In The Glen of Aherlow pub on Emmet Road in Inchicore, Dublin, last year, a regular reminded me of a looming centenary. “Next December, Con’s a hundred.” Con, of course, was sportswriter Con Houlihan. Despite his death in 2012, his first name is enough for many people to immediately recall him.
The pub was part of Houlihan’s beat, on the way back from a pilgrimage to Richmond Park, where he noted the good people of Inchicore had followed their local side “through thin and thinner”. Houlihan’s returning path often brought him to The Old Royal Oak in Kilmainham Lane. The walk, he would write, “is like a piece of the country in the heart of the city. It has green spaces and hedges and trees and there you can hear the birds sing. There, too, you will find a little pub which from the outside looks like a private house”.
It would be difficult to spend an afternoon in Dublin publand without encountering a memorial to Houlihan. At Mulligan’s on Poolbeg Street, a secular shrine of sorts was unveiled in his own lifetime, including the words of his friend John B Keane, who noted that the men had played rugby against each other and drank pints of porter together. They were good at one and excelled at the other. In the nearby Palace Bar on Fleet Street, a bust behind the bar honours the Castle Island (two words, he insisted) writer. Some memorials are humbler, such as a picture in Chaplin’s on Hawkins Street or a framed magazine cover in The Lower Deck in Portobello Harbour. Like the nearby Harold House, the latter is a pub near his Portobello home where regulars still recall him enjoying the peculiar concoction of brandy and goat’s milk. The brandy, Houlihan quipped, took the sting out of the milk.
[ An expert’s secret rules of drinking in an Irish barOpens in new window ]
Certainly, the approaching centenary of Houlihan was one factor that influenced my decision to write a new book about Dublin pubs. Other inspirations came from more surprising places. In pandemic times, Joycean (like most of them, he refutes the title) Glenn Johnston posted an image of the Palace Bar by Lee Miller, the celebrated American photographer and journalist. Miller’s story is more familiar to younger audiences now thanks to Lee, the 2023 biopic directed by Ellen Kuras and starring Kate Winslet. That Miller had found herself in 1940s Dublin photographing the city for Vogue magazine was unknown to me.
RM Block
“Not only did I drink at the sacred Men’s Bar,” she would recall of The Palace, “but I stood on it as well, straddling the partition between bars.” It was all worth it in pursuit of extraordinary images, which would illustrate an article by Joyce’s friend CP Curran. One of Miller’s images of the pub takes pride of place in the snug of the pub today, and her experience struck me as an interesting way to approach the story of women and their place – or absence – in such establishments historically.
Miller and Houlihan are enormous names in their respective fields, but social historians are generally concerned with the story of society at large, and what Myles na gCopaleen would call “The Plain People of Ireland”. For me, there was an importance in not drowning in the larger personalities of the tale. In chapters exploring things as diverse as early house licensing and the emergence of karaoke, space emerged to look at what the pub means to us broadly. The gradual acceptance of women in the great Irish “third space” is explored. John B Keane insisted that he could no longer understand how any publican “can refuse a woman a pint in this day and age”, as “some of my best customers are women pint drinkers and they are better behaved, better disposed and of nicer mien and manner than the men”.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the physical pub itself became a character in the tale. The physical ephemera and design of pubs could give great insight into broader themes. At The Flowing Tide on Lower Abbey Street, a series of magnificent stained-glass windows by Tony Inglis honour not only nearby landmarks such as the Custom House and the General Post Office, but the neighbouring Abbey Theatre. We see the masks of comedy and tragedy, reminding us that the fortunes of this pub were fundamentally tied to that of its neighbour. In The Castle Lounge – aka Grogan’s – on South William Street, Katharine Lamb’s windows include former and present regulars, ranging from the actor Donal McCann to Joey Magic, a contemporary and friend of Thom McGinty, The Diceman. Katharine Lamb and Joey Magic still visit the bar, few realising the artist or the subject are on the premises. At The Yacht in Ringsend, rowing oars from neighbouring clubs take pride of place over the bar, a reminder that sport – both in celebration and commiseration – is tied to the public house.
Since Kevin C Kearns published his extraordinary oral history, Dublin Pub Life & Lore, in 1996, the sheer variety of new primary sources in the public domain offer new windows into the story. Within the Bureau of Military History, the first-hand testimonies of the revolutionary generation of 1913-1921, public houses are frequently recalled. Take Philip Shanahan’s in the heart of the Monto, a popular centre of gun-running, where Tipperary republican Jeremiah Frewen recalled how “a fine big athletic-looking fellow bounded in and spoke to Phil and was introduced to us. This was Mick Collins whom I met then for the first time. He impressed me as a man full of energy and competence, and he talked casually with us while he drank a bottle of stout.”
Snugs across the city are remembered as places where actions were plotted, while some establishments became detested as spots favoured by “Auxies” and “Tans”. We also find much in the insurance applications submitted in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, when several public houses were looted of their contents, by those who saw an opportunity to get drunk for free. Michael Staines of the GPO Garrison would recall how “Orders had been given prohibiting alcoholic drink. On Tuesday, however, some looters pillaged a public house opposite the GPO in Henry Street and some women handed bottles of stout to the members of the Citizen Army occupying the windows of the GPO.” As one might expect of teetotallers James Connolly and James Larkin, they refused the offer.
To date, histories of Dublin’s public houses have largely focused on those between the canals. I felt it important to move beyond them into the suburbs and the fringes of the county. Gone is The Towers in Ballymun, perhaps the nearest thing Ireland ever had to an “estate pub” of the kind found in working-class England. In some cases public houses there were actually built on new estates by local authorities, conscious of the importance of places of recreation in different spheres of life. A survivor of The Towers, a large-scale mural by Muriel Brandt of the executed leaders of the Rising, can now be found in Ballymun Civic Centre. In the end, the pub outlasted the seven towers named in honour of the proclamation signatories, though it also met its date with a wrecking ball.
In the rural Strawberry Beds, I felt it important to include The Wren’s Nest, a pub that has been an important oasis for the traditional music community, and appears on the front of At Home with The Dubliners, a landmark LP from the group to the fore of the ballad boom. A mere two reviews on Tripadvisor stand testament to the welcoming nature of this remarkable pub, in stark contrast with the 3,415 people who have left their tuppence worth on The Temple Bar. Accordions belonging to former regulars take pride of place on the walls, and sessions are still regular. At lunchtime when I visited recently, a group of local ladies were deep in conversation over cups of tea and scones, telling me how they met regularly outside the pub in the car park during the pandemic. They were an important reminder that there is more to pubs than drink, something further revealed in the pots of tea populating musicians’ corners in pubs such as The Cobblestone in Smithfield, and Pipers Corner on Marlborough Street, amid the pints of stout.
In the proliferation of influencer culture, the obsession with finding “the best pub” or “the best pint” can mean we are at risk of venerating a handful of establishments and overlooking the importance of the institution in the broadest sense. Suburban locals may not be as aesthetically pleasing as the fine upstanding Victoriana of Dublin 1 and 2, but they can still be important places in their community, hosting all from local book clubs to charity fundraisers and live music. To some, The Towers in Ballymun was the place where births, weddings and funerals were marked. The Scotch House on Burgh Quay, The Horse and Jockey in Inchicore, Barney Kiernan’s on Little Britain Street, and Baker’s on Thomas Street were all important in the lives of people who called them their regular spot. We can’t bring them back, but I hope The Dublin Pub at least captures a moment in time, and encourages us to see the pub as more than the pint glass in front of us.
Donal Fallon is a social historian to Dublin City Council Culture Company, and presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast. The Dublin Pub is published by New Island Books
