Power’s Distillery, Holycross.
The distillery on the banks of the Suir in Graiguenoe townland, just downstream from Holycross village, was built by Michael Power of Cashel around the mid 1830s. S.A. Lewis in his A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, published in 1837, records that “…in the village an extensive distillery is now being erected by Mr Power of Cashel.”. (Vol 2, p.8.) The O’Donovan Name Books for Tipperary, 1840, mentions the distillery being in operation by that time. The Ordnance Survey Map 1840-41, (Sheet 47), shows the distillery and its mill stream in place, as well as the number of ancillary buildings going with it, namely five long parallel buildings to the front of the distillery, a single long building downstream in separate grounds, another long building backing onto and to the right of the laneway leading into the site, and, a little closer to the village, a large house, later to become known as Newtown House. Most of these ancillary buildings were erected to house the proprietor and family, and his staff, and to provide an excise office and stables.
It can be assumed that all those buildings were erected in the course of the 1830s. Around that period also Charles Clarke, the landlord of Graiguenoe townland, (c.500 acres), who leased the distillery site to Michael Power, had completed his “spacious and elegant mansion on his estate”. (Lewis, ibid.). Accordingly in that decade, just a few years before the Great Famine, there were major developments taking place in Graiguenoe.
The Valuation Records of the early 1850s (Griffiths’ Valuation) record the occupants of the houses built at the distillery site for the staff. There were two excise officers in residence at that stage, namely John Abbot and John Bold, and the working staff occupying the houses to the front of the distillery were William Ryan, Peter Connors, John Dunne, Michael Ryan, Jr., John Power, John Boe, and John Maher. Michael Power and his family may have occupied Newtown House, although the Valuation Records show a John Carney, Esq., occupying a house, office and yard in the vicinity, which may refer to Newtown House.
Michael Power, the builder of the Graiguenoe Distillery, belonged to a Cashel branch of the Power family, a notable merchant family of County Tipperary. He was a man of substance and some social standing as he qualified for Esq. after his name in the Valuation Records. Those same records show that John Power Esq., who lived in Ballyknock, Cashel, and owned a farm of 103 acres there, also owned almost the entire townland of Boscabell near the town. These two Powers were probably connected. (Brothers or father-son?). Michael would have needed a good source of revenue to embark on the major commercial venture which was the Graiguenoe distillery.
These Cashel Powers were likely to have been of the same family which established Power’s Distillery in Dublin in 1796, which was to become the famous John’s Lane Distillery. Around 1796 John Power (from where?) started a small distillery behind his public house in Thomas Street. The distillery was later moved to John’s Lane off Thomas Street, and by 1822 John’s grandson, also John, was listed as the owner. The distillery then had three stills of 500, 509 and 750 gallons respectively.
At the beginning of the 19th century there were a large number of small distilleries in the country. In county Tipperary alone there were fifteen licensed stills, four of which were in Thurles, and two in Borrisoleigh. The largest in the county was the distillery of Joseph and William Fitzgerald, Thurles, which had a still of 500 gallons. But the number of distilleries dropped drastically between 1800 and 1820 due to the severe excise legislation of the period. Stills were taxed heavily on their capacity and theoretical throughput (i.e. the quantity processed at a given time). In 1823 new legislation was introduced which benefited larger distilleries. The new Excise Act of 1823 required potential distillers to obtain a license costing £10 a year. The act also set the minimum size of still at 40 gallons, and taxed spirit alone at 2 shillings per proof gallon (around 57% alcohol). That tax was to increase as the century went on, and by 1860 it was 10 shillings per gallon.
After 1823 distilleries were built on a far larger scale than before, and their output was sold to a far wider market, which the Irish distillers found in England and in the expanding British Empire. The Irish distillers continued to produce whiskey through the pot-still system, and the major distilleries in Dublin, called the Dublin Big Four---John Jameson, John Power, George Roe and William Jameson---installed huge onion-shaped copper stills capable of holding 25,000 gallons or more. Power’s Distillery in John’s Lane was to expand rapidly, and by 1833 the distillery was producing 300,000 gallons a year, which went up to 900,000 a year by the 1880s. By then the distillery was spread over a six acre site.
Smaller provincial distilleries found it hard to compete against the major city distilleries. How Michael Power’s distillery in Graiguenoe fared in that century requires more research, provided records relating to it can be located. It was getting into full production around the time the Great Famine was about to loom. The fact that only one of the workers’ houses was vacant by around 1850 may well indicate that it continued in production during that time of national calamity, and indeed probably provided much needed employment in the area of Holycross. The family link with the great John’s Lane Distillery would have been an advantage. The Powers were staunch Catholics and this would have provided solidarity between branches of the family. John Power, the owner of John’s Lane, was knighted in the early 1840s, and laid the foundation stone of the O’Connell monument in 1854.
The smaller distilleries continued to compete as best they could with the large urban distilleries, which could buy cheap US-sourced grain in large quantities after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1848. Those urban distilleries also had the advantage of being close to the docks from where ships carried their produce overseas and returned with cheap coal from Wales for their engines. The small distilleries traditionally bought grain from local farmers, and no doubt Charles Clarke would have been a main supplier of grain to Michael Power’s distillery, sited on his own land. The Graiguenoe distillery would also, at least initially, have burned local wood and peat, and its position on the bank of the River Suir would have ensured an adequate water supply at all seasons. The coming of the railway system in the late 1840s advantaged the distillery also, as its barreled produce could be carted to Thurles railway station, and thus to more distant destinations. Coal, a more efficient fuel, could also be transported to Thurles by train for the Graiguenoe distillery.
Michael Power and his family were important patrons of the Catholic parish of Holycross, and they appear to have been closely linked with the spacious new parish church of St Michael, built in the same decade as their distillery. In token of their close association with parish and church, the family was given the privilege of burial on the south side of the church grounds. Michael’s wife, Ellen Desmond, was probably from the Desmond family of Cashel. William Desmond lived in Main Street, and was the master of the Union Workhouse in 1850. He may have been her brother. Desmond is a rare surname in County Tipperary, and is much more associated with County Cork. It is thought that the Desmonds were descended from a junior branch of the Fitzgeralds of Desmond (south Munster).
The Graiguenoe Distillery, now extensively demolished, was an impressive structure in its hey-day. It is remembered only as a roofless shell, standing gauntly above the Suir. It is hard now to imagine that once it was a village in itself, with all its associated buildings, and its workforce. It was a hub of activity, with smoke billowing from its brick chimneys, its cobbled yards echoeing to the sounds of carthorses, and within its walls the sounds and smells of the mashing grain and the sizzling still and worm. Accompanying all that was the noising of millwheel, grinding mill, steam engines, and conveyor belts carrying barley to the top storey.
We still have to establish from surviving records how many in family did Michael and Ellen Power have. Did their son William succeed his father as proprietor of the distillery? How long did the distillery operate? What led to its decline and eventual demise? There is no mention of the distillery in Bassett’s Guide and Directory of Tipperary, 1889. It would be interesting also to know if any old photographs survive showing the still-intact distillery building.
Power’s great Dublin distillery in John’s Lane survived until relatively recent times. It closed when the Irish Distillers Group decided to concentrate all the Republic’s production at Middleton, Co Cork, in 1974.