The Brewery Skerries

fergal.b

Just doing a bit of digging on the family history and looking for any old photos or info on the old brewery that my great,great,great Grandfather "Joseph Kieran" owned in Skerries from the 1850's No 64 on the map as it turned out I ended up by chance living in the house next to the Malting House for many years and remember hearing a ghost story about "Old Man Kieran with the beard" that was supposed to haunt the brewery but I can't seem to find anymore info.






£1000 in 1880 would have been a nice few quid I could do with it now



Joseph Kieran Skerries 1805- 1879 --- Mary Ann Kearns 1808-1870
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John Joseph Kieran Lusk 1840- 1896 Liverpool ---- Jane Costelloe 1839-1923

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Joseph Kieran Lusk 1870 - 1931 Dundalk ---- Mary ellen Nolan 1867- 1926
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Joseph anthony Kieran 1903 Liverpool - 1979 Dublin --Mary Kennedy 1909- 1979




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BrensBenz

As a kid in the 60's, our gang's headquarters were in the Brewery. At that time, it was owned by Noel MacDonough of Holmpatrick. His son, Liam (Leo) was a senior officer in our gang, so access to the Brewery was easy.

Sorry I don't know anything of the history of the Brewery. However, it, and the Ballast Pit, were wonderlands for us kids. Most of the buildings in the Brewery were in ruins at that time but, with care, they could be explored. I particularly remember a vast "bowl" - probably a kiln, used for drying hops or barley, or whatever. If you could run fast enough around the curved and sloped inner surface, you could pretend to be a motorbike on the wall of death. Access to the "bowl" was through dark, eerie tunnels - yes, a paradise for kids!

The brook was available for torturing captured members of the Cabra Gang and our ordnance was Mr. MacDonough's seed spuds, stored in one of the loft areas of another building.

Thank Heaven the nanny state wasn't around in those days!

fergal.b

Great story thanks for sharing, you bad boy






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The Hill Billy

Those Cabra lads were always bad news! :pac:

The Hill Billy

There's some real Skerries names with substantial properties too along the west side of South Strand Street...

Sheils, Boylan, Healy, Cappock, Murray

BrensBenz

The Hill Billy wrote: »

Those Cabra lads were always bad news! :pac:

Am I allowed to name one or two?

Ollie ("Drink the Ink") Shields, so named because he used to.....drink the ink in school and delight in showing us his blue teeth and gums;
Billy (The Hammer) Grimes - my hero. Dracula at the Pavilion was scary but Hammer's rubber face could bring it to a whole new level, next day in school;
Ray Farrell gave me my first Carrolls No. 1. I didn't know whether to suck or blow!

Wars would take place in the Brewery but peace and games of marbles would soon break out whenever we ran out of seed spuds.

Ahhhh, where are they now? Probably in the Dail.

A.Partridge

BrensBenz wrote: »

As a kid in the 60's, our gang's headquarters were in the Brewery. At that time, it was owned by Noel MacDonough of Holmpatrick. His son, Liam (Leo) was a senior officer in our gang, so access to the Brewery was easy.

Sorry I don't know anything of the history of the Brewery. However, it, and the Ballast Pit, were wonderlands for us kids. Most of the buildings in the Brewery were in ruins at that time but, with care, they could be explored. I particularly remember a vast "bowl" - probably a kiln, used for drying hops or barley, or whatever. If you could run fast enough around the curved and sloped inner surface, you could pretend to be a motorbike on the wall of death. Access to the "bowl" was through dark, eerie tunnels - yes, a paradise for kids!

The brook was available for torturing captured members of the Cabra Gang and our ordnance was Mr. MacDonough's seed spuds, stored in one of the loft areas of another building.

Thank Heaven the nanny state wasn't around in those days!

Ha ha...all of this is true! I too was a junior member of this gang. It was exactly as descibed. I'm glad someone remembers it as I do.

The funny thing is that one particular day I was left on 'sentry duty' at a window looking over the Mill Stream (Brook) which as you can see from the map flowed straight through the property. The Cabra lads had a habit of staging surprise attacks by wading up through the stream to get inside the locked gates of the Brewery and my job was to be on look out for this. Well, I was looking across the courtyard one day and saw an old man walk up a set of steps into one of the old outbuildings. However, he did so without making any sound. This man wore a cap and had a beard.

When the rest of the gang (led by Leo) returned I told them about the man but they said that the gates were locked and no-one else had a key. I still believe that what I saw was a spirit, ghost or whatever. Maybe it was Mr Kieran? Who knows.

noelagorman

Hi Fergal. I know I'm a few years late with this reply.

While I'm not directly related to your Kieran's but am through marriage.

My great great grandfather was James Power who's sister married Joseph in 1871. She was his second wife and had 5 children with him.

Best regards

Noel Gorman

Dublin

fergal.b

Was she the one that got all of his money 😁

The Hill Billy

Fergal - One of the Admins of the Skerries History in Photos FB group posted some pics of the Maltings site a while ago. PM me for his name if you don't have it already.

fergal.b

My brother Gavin did a talk on it for the historical group, he has a vast library on the subject with photos of the place and I think some video taken when it was used as the pits for the bike race, I keep an eye on the Skerries history page for any new photos I can steel 😉