Fathers Waiting Rooms - Pubs by Maternity Hospitals

One of the most easily quoted scenes from an Irish movie is that from The Snapper, where Des Curley reveals the weight of his new-born grandchild to a solidly unimpressed fellow drinker, in N1097 Conways on Parnell Street. 

This pub was renowned as being a "fathers waiting room", where - particularly in the days before it was normal for a father to actually attend the birth - men would wait out the final stretch of labour, and possibly try control any nerves with a few pints. Conways has not traded for over a decade now, but there are plans to renovate it.

But Dublin has more than one maternity hospital, and in January 1994 - not that long after The Snapper came out, albeit its not mentioned in the article, the Sunday World's "Pub Spy" column visited the four pubs nearest the four maternity hospitals in Dublin at that time.

Sunday World, 30th January 1994

Notably, not a single one of them was open as of March 2020 and only one has any short-term chance of serving pints to anyone; even if the specific market of worried waiting father drinking has waned.

Pub Spy's usual "pint rating", an officially six point, zero to five pint scale - but which really seems to be one to four with zero and five being very rare curses/accolades, is changed to a "stork rating" for this article; which may have been a slightly confusing choice. For the second pub they visit - after granting Conways four storks - was The Stork on Cork Street. 

Serving the fathers of The Coombe, The Stork, which closed in the early 2000s, was granted 3 storks; with O'Dwyers (most recently S0149 Howl at the Moon, eventually to reopen as a hotel on the same site) opposite the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street also getting four storks.

The final review, another four storks, was of the Orwell Lodge Hotel, which closed in the mid/late 2000s; and was the nearest to Mount Carmel Hospital, which itself delivered its last baby in early 2014. A rarer smaller suburban hotel that was fully licenced but not heavily based around a nightclub (I don't even think it had one), the Orwell Lodge still befell the same fate as many similar sized hotels - apartments.

The World's slightly obsession with carnal matters, at that time at least, provides suggestions that a coupling in O'Dwyers "Night Train" nightclub, or a stay at the Orwell Lodge, could provide a need to make use of the maternity hospital nine months later.