Splitting hairs: Wig honouring Arthur Guinness snagged by Brexit bureaucracy

'Malt to Vault' at Ardclough, Co Kildare, is the burial place of Guinness founder Arthur Guinness.

A wig destined to grace a museum mannequin honouring Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewing dynasty, has emerged as an unlikely symbol of Brexit snarl-ups currently plaguing trade across the Irish Sea.

The reopening plans this week of ‘The ‘Malt to Vault’ museum at Ardclough, Co Kildare, located close to Arthur’s final resting place, almost went awry when the 1700s-era replica hairpiece ordered from an English supplier fell foul of Brexit documentation bureaucracy at Irish customs.

Chairman of the Ardclough Village Centre, John Whelan, said the wig was urgently needed for a film crew producing a hologram of Arthur. 

But the hairpiece failed to arrive by a strict deadline after the specialist maker found it hard to navigate the new documentation required to distinguish between horse and artificial hairs for goods entering the European single market from Britain.

Another iconic Irish institution, the Abbey Theatre, came to the rescue when it loaned the museum a wig to produce Arthur’s hologram.

Mr Whelan,  who also advises Irish and British firms over Brexit, told the Irish Examiner that the saga of Arthur’s wig is “something of a microcosm” of what is happening every day for SMEs since Britain formally marked its divorce from the EU and embraced hard Brexit trading rules last Christmas.

However, for the time being, Irish companies selling across the Irish Sea into Britain have escaped the Brexit customs bureaucracy because Boris Johnson’s government has unilaterally decided not to implement the new documentation rules he had signed up to. 

The museum had placed much attention on finding a wig piece to replicate the only known portrait made of Arthur during his lifetime.

Arthur Guinness famously used the proceeds of a will and substantial other money to help sign a 9,000-year-lease in 1759 on the brewery at St James Gate in Dublin.

Mr Whelan said the small museum, and its hologram of Arthur greeting visitors, was grateful to the public funding it had received from the Department of Rural Affairs.