This November, following a multi-million-pound investment, the Titanic Pump-house in Belfast will be reborn as a whiskey distillery and visitor centre.
The Pump-house was built in 1911 as part of the infrastructure needed to build the massive White Star transatlantic liners
Olympic, Titanic and
Britannic and is a significant part of Belfast’s maritime history.
In bringing the building back to life,
Titanic Distillers have retained all the original pump equipment and internal features preserving its historical integrity and safeguarding it for future generations.
New tours of the building and distillery will invite visitors to ‘clock in’, as workers did more than a century ago. They will then get to view the workings of the distillery and hear the story of Belfast’s whiskey tradition.
An adjacent tourism centre will include a bar and café, gift shop, exhibition space and an enlarged mezzanine floor with tasting rooms.
Belfast was once the largest producer of Irish Whiskey on the island of Ireland, but the new distillery is the city’s first working whiskey distillery in more than 100 years. It will produce quality single malt Irish whiskey.
It is part of a growing cluster of new distilleries in Northern Ireland, which include
Hinch and
Mourne Dew. Northern Ireland is also home to the world’s oldest working distillery,
Bushmills, which was established in 1608.
Visitors to the new distillery can continue their Titanic journey by visiting the nearby dry dock where the Titanic was fitted out before her launch. It is some 260m long and was the largest dry dock in the world at the time it was built.
The Titanic Pump-house is also within walking distance of the multi-award-winning
Titanic Belfast, the world’s biggest Titanic exhibition centre and Northern Ireland’s number one tourist attraction. Spanning six floors, Titanic Belfast features nine interpretive and interactive galleries that explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of the famous liner, as well as the city, shipyard and people that made her.
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