Gem From The Archive

Eibhlin Colgan, archive manager at Guinness, shares a First World War roll of honour held in the Irish brewer’s archives

A First World War roll of honour for the staff of Guinness

On 31 December 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease to open a brewery at St James’s Gate, Dublin. By the start of the First World War in 1914, it had grown into the thriving business we know today, and hundreds of its workers went to fight. On the company’s 260th anniversary, the manager of its archive Eibhlin Colgan shows us the roll of honour that Guinness created to honour their courage and service.

Can You Describe The Roll Of Honour?

More than 800 men from our brewery in St James’s Gate and some of our trade stores across Ireland and the

UK would have enlisted in the forces during the First World War. As part of the commemoration after the war in 1919–1920 it was decided, as many other institutions would have done, to commemorate those men in the form of a roll of honour. It’s a handillustrated, hand-gilded, very large and really beautiful illuminated roll, which lists all of the men alphabetically by department.

A printed version in book format was also created. More than 1,000 were given out as a commemoration piece to the men who enlisted in the war, and the families of those who didn’t return. So the roll of honour exists in two manners.

Why Did You Choose It?

There’s a huge amount of personal information held within the Guinness archive. The social stories of the men who worked for the company over the years are a huge part of what’s made Guinness, and this is very much reflected in our archive holdings. One of the things that I love about the roll of honour is that Guinness had quite a hierarchical structure in terms of management, but the roll of honour was a great leveller. So the men are listed on the roll alphabetically by department irrespective of the rank that they held within the brewery, and for me that’s a really lovely feature.

Do You Have Any More Information About The Soldiers’ Lives?

From a family history point of view and a personnel point of view, the men who are listed on the roll of honour are those who were employed in the brewery in the leadup to the war and enlisted from the brewery. One of the things that we hold within the archive are personnel records, dating back as far as the 1880s, of men who were employed within the brewery, and they contain quite detailed information from when people joined.

This includes the age that they were when they joined the company; the name of the school that they attended, if they joined when they were 14 years of age; any medical concerns at that time; where they worked in the brewery; what their pay would have been right up until when they retired; where they were living at the time; and what their family circumstances were, because whether they were married or single or had young children would all have had an impact on the amount of pension that the brewery would have paid to them.

All of the soldiers on the roll of honour played their part in the brewery, and certainly played their part in society as a whole by enlisting in the war. Out of the 800 workers who left the brewery to fight in the war 103 didn’t return, so I suppose that’s a very poignant number for us.

For those who did return, the company’s stance at the time was very supportive of them joining the Army, so much so that their jobs were kept open for them for when the war was over, and the brewery paid the soldiers half of their brewery wages in addition to the wages they were paid by the Army.

Also, when the First World War ended, veterans who hadn’t previously been employed at the brewery would have been given preferential treatment when any vacancies came up.

Can You Tell Us More About The Collection As A Whole?

The collection dates back to 1759, the year when Arthur Guinness signed the lease on the brewery at St James’s Gate. He signed it for an incredible term of 9,000 years, and we hold the original parchment indenture here within the archive collection, and then really everything that survives to the present day. This includes brewing records and recipes going back to the late 1700s.

In addition, we have more than 20,000 of those personnel files I mentioned earlier relating to employees from the 1880s onwards – the decade was an important period in the history of the brewery, because that’s when the company introduced its non-contributory pension for all employees. You can search for your ancestors’ employment records on the database at www.guinnessstorehouse.com/en/archives/ archives-genealogy.

We have over 10,000 photographs in the archive too, including some of the brewery and its workers, from the 1880s onwards; many of these have been digitised and have been made available online.

Finally there is also a huge amount of material relating to sales, advertising and engineering – in fact all of the functions of the brewery as it would have been over the past 260 years.

‘Out of the 800 workers who left the brewery to fight in the war, 103 didn’t return’