Guinness Brewery

Corner-sited attached twelve-bay two-storey former vathouse, built c.1865, having single-bay gable-fronted elevation to south. Now disused. Recent metal pitched roof to south, M-profile pitched sheeted roof to north. Granite verge stone to north gable. Metal access deck at eaves level to front (west) elevation. Brown brick walls laid in Flemish bond having cut limestone plinth and cut limestone quoins and buttresses to south gable. Square-headed window openings to ground floor, having brick surrounds and sills, and metal framed windows with external grilles. Some blind openings. Round-arched blind door openings, infilled with brick. Square-headed door openings to front and west elevation having brick voussoirs and timber battened doors. Limestone cobbles and tram tracks to Rainsford Street.

Vathouse no.19 formed part of the Guinness brewery that was founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness on lands at James's Gate, and subsequently expanded on all sides. Crane Street was listed as having twenty tenements in 1865, and they appear to have been purchased and demolished and the site redeveloped by 1870, when 2-23 is listed as being Guinness stores by Thom's Directory of that year. The brewery underwent extensive rebuilding in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including the construction of this and adjacent later buildings on Rainsford Street, used for the storage and maturation of beer. Skilled stonemasonry is evident in the limestone detailing. The building retains its early industrial character, and the use of blind openings provides order to the elevations.