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Guinness 9000 year lease

  • 28-09-2009 10:40am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 1,226 ✭✭✭


    With all the hullabaloo last week about arthur taking out the 9000 year lease on St James Gate brewery 250 years ago, the big questions I have are,

    Who did he lease the property from?
    Who actually owns the ground the brewery is on?
    Do Guinness/Diageo still have to pay rent on the land and to whom?

    Have asked loads of people but nobody knows!
    Tagged:


Comments

  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 11,766 Mod ✭✭✭✭BeerNut


    From the City Council, I assume. I've only just bought the land my house has stood on since the 1960s from the Council. They had been sending me rent invoices too.

    So yes, the council will be billing Diageo for the rent of the equivalent of £45, decimalised and euro-ised.


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,370 ✭✭✭✭rubadub


    Only read this the other day.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Guinness
    At 27, in 1752, Guinness's godfather Arthur Price, Archbishop of Cashel, bequeathed him £100 in his will. Guinness invested the money and in 1755 had a brewery at Leixlip, just 17 km from Dublin. In 1759, Guinness went to the city and set up his own business. He got a 9,000 year lease on the four-acre brewery at St. James's Gate from Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45.

    I expect many buildings have these long leases, and some might have had some that have ran out, I wonder if there are any recent cases, i.e. at the time it might have seemed eons away, but they could well have ran out.

    I know somebody in one of the major banks and I think a lease is up in one building in town and it is not being renewed, they kept it quiet and everybody has to move to other areas in dublin, all was in their contracts that they could be moved but nobody suspected it AFAIK.

    http://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/Rainsford_and_Wine_Room.aspx
    Named in honour of Mark Rainsford, the man who owned the St. James's Gate Brewery before Arthur Guinness, this intimate yet spacious room is something unique. Hidden away in a quiet corner of the GUINNESS STOREHOUSE®, with its own entrance, the Rainsford and Wine Room provides just the right atmosphere for exclusive private dining occasions.

    Its floor is made from the same light American oak once used to craft GUINNESS® casks, its roof is laced with original pipework and its high windows give inspiring views over Dublin and the GUINNESS® Brewery making it the ideal location for intimate dining or private meetings.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,381 ✭✭✭oblivious


    rubadub wrote: »
    I expect many buildings have these long leases,


    Apartments are technically are long 900 year lease I believe


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 134 ✭✭rob88


    if it was rented from mark rainsford where is the 45 pound lease going to every year?


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,456 ✭✭✭Jev/N


    rob88 wrote: »
    if it was rented from mark rainsford where is the 45 pound lease going to every year?

    The heirs to his property (whoever they are) or to whomever the property was sold on to


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,156 ✭✭✭cuterob


    Sorry to drag this old thread up but I am a relation of Mark Rainsford and probably have some answers.

    The brewery was leased because if it was sold it would've lost the water rights that it had attached to it.

    In 1963 or thereabouts the Guinness empire went and found a relation of Rainsford in Australia and got him to sign over all rights to the factory and land. The following year or so Guinness became a public company. They could've easily found a relation in Ireland but they did not want much to be known about signing over the lease so went to the far reaches of the world.

    Hope that helps clear up any confusion.


  • Registered Users Posts: 659 ✭✭✭KevinK


    cuterob wrote: »
    Sorry to drag this old thread up but I am a relation of Mark Rainsford and probably have some answers.

    The brewery was leased because if it was sold it would've lost the water rights that it had attached to it.

    In 1963 or thereabouts the Guinness empire went and found a relation of Rainsford in Australia and got him to sign over all rights to the factory and land. The following year or so Guinness became a public company. They could've easily found a relation in Ireland but they did not want much to be known about signing over the lease so went to the far reaches of the world.

    Hope that helps clear up any confusion.



    True story?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,707 ✭✭✭✭Tigger


    Doubt the poster hung around for 8 years and 12hundred posts to make that up


  • Registered Users Posts: 78,218 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    oblivious wrote: »
    Apartments are technically are long 900 year lease I believe
    That will very much depend on the contract and the details of the Owners Management Company.
    cuterob wrote: »
    They could've easily found a relation in Ireland but they did not want much to be known about signing over the lease so went to the far reaches of the world.
    That doesn't sound right. Only the rightful heir(s) / current leaseholder could sign something like that.


  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,339 Mod ✭✭✭✭CramCycle


    Victor wrote: »
    That will very much depend on the contract and the details of the Owners Management Company.
    That doesn't sound right. Only the rightful heir(s) / current leaseholder could sign something like that.

    Surely the rightful heir to the lease could challenge that, unless the guy in Australia is the rightful heir.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,156 ✭✭✭cuterob


    Victor wrote: »
    That will very much depend on the contract and the details of the Owners Management Company.
    That doesn't sound right. Only the rightful heir(s) / current leaseholder could sign something like that.

    trust me , there was such a grey area around it all and so much corruption happening back then that worse probably happened

    Guinness being the big irish brand that it is wouldn't let Catholics take any management roles in there up till the 60's and even then if a Protestant was to marry a catholic they had to hand in their resignation


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,292 ✭✭✭✭coylemj


    cuterob wrote: »
    Guinness being the big irish brand that it is wouldn't let Catholics take any management roles in there up till the 60's and even then if a Protestant was to marry a catholic they had to hand in their resignation

    It was actually 1948 when a Catholic broke through the religious barrier for the first time and got a job on the 'No. 1 Staff' - the official name for the senior management level in the brewery. He was Al Byrne, an older brother of Gay Byrne.

    I've heard Gay talk in a radio interview about the day Al got the promotion, it's quite a moving story. Al had followed his father into Guinness at the age of 14 but had studied at night and worked his way up through the clerical staff until he was finally told that he was being promoted to the No. 1 Staff. Gay described the scene in the house when Al came home and told them, you can imagine how proud the parents must have felt.


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