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Notorious
Belfast prison reinvented as distillery.
A notorious Belfast prison that held
Irish Republican Army inmates during the
worst of the city's sectarian strife is
to be transformed into a Whiskey
distillery as Northern Ireland tries to
reinvent itself and its struggling
economy.
A wing of the Victorian-era Crumlin Road
prison, which closed in 1996, will house
the first whiskey production in 75 years
in a city that was once Ireland's
largest producer and will offer
exhibitions and tasting facilities for
visitors.
It aims to reinvent a building
synonymous with Northern Ireland's
so-called "Troubles", which held a young
Gerry Adams before he became Sinn Fein
President and the Rev Ian Paisley who
went on to become First Minister of
Northern Ireland.
After 14 years of relative calm since a
1998 peace deal that ended three decades
of tit-for-tat killings between
pro-British and Irish nationalist
insurgents, Belfast is bidding to break
its dependence on handouts from London
by boosting tourism.
In recent months the city opened a
97-million pound museum at the shipyard
that built the Titanic and a large new
arts centre.
The government has awarded a lease to
lottery millionaire Peter Lavery to
establish a boutique distillery in a
wing of the Victorian prison, a Grade A
listed building built in 1845.
The former bus driver won 10.2 million
pounds in 1996 and now heads the Belfast
Distillery Company BDC.L, a consortium
of local businessmen who are pumping 5
million pounds into the project.
 Lavery last year launched two whiskeys -
under the Titanic and Danny Boy brands -
which are currently produced for him
across the Irish border in Co Louth at
the Cooley Distillery.
"I'm delighted that we will be able to
bring production of the whiskeys home to
Belfast," Lavery said at the project's
launch.
Irish whiskey, whose 19th century
domination of global production
collapsed in the early 20th century, has
seen a revival in recent years. Exports
from the Republic of Ireland increased
by 60 percent since 2000, according to
the government, although they remain a
fraction of whisky exports from
Scotland.
Jim Beam, the U.S. bourbon giant which
recently bought the Cooley distillery ,
is to provide all the technical support
for the new project, which will produce
five and ten year old malt whiskey.
The Crumlin road prison once held Eamon
de Valera, who later went on to become
Ireland's leader, after he was accused
of entering Northern Ireland illegally
shortly after the partition of Ireland
in 1921.
In 1943 the IRA chief of staff and three
of his men escaped over the walls and
made it across the border to the Irish
Republic before his absence was noticed.
There were numerous escapes and escape
attempts by IRA members during the
1970s.
In the most audacious, nine inmates
playing football in the prison yard
kicked the ball over the perimeter wall,
went after it and escaped in waiting
cars - still in their football kit
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