Bennett's of Ballinacurra Descriptive List (Ref. B609)

B609/

from 1902 to 1907, but the period 1908 to 1916 is mainly represented by instructions and reports.

B609/1/A/3 Letters from AGS, 1919-20. Letters from the Brewer-in-charge, Malt Department, AGS, with related reports. Includes a report (25 July 1919) on the increased difficulty in obtaining local supplies of barley owing to competition from other growers and dealers. Letters also refer to supplies of barley for malting from Ferns and other parts of Wexford. A letter of 10 March 1920 thanks Bennett for sending on DATI reports on experimental plots. AW Mullen, Brewer, states ‘I hope you will succeed in getting another plot [on the experimental farm] near Birr, and I also think that it would be a good thing to have a plot in the New Ross district’. Mullen also notes the prevailing ‘excellent conditions’ for sowing barley, but adds ‘I suppose as usual the Irish farmer will not take advantage of the opportunity and very little barley will be sown before St Patrick’s Day’. B609/1/A/4 Letters from AGS, 1921. Includes a letter (7 January 1921) requesting information on the cost of kiln-drying ‘in this exceptionally wet year’. A letter of 30 August covers a circular entitled ‘Conditions attaching to the sale of Spratt-Archer barley and re-purchasing of the produce for seed purposes’. JHB is referred to in a letter (19 September) as one of a number of AGS ‘Commission Houses’. Another letter (21 April 1921) requests that JHB stop malting this season, and adds that the Board of AGS are ‘bearing in mind a shorter season will entail smaller profits, and will give this matter favourable consideration’.

B609/1/A/5 Letters from AGS, 1922. Includes a letter (24 May 1922) regarding the lack of screening of barley, with a note stating ‘new screen beds were put in as a result of this letter’.

B609/1/A/6 Letters from AGS, 1923. Includes ‘Notes for Commission Maltsters (8 September 1923). Also contains many letters regarding malting coal.

B609/1/A/7 Letters from AGS, 1924. Includes a letter (18 November 1924) approving acceptance of an offer for sale of barley by Mr Latchford, Tralee, with the comment that while the price seems ‘a very stiff figure…the Board, I think, like to take a little barley from Tralee’. A letter of 24 October gives the estimate that JHB will require 30,600 barrels of raw barley to manufacture the 28,500 barrels of malt allotted to them this season. A letter of 30 September discusses the problem of smut inheritance in barley. The file also includes a charter party for the ship Brooklands, of Grimsby, to convey 106 tonnes of barley from Ballinacurra to AGS in Dublin.