Notorious Belfast prison gets new life as whiskey distillery

A notorious Belfast prison that held IRA inmates during the worst of the city’s sectarian strife is to be transformed into a whiskey distillery as the North tries to revive its economy.

A wing of the Victorian-era Crumlin Road prison, which was closed in 1996, will house the first whiskey production in 75 years in a city that was once Ireland’s largest whiskey producer, and will offer exhibitions and tasting facilities for visitors.

It aims to reinvent a building synonymous with the Troubles, which held Gerry Adams, before he became Sinn Féin president, and the Reverend Ian Paisley, who went on to become first minister of Northern Ireland.