N2588 Ely CHQ

This is extremely similar in setup to Urban Brewing next door, but is the original of the species - Ely has been here since the CHQ building opened and may actually be the only remaining tenant from the days when it was conceived as a high class shopping centre.

The story of CHQ, while not relevant to the pub, is an interesting one. Build as a bonded warehouse it fell derelict when the docks moved further down the river and was later converted to a shopping centre. After a number of years mostly empty, the building is now a mix of food and drink outlets, short term offices and a successful cultural attraction (EPIC). Its a surprisingly similar story to Tobacco Dock in London, except that CHQ has found permanent relevant uses and Tobacco Dock hasn't.

On Ely - this is a fully pub licensed branch of the popular winebar on Ely Place and always seems to do good business when I pass. I had been intending to try it for food but it was extremely busy due to a conference on in the Convention Centre (see the disrupted visit to Urban Brewing linked above also) so I ate elsewhere and dropped back for a drink before my train home. Decent range of craft options from multiple brewers, reasonable prices on premium whiskeys and an interesting enough looking food menu complete the options along with the vast wine choices.

N2011 Beresford Hotel

A conventional if slightly worn out hotel bar opposite Busaras. There isn't much more to say really.

There are now very few pubs left within any range of my office I haven't gone to, so evening trips are going to start involving jaunts up and down the DART line from now on.

1013149 Urban Brewing

Visited on what I thought would be a quiet enough Wednesday evening, but due to a conference on at the Convention Centre this craft bar with an on-site brewery was actually packed. Inclement weather meant that the outdoor seating wasn't all that usable so my visit was shorter than I had intended and I intend to go back at some point. It wasn't really the kind of visit I intended to do but drinks (one brewed on-site, one not) were consumed so it does count.

April 2018 Licencing Update

There were no completely new premises on the list this month but still a fair bit of motion

Reappearances (but still closed)
1014008 Black & Amber Inn, South Circular Road - formerly S1492
N0029 Strand House, North Strand
S1451 The Bayno, Francis Street

Removed
S1579 The Hatch, Hazelhatch - has long been converted to an art gallery, but I could see this licence returning

Renumbered
1013740 Pillar Bar - formerly S4004
1013947 Castleknock Hotel from S4182 (an out-of-place Southside number North of the Liffey)

"Dublin On 50 Pubs A Day" A 1974 (probably fictional) Pub Crawl

The excellent National Treasures series running on RTE at the moment brought up Brand New Retro's collection of content from an Irish attempt at a mens magazine from the 1970s, Man Alive

The first issue of this featured the first half of "Dublin on 50 Pubs a Day", a title parody of the famous Frommers "Europe on X Dollars a Day" guidebooks and - hopefully - a parody itself. If it isn't the alcohol intake by about pub five would kill most.

The article states they went to 29 pubs, however there are actually 36 listed which I can only assume is part of the joke. But how many could you get to today? Nine are closed and many more are completely rebuilt.

The journey makes some geographic sense except for the first hop, which is stated as being done by taxi. Most pubs that seem like omissions on the way now simply weren't there in 1974.

Part 2 was apparently in Issue 2, but is not amongst the pages digitised on Brand New Retro should it ever have been there at all.

The Pubs:

#1 N0600 Ashling Hotel - still trading
#2 Scotch House - long since gone, replacement building is itself being extensively rebuilt already
#3 Madigans - now S0005 JW Sweetman
#4 The Harp - now S0967 River Bar
#5 Dalys - N1195 Clifton Court Hotel
#6 N1063 The Plough - closed for years
#7 N1103 Wynns Hotel
#8 N1064 The Oval
#9 The Tower, Henry Street - closed
#10 Madigans, Moore Street - both locations it has been in closed
#11 Quiltys, Mary Street - haven't traced this one for definite
#12 Ye Olde Crescent, Mary Street - closed
#13 N1068 Slatterys
#14 Four Courts Bar - closed but most recently N0077 Fibbers Rock Bar
#15 Four Courts Hotel - closed
#16 Ormonde Hotel - closed
#17 S0140 Clarence Hotel
#18 Red Hackle - licence used for S0107 Czech Inn but premises has moved across a site
#19 S0083 The Oak Lounge
#20 The George - I am presuming this to be the current S0092 George
#21 S0111 The Old Stand. The next line mentions "The Strand" but I assume this is a typo.
#22 S0056 The Bailey
#23 1007394 Davy Byrnes
#24 Larry Tobins - S0012 The Duke
#25 Royal Hibernian Hotel - demolished 1983, licence may have been used for 1004917 Lemon & Duke which is on the site
#26 S0010 Dawson Lounge
#27 S0001 Kehoes
#28 Zodiac Bar now S0094 Bruxelles
#29 S0093 McDaids
#30 S0077 Nearys
#31 S0078 Sheehans
#32 The Clarendon, building replaced by S0080 Bar Rua
#33 McGowans, Stephen Street - closed
#34 1007337 Peters Pub
#35 Achesons - now S0131 Hairy Lemon
#36 Bartley Dunnes - site occupied by S3012 Grafton Capital Hotel

1007830 J T Pims

A recent enough re-opening, this is named after the Pims Department Store which covered much of the opposite side of Georges Street in the past. The hideous buildings which are now there only replaced the large mid-Victorian department store in the 1970s. J T Pims itself is in an older redbrick building like much of the street.

Formerly Shebeen Chic and Speakeasy, this is now a cocktail bar primarily, but does have a normal selection of beer and a food menu and is reasonable enough price-wise for the location

When this premises opened, it had been announced that another bar was about to open also roughly named after the same former department store - Tod Hunter Pyms. This opened as 1011716 Idlewild instead though, preventing a name confusion - or stopping a rather boring conversation starter from existing!

N1066 Bachelor Inn

One of the most centrally located pubs in the entire city, this is the nearest to the Northern side of O'Connell Bridge these days and does get a sizeable amount of tourist traffic, however it still seems to have regulars. It was however a tourist who found the backpack I left behind when I realised I needed to be elsewhere in a hurry, enabling me to pick it up later completely unscathed.

Something likely to endear regulars and not tourists was a large group of probably Spanish student tourists being told by staff that they'd need to actually buy drinks if they wanted to sit down to watch a match - the stereotype of one pint for 6 people for an entire evening appeared to be in force. They decided to stand with their one pint instead!

N1081 Confession Box

A very small city centre pub which appears to have given a lot of space over to selling or promoting tourist tat. It also had a rather nasty smell throughout the entire premises at the time of my visit. Won't be bothering going back now the box is ticked.

They heavily promote that they show live sports, but it is so small and gets so many tourists I'm not sure they need to spend the money on the TV subs.

Tied Houses in Dublin

Its a generally accepted rule that the tied house system, common in the UK, never applied in the majority of Ireland, being specifically a Cork oddity. However, this wasn't the case in the past and indeed isn't really the case now.

These days, the boom in craft breweries has lead there to be a number of brewery-operated premises in Dublin. The Galway Bay chain is the largest, there is also the Porterhouse chain; and Brú House (Brú Brewery) and Bar Rua (Carrig Brewing) are also brewery-controlled.

In the past, there were at least two breweries with small tied estates in Dublin.

Watkins Jameson Pim were the second-largest of Dublin's breweries and their history is well documented elsewhere - this detailed article on Come Here To Me! is a good starting point. They had at least two pubs in Dublin, both of which took the fairly traditional name for a brewery-owned pub of "The Tap", and which they continued to operate long after the end of their own brewing.

One of these was on Patrick Street and was demolished for road widening in the 1980s - it last traded as Dunnes; and another was N0197 The Tap on North King Street which is currently closed but about to reopen with a new name. The latest I can find reference to them operating these premises is 1956 story of the manager being tried for theft from the company.

There is still a company called Watkins Jameson Pim (1976) with its registered address at the old brewery house - but they produce Dalkey Mustard. After the cessation of brewing there are various news articles about the company being involved in property trading in Bulloch Harbour in Dalkey so there is presumably a solid link between them. I have also found some evidence that they had at least one other tied house outside of my scope, in Roundwood, which they were selling in 1952.

Beamish & Crawford held a large estate in Cork, but they did enter Dublin also. I have been able to trace 7 Beamish owned premises in the city during the 1940s. Those pubs still remaining include the S0042 Windjammer and S0122 The Jar, with the recently closed N0098 Welcome Inn having also been in the chain.

Finally, Guinness started purchasing pubs, mostly large suburban premises, in the 1980s but has since divested of what had become a decent enough estate. These never operated as tied houses.

This is a subject I intend to research more - find out the full extent of the estates I'm aware of, see if any of the other former breweries had their own and also when divestment occurred.

2021 Update: A 1931 licencing application by Beamish for a bulk transfer also shows the following as having been tied premises at the time: N0148 Meaghers and N0099 The Big Romance, neither of which are recorded as such by the 40s. 

I have also found reference to a Mountjoy Brewery tied property on Cook Street (in the 1910s), a Mitchells Distillery tied house (in the 1900s - and almost unheard of as a concept except in the Netherlands) and accusations that Guinness used "soft ties" in the form of purchase and capital development loans in the 1920s.

Later 2021 Update: A search for something else entirely (well, still pub based) found a licence application for the pub latterly known as the Sligo Bar on Parnell Street by the Phoenix Brewery, giving their address not as their HQ at 89 James Street, but in the pub latterly known as O'Reillys at 88 next door - which in 1897 they were advertising as the Phoenix House. Phoenix ended up, eventually, being owned by Watkins Jameson Pim via many sales but the pubs were disposed off before then.

2022 Update: I have been working through a 1955 Thoms trade listing, which turned up two of the former Beamish premises being given Beamish related names when sold off. N0098 Welcome Inn was trading as the "Beamish House", and S0122 The Jar as "The Knuckleduster" (which I hadn't connected as being Beamish-related until reminded of this branding for Beamish stout by Dublin By Pub)

2024 Update: I have found a reference - in a 2024 era Business Post article - claiming that N0250 The Villager in Chapelizod was a tied house of the nearby Phoenix Park Distillery. I've not found any further info on this though, although I know it was sold in 1904 which is the year the article mentions for this.

I've also written about Guinness's late 20th Century pub estate

 

Further 2024 update: I have landed on a 1907 reference to the Recorder of the Court for Dublin City having a personal opposition to tied houses, which certainly would not have helped the propagation of same. This is more likely to be mortgage ties rather than owned and managed houses like Beamish's premises

Irish Independent, October 7th, 1907