Not Pubs: Guinness Merger Timeline

I haven't seen a timeline of the many acquisitions that Guinness made in the 50s and 60s which had the end result of reducing regional variations in Irish beer and the eventual closure of every pre-craft-era brewery outside of Cork and James's Gate.

However, part of the reason for this is that its rather hard to nail down dates, so don't trust this to actually be that accurate. 

1952

Guinness of Dublin purchases Cherrys of New Ross

1954

Smithwicks of Kilkenny purchase the Great Northern Brewery of Dundalk

1955

Guinness purchases the defunct Strangmans Brewery of Waterford.

Cherrys production is moved to Strangmans, New Ross closes.

Ind Coope of the UK purchase a large, but non-controlling stake in Macardle Moore of Dundalk

1956

Cherry Cairnes Distribution Ltd formed to produce and distribute Phoenix Ale. Cairnes of Drogheda is at this stage an independent company

1957

Perrys Rathdowney bought, nominally by Cherrys

1959

Cairnes brewery closed in 1959 and sold immediately to Cherrys (and hence Guinness).  Cairnes Ltd refocused on their (Prestons) distillery

Irish Ale Breweries Ltd (IAB) is formed to merge the operations of Cherrys, Perrys and Macardle Moore. This company is 66.6% owned by Guinness and 33.3% owned by Ind Coope, reflecting their input to the merger

Smithwicks lease the Great Northern Brewery to Guinness for an initial period of five years. The newspaper reports on this imply Smithwick is not in a solid financial state following extremely poor sales in 1958.

1960

IAB now own 100% of the Macardle Moore company

1961

IAB purchase Bulmers of Clonmel, who rapidly enter cooperation with Showerings, a sister company of Ind Coope

1962

Drogheda site closed entirely

1964 

Guinness gain a controlling share of the still publicly listed Smithwicks

1965

Guinness fully take over Smithwicks

1966 

Smithwicks transferred to IAB

1967

Showerings take majority stake in Bulmers

Perrys brewery closes, after but probably not due to a strike. Production moved to Waterford.

1970

C&C takes full ownership of Bulmers.

1988

Guinness takes full ownership of IAB.

2000

Macardle Moore brewery closes.

~2004

Waterford production moves to new facility

2013

Great Northern brewery closes

Kilkenny brewery closes

Replacement Waterford brewery closes.

Of all the range of products bought in through all this process, I believe only Macardles and a heavily modified Smithwicks are still in production, at James's Gate. Phoenix survived until this century, Perrys possibly until the 1980s but other products - Great Northerns' Amber Ale, the Perrys and Cherrys products and so on faded out quite quickly.

"Stolen" Dublin Pubs

As Lockdown continues, so do the historic articles - and this one is breaching my 1902 "floor", as I find it rather interesting considering county boundaries have formed part of Lockdown restrictions at various times - at various times allowing me in to a pub for as long as I wanted (2m+ spacing) without buying food, and restricting me from visiting pubs in Dublin at all.

County boundaries often seem like something set since time immemorial, and are often heavily defended if there are any suggestions of altering them - such as the proposals to give Limerick City some areas currently in Clare; or Waterford City some from Kilkenny.

But the boundaries are "recent" invention compared to what many may think; and were significantly finessed in 1898 when the predecessor of our current system of local government came in. On the list of changes provided by Shane Wilson, you may note that a portion of Bray, Co Wicklow was actually Little Bray, Co Dublin prior to this. This would be the areas of the town north of the River Dargle.

So how many extra pubs in Dublin has this denied us?

Four. One is long, long gone; one has been closed for quite some time as far as I can tell, and they all may not be pre-1898 anyway.

The Sunnybank, burnt down in 2000, was located where the large gym/office/apartment complex is on the Dublin Road. An ad from 2006 for retail units here stated the pub licence was still available, so I would assume the Costcutter that was there originally may have used it for off-sales.

The Dargle Tavern, which I believe has not traded in some time, is at the junction of the Upper and Lower Dargle Roads.

The Coach Inn, Dublin Road and O'Sullivans, Castle Street are the final two - both are still extant so there is less information online about them than a pub that has closed might have! O'Sullivans website is currently offline but The Coach appears to be open for food takeout.

Interestingly, a 2002 Pub Spy review didn't agree with the 1898 changes!

Sunday World, 5th May 2002

There is another, even rarer, form of pubs disappearing from Dublin but trading elsewhere - the wholesale shipment of the interior of the pub away from Dublin. The only confirmed case I'm aware of of this is documented on Come Here To Me! and is that of the bar of the original Jurys Hotel, now in Zurich. However, an article on the work of the Irish Pub Company, who have often used salvaged interiors, claims that the branch of the US pub chain Fadó in Chicago has a "South of Dublin" pub interior. 

February 2020 Licence Update

Small enough list of changes this month, but all on the interesting end of the scale:

Removals

1009700 The Snug, Stephen Street. Don't take this as a certainty that its closed for good, however.

Returns

N0189 H Mathews, Benburb Street

N1107 Coffeys, Emmet Road. Both of these are returned in the name of a receiver and are probably only to make the licence saleable, but it is possible this isn't the case.