S0287 Sallynoggin Inn

Have you ever felt like you really wanted to go drinking in, say, Solihull? Because it turns out, you can. Sort of. The pub is nowhere near as grim as it would be in Solihull. 

It doesn't really feel like an English suburban pub, but by feck does it look it, in a large number of ways. First off is the actual presentation and location of the pub itself.

Being sited behind a petrol station isn't the most common for a urban or suburban pub here - it is in rural areas, where the pub may be the shop, petrol station and undertakers all in one of course - but it is fairly common in English suburbs built in the early era of more widespread care ownership. 

There weren't that many of these, but Sallynoggin *was* developed in the 30s-50s, with the pub coming in 1951 it seems, and the petrol station listed as "recently added" when being sold in 1958. While a lot later than the 30s builds I'd expect for equivalents in England, Ireland was poorer and slower to take to private motoring as a result.

When you can actually see the wood for the trees pub for the petrol station, it again looks like an English pub - mock Tudor, with a full width greenhouse style area at the front, added about twelve years ago it seems.

And on walking in to the large, single room with a U shaped bar, slightly too many televisions, a poker machine, another betting machine, a vape dispensing machine and a semi-separated area for pool and darts.

Once you can look beyond the, well, looks; and the too many TVs, its actually a normal suburban pub. It has become the only pub for a fairly large area since the demise of The Thatch (an interesting story could be told at some point about a pub with that name being in a Power City industrial unit - it was a replacement building) and the Deerhunter in the late Celtic Tiger era; and seems to keep a good locals business.