Guinness Brewery

Corner-sited attached nine-bay two-storey warehouse, built c.1900, having six-bay west elevation. Pitched slate roof with raised barges to east end, recent roofs to remainder, behind parapets. Cut granite coping to barges and parapets. Yellow brick walls having cut rusticated granite quoins and cut snecked limestone to ground floor. Square-headed blind openings to ground floor front elevation having brick surrounds and infill, some granite sills. Segmental-arched blind openings to ground floor west elevation having brick surrounds, infill and granite sills. Round-headed blind openings to first floor having brick surrounds, infill and continuous carved granite sill course. Oculus to front gable having brick surround. Square-headed door openings to front elevation having timber battened doors. Square-headed vehicular entrance having recent metal shutter. Corrugated-iron clad walkway bridging the street at first floor level. Limestone cobbles and tram tracks to Robert Street.

This building is part of the Guinness brewery that was founded in 1759 on a site to the south of Saint James's Gate, and subsequently expanded on all sides. The brewery underwent extensive rebuilding and expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including the construction of this and adjacent buildings on Rainsford Street, used for storage and maturation of beer. A map of the brewery from 1896 indicates stables on this site. Built in a traditional style like the earlier vat houses on Rainsford Street, with structural brick walls, skilled stonemasonry is evident in the limestone and granite detailing. The building retains much of its early industrial character, despite the loss of the roof. The use of blind openings provides order to the elevations.