N0246 Penny Hill

A barn of a pub - not in a negative way, but just a decent description of most of the pubs built in the Dublin County areas from the 50s to the 90s. As a 1998 build, the Penny Hill would be towards the end of the era when it was rather difficult to get a licence transfer approved, with distance rules in place, but it still stands alone as the only pub for a large suburban area.

The 2003 "Dublin Superpub of the Year" in the Black & White Pub Awards (S0172 The Waterloo taking the 'normal' Dublin award that year), the Penny Hill bears a lot of resemblance to my local Fitzgerald Group premises - albeit with a single giant room for the lounge areas rather than three across two floors as it has.

If you've been in any Fitzgerald suburban pub you've been in them all, really. There's nothing hugely distinctive here, but it has a large customer base, a slightly more varied than some taps list, and does food all day. A slightly baffling lunch menu was still on offer when I arrived in what would really be mid afternoon, so some nachos were obtained to have with my pints.

There was an upstairs nightclub here ("Mint") until recently, but the pub will now only operate as a pub and restaurant (and off-licence - which is pretty decent actually) as per a Sunday Independent interview with the Fitzgerald family on October 3rd. Suburban nightclubs are all but dead now, but what is done with the presumably substantial space it once occupied will be interesting to see - as the pub floor is already vast.

As a random item of limited interest, this is one of a number of pubs that are clearly South of the Liffey with an N/Northside licence serial number - the dividing line is based on court districts, not the actual river. Newer licence serial numbers do not indicate the court district at all; and I don't actually know the boundaries used within Dublin. A limited number of Dublin licences have Meath, Arklow or Drogheda licence serials also.