Digital Exchange

Attached gable-fronted three-bay three-storey former brewery hop store, built 1879-83, having four-bay east elevation. Now in use as offices. Pitched roof hidden behind parapet. Recent metal access deck at eaves level to east elevation. Yellow brick walls having rusticated granite quoins. Snecked cut limestone walls to ground floor. Cast-iron wall-mounted lamp to second floor level. Square-headed window openings having cut granite sills and eight-over-eight pane timber sash windows. Blind windows to central bay of first and second floors, blind oculus to gable. Square-headed door openings to ground floor having yellow brick block-and-start surrounds and timber doors. Segmental-arched opening to ground floor central bay, yellow brick voussoirs, now infilled with yellow brick.

This building was once part of the neighbouring Guinness brewery that was founded in 1759. This area between Bellevue (also spelled Belview, and marked as Sugar House Lane on Rocque's map of Dublin) and Thomas Court was listed as tenements in Thom's Directory of 1870. It was subsequently purchased and redeveloped by the Guinness Brewery as a hop store designed by W.W. Wilson, head of the works department. The brewery underwent extensive rebuilding 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. The use of blind openings provides symmetry and order to the elevations, while skilled stonemasonry is evident in the granite and limestone detailing. Despite its change of use the building retains its early industrial character.