The Brereton Story

Four Generations of Irish Fine Jewellery

For more than a century, the name Brereton has been woven into the story of Irish fine jewellery. From a single shop on Dublin's Capel Street to our flagship store on O'Connell Street today, we have spent four generations doing one thing exceptionally well: helping families mark the most meaningful moments of their lives with pieces they will treasure forever, and one day pass on.

A Century in the Making

Brereton Jewellers was founded in 1916, when John Brereton acquired our first shop at 108 Capel Street in the heart of Dublin city. The premises themselves carry an even longer story: the building has housed a jewellers and pawnbrokers for more than two hundred years, making it the oldest financial institution in Ireland outside the Bank of Ireland. From the very beginning, the business was built on the values that still define us today - an unwavering commitment to quality, a deep love of the craft, and the kind of warmth and care that turns customers into lifelong friends.

In the 1930s, the second generation, John (Jack) Brereton, joined the firm and steadily built the reputation of the Brereton name through the middle decades of the twentieth century. Jack married his beloved wife Ita in 1946 and the two of them worked side by side in the shop until their retirement. By the early 1970s the third generation, Jack and Ita's sons, John and Liam had taken their place behind the counter, and the family expanded with a second store on Chatham Street in 1976. A decade later, in 1986, we opened our doors on O'Connell Street, directly opposite the GPO. That shop has been our flagship and our spiritual home ever since. In 2003, the fourth generation joined the business when Paul Brereton stepped behind the counter himself.

In 2012, the family acquired the former premises of the renowned fine jewellers West & Sons on Grafton Street. With the new shop so close to Chatham Street, we closed Chatham Street the same year, and in 2023 the Grafton Street shop became a separate family business, trading today as John Brereton Jewellers.

In April 2026 we began a significant redevelopment of our O'Connell Street store, a renewed investment in our home, and a quiet promise to the next generation of customers, and the next generation of Breretons, that this story is far from finished. The new store will open in September 2026 and will bring a whole new experience in jewellery shopping.

Four Generations, One Family

We are now in our fourth generation. To us, that means something very particular. It means that our great-grandparents personally chose stones that our parents later set, and that we now sell to the grandchildren of customers who bought from them. It means that we have grown up listening to stories told around a counter and a workbench and that the craft and the conversations have passed quietly from one set of hands to the next.

Family runs through everything we do, on both sides of the counter. A great many of the engagement rings we sell today are inherited within families, remade from a stone first chosen by a grandmother decades ago, or commissioned by a son using the diamond his mother once wore. We have helped three generations of some families choose their rings and that, more than anything, is the measure by which we judge our work.

Irish Fine Jewellery and Modern Inspiration

Many of our pieces of fine jewellery we make under the Brereton name are designed and crafted here in Ireland. That is a quiet point of pride for us, and an increasingly rare one. While much of the trade has moved overseas in pursuit of volume, we have stayed close to home because we believe the finest jewellery is made slowly, by hand, by people who understand the weight of what they are creating.

Our designs draw on a broad range of influences. Alongside the classic fine jewellery for which we are perhaps best known, we offer more contemporary pieces too. We are proud to support that new generation directly, working closely with The Craft Council of Ireland Jewellery School and National College of Art and Design, Metal Department to commission individual pieces from emerging students whose work catches our eye.

While we take great pride in our heritage and tradition, we are equally keen to keep moving forward alongside our customers, and with the ever-changing tastes they bring through our door. Our past, in many ways, is what helps us build our future.

Our Goldsmiths

Behind our shop is a small group of master goldsmiths whose combined experience stretches well beyond a century. Many of our goldsmiths have spent thirty or forty years at the bench, and the great majority of our diamond rings are made by their hands, here in Ireland, often using techniques that have not fundamentally changed in generations.

We work this way because there is no substitute for it. A ring that has been hand-made for a customer fits differently, sits differently, and feels differently. It also lasts. We see pieces returned for cleaning or resizing twenty, thirty, forty years after they were first made, still as beautifully balanced as the day they left the bench.

Gemologists You Can Trust

We are qualified gemologists, trained by the Gemological Institute of America — the most respected body of its kind in the world. Every natural diamond and coloured gemstone we offer has been personally hand-picked. We travel to source our stones, examine each one under the loupe, and reject far more than we ever accept.

That careful work happens long before a stone ever reaches a customer, and it is the foundation of everything we sell. When you buy a diamond from Brereton, you are buying a stone that has been chosen - and you have our word, as gemologists and as a family, on its quality.

The People Behind the Counter

A jewellery shop is only ever as good as the people in it, and we are immensely proud of the team we have built over the years. Many of our staff have been with us for decades. They know our regular customers by name, by family, and by story - which daughter is about to celebrate a milestone birthday, which engagement is just around the corner, which earrings were a fortieth wedding anniversary gift bought from us many years ago.

And we are every bit as delighted to welcome customers stepping through our door for the very first time. We love nothing more than helping someone choose the piece that will mark a new beginning and watching, in the years that follow, as those first occasions become traditions of their own.

We do not work to a sales target and we do not chase the trends of the moment. Our team is here to listen, to advise, and to help you find - or create - exactly the right piece. There is no pressure, ever. Only the quiet expertise that comes from spending one's working life surrounded by beautiful things, and the genuine pleasure of helping people choose them.

The Brereton Promise

When customers describe what they love about us, the same words come up again and again: trust, expertise, and care. Those three words are, in many ways, the only ones that matter in our trade.

Trust, because fine jewellery is bought rarely and remembered forever, and you must be able to believe entirely in the people you buy it from. Expertise, because no two diamonds are alike, and only a true specialist can guide you well. Care, because every piece we sell marks something - an engagement, a birth, an anniversary, a memory - and deserves to be chosen with the same affection with which it will one day be given.

These are not promises we make lightly. They are the inheritance of four generations of our family, and they are why our customers come back to us year after year and why they bring their children with them.

Welcome to Brereton

Whether you are visiting us for the first time, or you are the next generation of a family we have known for half a century, you are very welcome at Brereton Jewellers. Step inside our Capel Street or O'Connell Street shop and you will find something we believe is increasingly rare on the modern high street: a true family business, doing what it has always done, beautifully, and for you.

— Brereton Jewellers, Dublin —