noless - so why was it now priced cheaper than all other beverages? Had it dropped since it was first seen 2 years previously in the town?

Sorry, that's an actual question ... I don't know the answer.

But perhaps the answer lies in the fact that this was just the price of IPA...

Another find - you can see here - shows by 1846 Birkett now stocked Bass Ale, adds weight to my argument that their East India Pale Ale from 1842 was indeed supplied by Pim's ... and had to drop his Guinness price back to a 1844 level, for bulk purchases at least!

A discussion an 'Imperial Perry' and 'Captain Pidding's Celebrated Teas' will be left for another day!

Interesting stuff ... to me anyhow.

Liam

[With thanks once again to the local history room in Carlow library]

History: Guinness's Small Cask vs Hogshead in 1842

Carlow in 1842 was a busy and prosperous place. The streets were full with shoppers day and night and with travellers from the excellent coaching system who stayed in the local inns, plus there was produce arriving constantly via the barges that travelled regularly on the Barrow river, from Dublin, Waterford and all points in between.

The many shops stocked a fine array of teas, coffees, exotic fruits, meat and spices ... and beer, spirits and wines of course. Henry Birkett's grocery store was positioned in a fine location on the southern end of Dublin Street, close to where it intersected with Tullow Street at Market Cross, where most of those who lived or visited the town past through on a daily basis.

His customers we can presume were many of the landed gentry that owned the best houses in and around the town, and those customers seem to have had a problem with the their Guinness double stout porter. It appears that they were not impressed with hassle of bottling their own stout, and were losing too much during the messy process. So Henry decided on an enterprising plan to bottle the beer for them instead, thus insuring he keeps his sales of porter, and made a few more shillings in the process.

To let his customers know of this service he decides to place an advertisement in the local paper - The Carlow Sentinel:

'Several families who purchase PORTER IN WOOD having complained of the inconvenience and loss in bottling, H. B. has so arranged that by their taking 8 Dozen together ( the quantity contained in a half Barrel) and giving Bottles, he can supply them at the rate of 3s 6d per Dozen.

He wishes to remark he gets his porter direct from JAMES' GATE BREWERY, in Hogsheads and the Porter in them is always superior than that contained in small Casks.'

As you can see, as well as promoting his bottling service he makes some bold claims about the quality of hogshead versus small casks, claiming that the former 'is always superior' to the latter. Would a larger barrel of porter travel and store better than a smaller one? Hogsheads would be less likely to suffer temperature fluctuations but how else could they affect the beer? Was he receiving older small casks perhaps? Was it even a different porter masquerading as Guinness's? There certainly could be a few reasons and variables I believe ...

Either way his comments did not go unnoticed by Edward Byrne, who was either the local distributor for Guinness or another seller of it, and the following week this rebuttal of the accusations appeared in the paper.

'... we [Guinness] authorise you to state that the Porter sent from this Brewery, as Double Stout, in half barrel casks, is the very same as sent in hogsheads, both being Racked from the same Vats.'

But it seems that Henry stuck to his guns, as the original advertisement appeared on the front page with Guinness's defence of its beer at the bottom of the page, and the same advert appeared for a few weeks afterwards.

Whether it was just a perceived difference on his part or not, it appears that Henry had enough of an issue with it to have it put down in print...

And one wonders if it was - like with so many a present day beer drinker - tainted by other influences?

[Thanks again to the local history room in Carlow library]

Liam

(Edited and expanded slightly 12th October 2022)

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.

History: Carlow's Lost Breweries - The Story so Far...

My Tuesday mornings have become predictable...

At 9am I grab a coffee at the optimistically - but in truth accurately - named Tea & Coffee World on Castle Street in Carlow town. It helps focus my mind for the task in hand as this is one of the sites of the town's lost breweries, and it's ironic that I still get to enjoy a brew here ... albeit with more caffeine and less alcohol. They stock a wonderful range of coffees that I've started to work my way through and tag on Twitter with #coffeeticking - and they stock a huge range of teas too of course. (Ironically my other haunt is across the river at The Lazy River Cafe in Graigue at the site of another local brewery ... and they do great poached eggs and bacon!)

With my coffee fix swirling through various parts of my body I walk 3 minutes up the street to the local library and get ushered politely up the stairs to the local study room where I start up the microfilm viewer and load up a newspaper reel. I get my eyes in focus - my newly acquired glasses don't seem to work on a pixelated screen - and trawl through the columns looking for keywords such as 'Beer', 'Brewery','Distillery' or any other brain-imbedded keywords that cause me to pause my scroll and click on the zoom button.

I've become an organic search engine...

I started this research last March after a seeing a video on old Dublin breweries by The Beer Nut on The Irish Craft Beer Show and some correspondence on old Irish breweries with Barry Masterson ... and something that I thought would take a few weeks to compile has become a drawn out affair, and perhaps a labour of love/hate. There are days when I find nothing, and these can be a bit defeatist and deflating, but generally I find some nugget of information or at worst get sidetracked by other unrelated information that catches my eye.

But I havent given up and nor do I intend to, as I currently have 3 folders of information from various sources such as the aforementioned papers but also from commercial directories, various books and a few other online resources. Some of these are questionable - and require further research - but at least they are providing me with a world of information about the breweries in Carlow that existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. And so from having just a vague knowledge about two I now have names of breweries and brewers, what they brewed and their approximate locations.

From talking to local historians and contact with the local museum it seems that this kind of research has never been attempted before for the town and the information I am recovering has never seen the light of day, and possibly never would ...  and this keeps me motivated every time I spend fruitless hours on research that turns up very little concrete evidence.

But here are a few snippets of the information I have recovered so far...

• I knew that there was a brewery where the town hall now stands but in 1849 during the famine it was closed, used by The Guardians of the Poor as a workhouse for 661 girls and had just 2 school mistresses.

• The Bridewell Lane brewery changed hands on a number of occasions, and at one time had a 'Mr. Arthur Darcy late of Anchor Brewery in Dublin' employed as head brewer, when it was called the Shamrock Brewery. I doubt any Carlow people knew a brewery of this name existed in the town...
• What about the aforementioned brewery on Castle Street which was sold after the illfated 1798 rebellion in the town when the owner was forced to sell up and leave the country in haste, having been implicated in the uprising? It was news to me anyway...
• In Graigue, just across the river from Carlow town, there was an impressive distillery that was producing almost 40,000 gallons of spirits in 1828 and had capacity for over twice that when it was sold 1840.
• There was a brewery on - probably - the same site as the above distillery that was producing 'Brown Stout Porter, Stout Ale, Pale Ale (Bitter) [&] Table Beer in 1862.

• There was an attempt to set up 'The Carlow Brewery Company Ltd.' in 1863 on the Graigue site. (This failed to materialise, and I have a listing of the equipment in the older brewery it was to redevelop when it finally went bankrupt in 1865, but that's not the end of its story...
• I have breweries and brewers listed on Tullow Street, Burn-Street[sic], Chapel Lane and Dublin Street that need research and corroboration.
• Plus information on the Irish barley and malting trade, the effect of the Total Abstinence Society on brewing, trade on the Barrow river, imported beers for sale in the town from Dublin, Waterford, Enniscorthy, Mountmellick, Drogheda and beyond.

Plus I still have a lot of information to dig through, disseminate and record before I can produce anything of real note or interest.

What will I do with this information? I'm not sure at this point, as I still haven't found the exact endpoint of some of the breweries, not to mention the beginnings...

I guess you will all have to wait and see.

As will I...

Liam

[With thanks to the Local Study Room at Carlow Library]

History: Carlow's Lost Breweries - The Search Begins...

Yesterday I had my first taste of trawling through microfilm in the local library - an eye-wearying but interesting task.

My subject was a local brewery that once existed on the site where now stands Carlow town hall. The earliest information I can find names it as 'Hamilton's Brewery' in the late 18th Century and it is known as 'The Old Brewery' in the late 19th century, although by this time it had been used as an overflow to the local workhouse and nothing was being brewed here as far as I can tell.

I found this advert, which ran for a number of weeks in early 1854

It sounds like breweries were scarce in the town and so far I can't find reference to any others at this time. - although the Historic 6" OSI map for 1839 shows two including this large one.

(The other was situated closer to the Burrin river and its memory remained in the name of 'Brewery Lane' until the area was demolished to build the monstrously ugly post office and social welfare offices in the 50s/60s ... but more about that in another post.)

I don't imagine I'll find brewing records but I hope to find out more about when it was first built and its owners over the hundred or more years it existed in one form or another - I have a few of those names already thanks to various historical directories and other publications

I had better bring my glasses on my next trip to the library!

Liam