Where was ‘House of Guinness’ filmed?

The House of Guinness also shares an industrial backdrop and a strong sense of period and place, moving from grimy backstreets to gilded ballrooms, from the towering mansions of the haves to the crowded hovels of the have-nots. And, as with Peaky Blinders, this was created through a combination of clever location hunting and reconstruction. Here’s our guide to how it was done.

Is House of Guinness filmed in Dublin?

Although it’s undoubtedly a Dublin story, House of Guinness didn’t film in Dublin at all. The primary reason for this is that Dublin has undergone significant changes since the mid-19th century, when the story is set. Instead, the team used period-suitable buildings in the north of England, just as showrunner and writer Steven Knight did on Peaky Blinders. “The fact is that Dublin now looks less like Dublin in 1868 than other areas do,” explained Knight. “Peaky wasn’t filmed in Birmingham, because Birmingham didn’t look like Birmingham in the 20s anymore.” While the real-life Guinness Brewery and the family’s home Iveagh House are still standing, they are now busy places of work, and it was easier to recreate them in the historic parts of Liverpool and Manchester. As director Tom Shankland tells it, “There are a lot of Georgian-era streets and grand buildings in Liverpool that were just right for us. You’re like, ‘That’s Iveagh House!’ in a way that we could never have achieved at [Dublin’s] St. Stephen’s Green.”

Stanley Dock, LiverpoolGetty Images

Where is the brewery in House of Guinness?

The St James’s Gate Brewery, the largest in the world at the time the show is set, still stands just a few yards from the River Liffey in the centre of Dublin. To recreate it, the team took over much of Liverpool’s Stanley Dock, opened in the middle of the 19th century at the height of the city’s trading power. Like the city’s other docks, Stanley has been regenerated into new forms, including a hotel and housing, as well as providing a popular filming location that’s featured in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and Steven Knight’s own Peaky Blinders.

In particular, House of Guinness utilised a vast former tobacco warehouse, which allowed them to recreate everything, from the factory floor to offices and outdoor areas, such as the cooperage and streets, all in one place. As executive producer Karen Wilson explains, “Given how many different brewery locations we needed – the stables, the cooperage, the docks – it was invaluable to have all of that in one place, so the characters could move through it naturally.” Building on this scale is unusual for a TV production, even these days. Production designer Richard Bullock describes it as “like a huge, living, breathing machine. There are steam trains, boilers, refrigeration systems, a massive cooperage, huge barrel stores, and stables. It was absolutely nuts to try to do. Huge scale. Insanely complex.”