Revenue register update, September 2025

I still have no further writeups to post, so another routine posts gets moved to being a scheduled post! 

Reasonably large update to process this month, albeit a lot of it is just renewals of extant premises. However, there's still a few changes of note:

New:

1022169 Lane7, Chatham Street - already visited
1022390 CitizenM Hotel, Bride Street - already visited

Renumbered: 

1021887 Plunkets, Middle Abbey Street - formerly N1939

Removals:

1009401 Citywest Hotel, Citywest - this hotel has been purchased by the State and is extremely unlikely to ever reopen

Revisited pubs, August 2025

With a current pub writeup backlog of zero - everywhere I've been since 2005 is written up, as far as I know - the revisit post for August is being promoted to the status of being a regular scheduled post for the first time in many years. 

N0097 Underdog - a regular that needs no explanation

S3103 Christchurch Inn - one stop of a few on a Sunday afternoon wander around the city

1014121 John O'Dwyers - and another

S0198 Cassidys - and another

N0082 McGraths - another regular

S0106 Tapped - with two hours to kill before a work event in the next-but-one entry, I had time to visit a few places in Dublin 2...

1007394 Davy Byrnes ...some of which were less busy than all their also famed neighbours on a sunny Thursday evening, presumably due to a North-facing outdoor area

1019597 Hyde - this was where said work event was.

1017882 IMC Cinema Santry

Another cinema, part of the same chain as my other recent visit, but without anywhere near the history of the Savoy. 

And it was another surprisingly cheap pint, of Heineken - the only beer they offer. 

There is a tiny bit of history here, though. The cinema itself is an early 90s multiplex, minimally modified but that has been kept in serviceable condition; however that alone isn't particularly interesting. 

The previous use of the site, as McCairns Motors Vauxhall and Chevrolet assembly plant is more interesting, at least to me. I have been in to the admin areas of the centre in a previous job, and there is a photo of the media launch of the shopping centre development in the early 90s, with a helicopter dropping someone off in the ruins of the car plant.

There's also a quirk with it's name. As the cinema element of the Omni Park shopping centre, this was the cinema that gave the Omniplex chain it's name - but it isn't part of that chain. IMC and Omniplex were two seperate chains that mostly operated as one - Ward Anderson - but split over ten years ago, and despite this being the source of the Omniplex name; that name went to the other side of the split. 

S0259 The Willows

Just when I'd announced I'd finished all the "normal" pubs in the county, it gets revealed that one recent enough closure that I'd just missed - it shut before I did a sweep-up of that bit of suburbia - was to reopen on the August Bank Holiday weekend.

I didn't make it out that weekend - I was elsewhere in the country; but I did the weekend after. 

This is another Irish "estate pub", an entirely different idea to that in the UK - a pub in a small row of shops in a housing estate; often these days not containing any conventional shops at all. Streetview history shows that the normal shop here closed some time between 2014 and 2018. 

Most of these pubs were built in the 1940s to 60s, this coming from the latter end of that period by the looks of things, but it has been extensively updated - I wouldn't say "modernised", as that would imply a loss of character - before its recent reopening.

The food offering, at least initially, extends to toasties; and the drinks offering has some Four Provinces to break up the monotony of Diageo and Heineken products. I expect more food may be offered here going forward.

The pub isn't too far from Dundrum village and the Luas stops there; but there isn't another pub for quite some distance in all other directions, so there should be catchment here to keep it going.

1001687 Smock Alley Theatre

One of the newest, and also oldest, theatres in the city centre; Smock Alley opened in 2012 in what had been, for my generation at least, the Statoil Dublin Viking Experience. (That attraction is not to be confused with the still operating Dublinia)

However, that was just a temporary cultural use of the building, which had formerly been a Catholic church - apparently the first obvious one within the city for centuries, as it opened pre-emancipation. And this church had been built on the site of, and retaining various features from, the 1735 Theatre Royal.

That theatre itself had replaced a 1662 building on the same site, and a little of the fabric of that building appears to still survive. I don't believe there's another operating theatre in Dublin that can claim, even tenuously, to have that length of history - but this really isn't my specialist subject.

What there is now is a complex with a number of relatively small rooms, including a banquet hall above the main stage. It's here that I had my drinks; as there was an option to purchase charcuterie prior to a show, in what have to be some of the most impressive surroundings of anywhere you can actually get a drink in Dublin. 

But you do have to go see something being performed here to get a drink, either in the banquet hall or the small bar in the lobby. I saw a modern, Dublin-set interpretation of Moliere's Misanthrope; an interesting experience for someone who last attended a theatrical performance in the early 2000s! 

1013760 Savoy Cinema

Once a grand, nearly 3000 capacity single screen cinema, the Savoy has been chopped up so much over its nearly 100-year history (opening in 1929) that there are now THIRTEEN screens in the building.

I watched a documentary, on my own, in Screen 12 - which I'd swear is what the ladies toilets for the main screen used to be - with what was actually a fairly reasonably priced pint, of the only beer they serve - Moretti. 

I wanted to see the documentary anyway, and the screen was cooler than the air outside, so I got a comfortable enough visit to tick the place off.

This limited beer or wine offering isn't all the Savoy has ever had, pub-wise though. The adjacent branch of Madigans was once the cinemas bar (and also the first pub on O'Connell Street in the modern era - there's still only three other than the hotel bars, which isn't a lot) but eventually separated in operation and ownership and trades entirely independently and on its own licence.

1022390 CitizenM Hotel, Bride Street

Bride Street was once lined with pubs - eight by my count, and another 3 on Werburgh Street which continues directly from it. Of those, one one of the Werburgh Street pubs - the famed Lord Edward - still exists.

But as part of the recent redevelopment of the area, Bride Street now has two hotels. One, a StayCity, only has a residents bar - licenced as such and out of scope for me. The other, the new CitizenM, has a conventional bar open to the public.

Or at least it does by the time you're reading this. On the day I visited, they had not yet got their full Publicans Licence (Ordinary) Hotel in place and were only able to serve wine and soft drinks. But a wine is a wine, I was in the bar and I'm counting it against the full licence they were expecting to have by the end of July. I think the hotel opened a bit earlier than was originally advertised so this may explain the period of no full licence.

The bar is a hotel lobby bar, but a fairly nicely fitted out one. With no beers actually yet on offer, I can't comment on what the beer selection is like; and I know next to nothing about wine either, but I was able to drink what I bought!