This map illustrates the commercial breweries operating in Ireland between 1850 and 1900 labeled with their nearest town. It is overlaid on railway and canal infrastructure.

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed an extensive consolidation of commercial breweries. The development of a wide railway network to supplant canals and roads for transportation and the industrialisation of the brewing process lead to larger breweries able to access more substantial supplies at central locations in evident. Commercial breweries largely disappear from the midlands as the brewing volume from Dublin and other sources can be distributed more cheaply and effectively over the emerging rail and existing canal and navigable river network.

(Sources: Pigot, 1824; BPP, 1832; Lewis, 1837; Slater, 1846; Barnard, 1889; Lynch & Vaizey, 1960; Cullen, 1972; Beoir, 2022)