THE BREWING INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 467 



extensive employment. A unique feature is the brewing of non-deposit ale 

 under sole rights for Ireland, and the Company has the distinction of holding 

 the Royal Warrant as brewers to the late Queen Victoria. In connection 

 with the brewery are extensive makings, with branches at Donaghmore, 

 and at Brosna, Roscrea, Irish barley only being used. The firm has always 

 been noted for the excellence of malt they make. 



Brewing in the North. 



The history of the brewing trade in Ulster has been one sequence of 

 vicissitudes which it is not easy to explain. As fortune after fortune has 

 been made in the whiskey trade, and as the increase in the population of 

 Belfast has been phenomenal, the failures which have attended efforts 

 to make brewing a success, especially in recent years, is surprising. Going 

 back to the fifties, when the population of Belfast was about one-third of 

 what it is to-day, there were in full work in Belfast, Lewers' Brewery, 

 situated in Anne-street, which had previously been worked by Mr. Lewers' 

 brother-in-law, Mr. Ledlie Clarke ; Messrs. Mackenzie, Shaw and Co.'s 

 Brewery, Hercules-street ; Messrs. Clottworthy and Dobbin's Brewery, 

 Smithfield ; Messrs. Henry Scott and Co.'s Brewery, Cromac-street ; Messrs. 

 Fordyce and Co.'s Brewery, Cromac-street ; Mr. Johnson's Brewery, King- 

 street ; Mr. Henry Murney's Brewery, Bank Lane ; and finally Mr. John 

 Kane's Brewery, North Street. The Belfast Brewery Co. was built later 

 at very considerable expense, and at one time no less than thirteen breweries 

 were working in Belfast. 



There was also a brewery in Comber, where what is now known as the 

 Old Distillery st;inds. while all over the North of Ireland there was a net 

 work of breweries. The father of the present Mr. Jas. Johnston, Lurgan, 

 had four working, two at Lurgan, one in Antrim, and one in Newtownards. 

 There was also one at Lisburn worked by Mr. William Graham. Down- 

 patrick had two breweries, Saul's and Moore's, and there were at least two 

 workine in Derry, viz., Carson's and Median's. Coleraine also had a brewery 

 owned by Mr. Jas. Moore, and there was one at Desertmartin in the 

 County Derry, which was owned by Mr. Edward Kelly, who also had a 

 brewery at Limavady ; whilst Mr. James Colgan worked one at Bally- 

 money. Lyle's of Donaghmore was an important concern, and tradition 

 says that about seventy drays used to start from the brewery on a Monday 

 morning laden with beer for all parts of the country. Then, again, there 

 was William Henry and Co., who did a good trade in those days in Newry, 

 and Mr. Arthur Russell, father of the late Chief Justice of England also 

 at one time had a brewery in the same town. 



Whatever may be the cause of the comparative lack of success which has 



attended brewing operations in the North, whether 

 Belfast. it be the non-suitability of the land in the North of 



Ireland to grow barley of the kind required for brew- 

 ing, or whether the quality of the Belfast water, so admirably adapted for 

 making whiskey and mineral waters, may not have been quite so suitable for 

 brewing, it is quite certain that up to a recent date the only surviving brewery 

 was Caffrey's in Smithfield, which is owned by Mr. Thos. R. Caffrey, J.P. 

 Within the last few years Mr. Caffrey ceased brewing in Smithfield, and 



