S3226 Maldron Hotel Newlands Cross

Dalata hotels don't really seem to look at their bars as major profit centres, with them often being very constrained or even closed; so I was vaguely expecting another bottle of Heineken in a lobby like my most recent Dalata visit.

But no, there is actually a fairly big bar here, open to the public up until the mid evening. It isn't particularly interesting, but there isn't another pub in this end of Clondalkin - well, not until the next hotel - so it may be useful for weekends.

S4515 Louis Fitzgerald Hotel

There are seven hotels along the Naas Road in Dublin, starting from the Red Cow and working outwards.

The first two (the Red Cow and the Ibis) and the seventh (City West) are currently not open to the public, and the Ibis only had a residents bar licence anyway; but the other four are fully trading; and despite having been at events in some of them, I'd never drunk in any of them.

So, with the help of a driver, I got all four done in fairly rapid succession.

First up is the Louis Fitzgerald, a very rare case of a hotel named after a living owner - excluding family surnames on some hotels that is. Built beside his longer standing Joel's restaurant, there is a further restaurant in the lobby here; but there is also a normal bar.

Louis has an admitted reputation as hoarder/collector, and it seems the hotel he's named after himself gets the best goodies - his GB£80,000 1904 Wolseley 6hp

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This is the last Fitzgerald Group premises for me, for now - Louis is likely to add some more.

1016097 Mackenzies

This is the last of the "random womans name" Paddy McKillen Jr restaurants for me to tick, and it's just as generic as them all. Except here, you really do need to eat - there isn't an option for a bar booking; and indeed you do need to book because walk-ins were not being taken on the night I was here.

I seriously doubt I'll be back.

S0257 Buglers Ballyboden House

I'm not sure there's a current pub name I have to try so hard not to misspell - the Colosseum in Walkinstown no longer holding that name, thankfully. "Bulgers" seems to scan better, despite Bugler being a semi common surname, and a type of musician at that. I may just be remembering a horrific incident that was heavily reported when I was a kid, though.

There's more than a few newspaper archive references to "Bulgers" as well, covering both the pre- and post-spellcheck eras of newspaper editing (the pub has been Buglers since 1954) so at least it's not only me.

Another packed pub - three in a row, albeit they aren't all that far apart - I ended up in a corner of the bar rather than in the fairly recently renovated lounge, or the covered outdoor area so new you can see the demolition of the old one on Streetview.

1010020 Eden House

Approaching this pub from the road feels a bit weird - as the pub doesn't address the main road at all. 

When you do get in to it, via the start of a housing estate, it becomes clear that the pub is in a very old building - a Georgian manor house called, appropriately, Eden House.

Eden House - the manor, that is - was redeveloped in the mid 1990s in to the pub we now have; with a small retail/office development and a housing estate built on the lands.

The pub itself has a variety of Georgian or Victorian features left inside, and has quite an unusual layout due to the room layout of the house itself. It was also absolutely and utterly rammed when I visited, so I ended up outside rather than continuing to wander around inside. This may be worth a revisit when quiet; but the reason it has ended up so late in my ticks is that it isn't quite the easiest place to get to!

S1328 Ballinteer House

Another single storey, shopping centre carpark pub but with rather less of the semi-architectural interest of the Coach House - this is a bit of a box.

And a very busy box it was too; with not a lot of free tables and a huge amount of food being served at the time of my visit. Surprisingly, there was a single Irish independent tap on offer - Trouble Ambush - which is what I enjoyed at the only free table I could find.

The pub apparently features a six-table snooker hall - with snooker tables very rare in pubs to begin with, and even more than one cue sports table of any description being rarer this is not something you're going to find often.

S0251 Sandyford House

Sandyford, the business park area, has lots of buses; and is walkable from the Luas. It has two not-really pubs and once had a hotel.

Sandyford, the village it's named after, has one irregular bus and eluded me for quite a while - it took close to three hours to get here due to poor meshing of public transport timings; and a lengthy amount of time to get to the next pub afterwards; but I made it.

The Sandyford House claims to date to the 1690s and certainly bits of the pub are very old; but with the 16 years of Streetview passes showing three completely different paint jobs and multiple different approaches to outdoor seating, they certainly aren't unwilling to modify this place! The balcony seating, removed since the earliest passes, is an interesting loss.

I didn't venture any further than the front bar - named Boss Crokers, after the Irish-American politician and former namesake of a pub on the Quays, most recently N0185 Index. I got one of the window bays on my own, as the bar was not terribly busy when I attended. 

A longer visit than normal ensued here, due to the bus times; and I took a few photos of some of the historical paperwork on the walls... which I now can't find. I'm certainly not going on another five hour round-trip mission to re-take them!