Saturday 29 February 2020

S3012 Grafton Hotel

This site has a long and storied pub history, and there is now a name to match - what was most recently the Grafton Capital Hotel and Break for the Border nightclub has had a full refit/refurb and is just The Grafton - with Bartleys bar.

The "Capital" in the former name was a reference to Capital Bars Plc who, at their peak, had 15 premises in the city and were the Press Up of their day more or less - but this isn't the interesting bit of the history

For on the site prior to the hotel being built was Bartley Dunne's, famed as one of the first gay bars in Dublin, at a time when that was legally dubious prior to decriminalisation in 1993. It wasn't officially a gay bar, as detailed in the Come Here To Me! article linked, and the first official one is probably The Viking - now S0082 Brogans.

So, 29 years after Bartley Dunne's was knocked for the original incarnation of the hotel, the refurbished version opened in 2019 with Bartleys as its new bar, taking up much of the space that Break for the Border did, but without any nightclub function.

Its fairly standard for a hotel bar, and leads through to a more formal sit down restaurant at the rear; but there's a wide enough selection of drinks including Persistence P50 as a smaller Irish firm offering, and the food was good too - however, getting the attention of the floor staff is not easy, and you cannot order at the bar

There were tables available at 7pm on a Friday, which is rare enough and certainly not the case in  any of the other nearby pubs so this could be a decent place to start an evening out.

Thursday 27 February 2020

Mhp0136 Fox Inn

Those who pay any attention to the pub licence serial numbers that I use as a unique identifier may notice something odd here. That legacy code is not the usual N or S for Northside/Southside - its Mhp for Meath Pub.

But its not in Meath - its just in a Meath district court area. There's one pub with a Wicklow code (Arp) and multiple with Drogheda (Dg) so eventually you'll see some more of these

If you look at just my Dublin map, The Fox Inn seems to be extremely isolated from anywhere else - but this is because the town it is actually extremely close to, Ashbourne, is in County Meath. There are pubs elsewhere in Dublin that are further away from the next nearest boozer; but this one manages to pass itself off as being very rural from its appearance.

The pub is sizeable enough for a small townland, with one primary bar area extensively decorated with the standard things you expect a rural pub to have - including a taxidermy fox to go with the name. Its a quaint stone building, that was far too dark for me to photograph, but is on geograph.ie for your perusal.

Like a lot of these pubs, its unlikely you'll ever have reason to stumble across the place - but if you live in Ashbourne it'll only be a few quid in a taxi each way to drop out for a few in different surroundings. Just imagine it's ten or more kilometres further away!

Tuesday 18 February 2020

N0309 Gormleys

Of all the small villages in NCD, Garristown was the only one to have two pubs (at least in recent times - if you know of any that went pre 2009 please do give me the details); but N0308 Garristown Inn is currently closed, up for sale and not in the best condition internally (these links will rot when it eventually gets sold). I didn't see an equivalent "Best Pint In..." sign up in Gormleys as the only pub in Oldtown had, even though it would still be right by default at the moment!

Garristown has a lot more substance to it than some of the other villages - as well as the second pub there's a Garda station and a post office. Gormleys is a little larger to match, with an L shaped main bar and a pool table with some poker machines off to the side at the back.

This was another pub with well behaved dogs in it; making my Brewdog experience seem even more out of line. One huge, sleepy, golden furred pooch moved itself around the bar, finding the most suitable location for a snooze and the occasional ear scratch from regulars who all appeared to know it

After the two pubs with generic betting slips, Gormleys actually had their own branded ones on the tables - are they actually running the book themselves? Never been my thing so don't really know how that would work financially with a small audience.

Thursday 13 February 2020

Revisited Pubs - January 2020

For some surreal reason, my listing of pubs that I re-visited in December did better numbers than nearly any other individual post, so of course its going to be a feature now.

In January, these were the pubs that I visited when not seeking a further green line on the spreadsheet-of-boozers:

N0006 Brew Dock - because The Mayson failed me for food and I needed dinner
1010804 Drunken Fish - because I've already been to every pub near work
N2588 Ely - ditto, also Urban Brewing was full
N0002 Madigans - because I made an arse out of train timing and had 29 minutes to wait

Tuesday 11 February 2020

N0270 The Village Inn O'Connors

Ballyboughal would start to tend towards a town - or a suburb of Swords - rather than a village these days, but its one pub retains The Village Inn name.

And it could have been transplanted from a community with a tenth of the population, at least aesthetically

Like the previous pub, there was nobody in the lounge but a fairly full bar when we arrived, but just horse racing on the TVs and the same generic betting slips.

There's a slightly more modern range of drinks than you might expect here, including a gin menu on every table

There's very little chance you'll ever end up here unless you live in Ballyboughal, but it's a nice boozer none the less.

Friday 7 February 2020

N0271 Oldtown House

"The Best Pint in Oldtown" says a plaque behind the bar. This wouldn't be hard - there is only one pub in Oldtown! There's isn't much of anything else either, except for some housing estates - I believe the sole shop is shut. There was even one of the last ghost estates in the entirety of Dublin but this has been resolved now as far as I'm aware

What you get here is a relatively sizable pub which has clearly had some money put in to it recently - shiny new gents toilets off the entrance corridor - with the normal bar and lounge split. There was absolutely nobody in the lounge when we (I had a non-drinking driver with me, because these pubs were never going to be visited any other way) visited, but the bar was nearly full with people placing bets on the horses, with a small few watching the England - France game on the big screen.

There was some form of in-pub bookie here; with unbranded betting slips so it may have been the pub itself operating it. We would see this again and again during the day, so my previous running total of two pubs with in-pub bookies was smashed.

If you're in a small town/village in North County Dublin, you rarely have a choice of pubs - but you'd probably be happy enough with this as your local regardless.