This week, Newry and Mourne Museum is revisiting one of the town’s most storied enterprises: the Matt D’Arcy and Co. distillery, a business that helped shape Newry’s industrial identity for more than a century.
The company’s roots stretch back to 1817, when a young Matthew D’Arcy, just twenty-six, went into partnership with Denis Caulfield and Robert Thompson. D’Arcy had recently inherited property and money from his late father, while Thompson brought solid experience in distilling and Caulfield contributed wealth earned through trading and cattle breeding. A few years earlier, in 1815, Caulfield had purchased a distillery originally built by Samuel Hanna in 1780 on what we now know as Monaghan Street. This site would become the heart of the future Matt D’Arcy empire.
After Caulfield’s death in 1819, his nephew Denis Caulfield Maguire joined the partnership. The trio were well positioned for success: Maguire’s milling business sat close to the distillery, and the partners owned extensive barley fields - an ideal recipe for a booming whiskey trade.
By 1823, D’Arcy and Thompson expanded operations to Belturbet, Co. Cavan, but the venture soon faced turbulence. In 1826 four employees were brought to court for obstructing a Post-boy, and only months later a fire swept through the Belturbet distillery backhouse. More serious still was the discovery that Thompson owed £20,000 in unpaid duty from 1816, when drought and mechanical breakdown had halted production. The debt forced Thompson into bankruptcy, and by 1831 Belturbet’s equipment was up for sale, signalling the end of whiskey-making there.
Back in Newry, the story took a new turn with the death of Matthew D’Arcy. His nephew Thomas D’Arcy Hoey, then just twenty‑four, assumed control. Over the next three decades he reshaped the business, modernising facilities and boosting output. Hoey had the old chimney, another of Samuel Hanna’s legacies, demolished to make way for an enormous two‑storey, 20,000‑square‑foot warehouse. He also commissioned celebrated architect W.J. Barre, renowned for Belfast’s Ulster Hall and the Albert Clock, to design an impressive façade for the distillery.
Hoey wasn’t the only one to call on Barre’s talents. His business rival Henry Thompson, nephew of D’Arcy’s former partner, also hired Barre to create a striking front for his buildings at Trevor Hill. Despite their competitive streak, the two men worked together when it counted, jointly holding shares in the Newry Navigation Company and backing bold plans for a 61‑mile tramway from Rathfriland to Co. Tyrone.
Although the original distillery eventually ceased operations, the Matt D’Arcy name has never been forgotten. In 2020, the brand was revived by local businessman Michael McKeown, and today its whiskey is produced in partnership with Echlinville Distillery, ensuring that one of Newry’s most iconic names continues to raise a glass to the future.
