A Dublin location that's the icing on the cake

John Moreland has managed the Irish Yeast Company for the past 72 years

Holly-green icing, red and gold cake frills and tiny cake-top Christmas trees: the Irish Yeast Company on College Street in Dublin sells far more than just yeast.

For the 122-year-old shop at this time of year “it’s mostly small cake decorations, cake frilling and the cake boards”, says John Moreland, who took over the bakery supply business from his father as a teenager.

“I’m here since I was 16. I was born upstairs,” says the smartly dressed octogenarian.

Unlike on nearby Grafton Street, where some shops trade until 10pm as Christmas nears, opening hours at the Irish Yeast Company remain the same all year: from 10.30am until 1.30pm. But then it’s not just Christmas cake decorations it sells. The rest of the year there are customers for all sorts of special occasions

“We do the biggest selection of brides and grooms that you can get,” says Moreland of the wedding cake-top figurines.

“And we’re the only ones, I think, that have a complete range of sizes of cake boards.”

Changing tastes

Sandwiched between a five-star hotel and a bar, this premises on one of Dublin’s busiest streets has been Moreland’s workplace for 72 years. Over seven decades tastes have changed.

“Years ago you’d get an awful lot of people coming in making their son’s or daughter’s wedding cakes,” he says.

“A wedding cake years ago was the principal item on the breakfast table at a wedding reception. Now it’s put to the side, or they don’t even bother with a wedding cake.”

The street has changed too, says the former CBS Westland Row boy. “There are very few people alive today that remember the Dublin I grew up in. I know the whole history around here, including your place,” he says, referring to the former office of The Irish Times around the corner.

And he recalls the Paradiso restaurant.

“The fellas used to bring their girlfriends there after the pictures. They had an advertisement outside that said ‘world-class violinist here’ – but we knew the fella. He used to arrive on his bicycle with bicycle clips.”

Collins questioned

He remembers the Inchicore-Ringsend tram running outside his house but dismisses rumours that Michael Collins courted next door.

“I heard he was brought in here for questioning once or twice, all right – that was the old Garda station next door before they moved to Pearse Street,” he says.

He knows the sculpture of Christ in Clarendon Street church was sold by an agent two doors up for a then cash-strapped sculptor, John Hogan. He recalls a story that the man who planted the explosives at Nelson’s Pillar had to take them down and prime them again when they failed to detonate.

He knows, too, that the bank around the corner used to be “a high-class gents’ outfitters run by Maureen O’Hara’s father and brother”.

Did he every buy a suit there?

“It was too expensive to even look in the window.”

But he must have had his share of generous offers to sell up?

“As I told Johnny Ronan, I wasn’t interested,” he says of bids to buy him out during the building of the five-star Westin Hotel next door.

“He said: ‘I’ll get you a place wherever you want.’ But I have enough money to keep myself going, so what else would I do? It’s terrific here, you get no trouble whatsoever, you’re in the centre of the city, so I mean I couldn’t do any better.”

Retirement

He is surrounded by boxes with neatly handwritten labels that say things such as “glitter flakes”, “wafer paper”, “petal base” and “sugar flowers”. Does he have any plans to retire? “Well, that’s the idea,” he says.

“But I’m keeping going for as long as I can. It’s more a hobby with me now. As long as I can keep it going I’ll keep it going. I can’t say how long that will be.”