Dublin Down & Drinking Up

Day 192, Friday August 2, 2019

“It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.”

-George Burns

Sites Covered in this Post
• Christ Church
• Guinness Brewery
• Pearse Lyons Distillery
• Saint Patrick Church

Christ Church

Visiting churches always goes better with alcohol. No, I don’t drink in church, but that makes more sense than substituting grape juice for wine during communion. Try it some time, you’ll like it. Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of the capital city’s two medieval cathedrals, the other being St Patrick’s Cathedral of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The cathedral was founded around 1028 when King Sitric Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin made a pilgrimage to Rome. The church was built on the high ground overlooking the Viking settlement at Wood Quay.  Henry II attended the Christmas service at the cathedral in 1171 which was the first time Henry received Holy Communion following the murder of Thomas Becket by Henry’s knights in Canterbury.

In the 1180s, Strongbow and other Norman magnates helped to fund a complete rebuilding of Christ Church. In 1539, King Henry VIII converted the priory to an Anglican cathedral. King Edward VI formally suppressed St Patrick’s Cathedral on 25 April 1547 and in 1551, divine service was sung for the first time in Ireland in English instead of Latin. In 1560, the Bible was first read in English. Well, that’s all well and good, but to us it was an old Catholic church that’s now CoE and I was more interested in the architecture. Pretty cool.

Guinness Brewery

The Guinness Brewery, located at St. James’s Gate was founded in 1759   by Arthur Guinness. The main product of the brewery is Guinness Draught (Stout), which is in fact the defacto draught of Ireland.

Originally the land was leased at IR£45 (Irish pounds) per year for 9,000 years (not a bad contract), the St. James’s Gate area has been the home of Guinness ever since. It’s been the largest brewery in Ireland since 1838, and it was the largest brewery in the world in 1886. There is an attached exhibition on the 250-year-old history of Guinness, called the Guinness Storehouse which reminds me a lot of the tour of the Hershey factory in Hershey Pennsylvania, which reminds me a lot of a bad Disneyland ride.

The exhibit was kind of hokey, but the top floors had a fabulous view of Dublin. I thought it was way over-priced (18.50 Euros: $20.72) for what you got, and it was pretty crowded. My recommendation is to read the Wikipedia page in a pub and have a few pints of stout (3 or 4 for this price) instead of going to the storehouse. Drink one for me, will ya?

Lyons Distillery

We were told by numerous locals that if we were going to do a distillery tour, Pearse Lyons was the one to choose due to its unique history and the beautiful setting for the distillery. There are 4 distilleries in the area and we planned on doing several, but then you would have had to get an escort home to our hostel for us, we only did one. Pearse Lyons Distillery is Dublin’s newest visitor experience. It’s a boutique distillery in the former St. James’ Church that lights up like a beacon after dark. All visitors get a guided tour with local guides who will regale tales dating from 12th Century Dublin to modern days, and you can choose whether you sample 3, 4 or 5 different lines of the whiskey they distill at this plant.

The combination of history and whiskey at Pearse Lyons is curiously extraordinary, and has a touch or the good old USA in its story. St. James Church and graveyard was founded in 1190 BCE, and by approximately 1212 had established a hospice for pilgrims travelling the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Having experienced centuries of history and 100,000 burials, by 2013 the Church was in major disrepair including a spire that had been removed due to damage. In that year St. James was acquired by Irishman, and founder of Alltech animal nutrition group (in the USA), Dr. Pearse Lyons.  

The graveyard is interesting, but upon entering the former St. James’ Church, you’ll be amazed how clean and new everything is in what is now a working distillery. The guides walk the small tour group (6 to 8 guests) to explore the art of distilling done the Irish way in single pot still, while smelling, touching and tasting every step of the distillation process. Each one-hour tour finishes with a tasting experience of Pearse Irish Whiskeys and a sample of Ha’Penny Dublin Dry Gin (which I thought was very good, even though I’m not a gin drinker).

The distillery was founded by Pearse and Deirdre Lyons, and opened to the public in August 2017 which means it’s a very young distiller since its whiskeys are 5, 6, 8 and 12 years old. They tell you in the tour that some of the whiskeys started in the US because Pearse Lyons owned (he died last year) a distillery there, and that some of the lines purchased already started whiskeys from other, unnamed Irish distillers to get a head start on the older aged whiskeys.

The tour takes about one hour, and we enjoyed it much more than the Guinness tour. The guide spends some time describing the old neighborhood in which Guinness and some of the other distilleries are located. The Liberties district has a colorful, working class background to say the least.  This district, rich in culture and traditions, was once a place of booming industry known as The Golden Triangle. The area, until recently, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Dublin, has recently undergone a remarkable phase of renewal and is now part of Dublin’s new distilling district.  

Pearse Lyons Distillery opened in Dublin in 2017, but has had stills producing whiskey for the last five years (in Kentuky). Some of that whiskey now has aged and is being brought to market. These whiskeys are being imported to Ireland by Alltech’s U.S. operations and using some of the same distribution channels as Town Branch and Kentucky Ale in Louisville, Ky. The whiskey should be making a round trip return to the US some time later in 2019. I was amazed at how whiskey starts its life much like making beer until it begins the distilling process (distilled twice) and then aged in old, re-used Kentucky sour mash whiskey casks, and/or sherry casks. Its an interesting process and we enjoyed the tours, and the whiskeys.

Saint Patrick (the snake master) Cathedral

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was founded in 1191, and is the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland. The architecture of the church rivals cathedrals in England and France (well, smaller but still very complex) with a 43-meter (141 ft) spire, St. Patrick’s is the tallest church (not Cathedral) in Ireland and the largest, which I’m still not clear on the distinction. Oh, and the reference to the snake master is just in regards to the legend that St Patrick chased all the snakes from Ireland.

Actually, there never have been any snakes in Ireland, partly for the same reason that there are no snakes in Hawaii, Iceland, New Zealand, Greenland, or Antarctica simply because Ireland is an island. But legend holds that the Christian missionary rid the island of all things that slither as he converted its peoples from paganism during the fifth century BCE.

St. Patrick supposedly chased the snakes into the sea after they attacked him during a 40-day fast he undertook. Personally, I think he was just a bit cranky and really just wanted a Five Guys hamburger. So, the snake thing is an unlikely tale, still Ireland is unusual for its absence of the little slithering things, which was just fine with Ellen.

Since 1870, the Church of Ireland has designated St Patrick’s as the national cathedral for the whole of Ireland, drawing chapter members from each of the twelve dioceses of the Church of Ireland. The dean is the ordinary for the cathedral; this office has existed since 1219. The most famous office holder was Jonathan Swift. Its still curious to me that the grandest churches in Dublin (and much of Ireland) are Anglican even though the bulk of the population is Catholic. I would have thought since 1922 the Catholics could have thrown together a few amazing Catholic Cathedrals to rival the ones the Church of England stole and embellished over the years.

It is unusual for there to be two cathedrals in the same city, since Christ Church was already established. While it is not clear when precisely St Patrick church was further raised to the status of cathedral, a unique move in a city with an existing cathedral, it was probably after 1192.

After the English Reformation (an uneven process between 1536 and 1564 but at St Patrick’s, effective from about 1537), St Patrick’s became an Anglican Church of Ireland church. Under threat of severe punishment, most Dubliners followed the same line. In the 1530s some images within the cathedral were defaced by soldiers under Thomas Cromwell, and neglect led to collapse of the nave in 1544. I’m not sure if the Cromwells did anything positive for anyone in the UK.

During Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland in 1649, he stabled his horses in the nave of the cathedral. This was intended to demonstrate Cromwell’s disrespect for the Anglican religion, which he associated with Roman Catholicism and political Royalism. Cromwell died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The English Royalists returned to power along with King Charles II in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, repairs to the St Patrick were begun. Like most of the churches we’ve visited, the history and architecture of these structures is amazing. Everyone should take an hour or two out of their visit to stop by and look.

This was the end of our Irish adventure, next stop….Turkey!