Birr Distillery

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Birr Distillery was an Irish whiskey distillery in Birr, County Offaly. It was founded in 1805 by R. & J. Wallace and stood near Newbridge Street beside the River Cam-Cor. The three-story, square-shaped distillery produced about 200,000 US gallons of whiskey each year at its peak. By 1818, only two distilleries remained in Birr. In the late 1840s, one Birr distillery closed and the other was bought by the Wallace brothers. The distillery included a malting floor, kiln and mill, mash tun, still room, spirit store and bonded warehouse. The Wallace brothers operated Birr Distillery until 1889, when a fire started by a sleeping worker and sparked by the millstone spread, causing casks to explode and whiskey to flow into the nearby Camcor River in flames. In the 1990s, the site was bought by an English family and turned into a summer house, with the other riverbank buildings rebuilt as apartments.