RetroReview: S3035 Irish Film Institute

I used to drink here quite a lot; as they didn't check for ID if you were eating. 

The bar/restaurant were very nice, by 2003/4 standards anyway. I presume they've been upgraded since, but I dunno.

Every? Remaining Pub In Glenties

I sometimes stay overnight in the small Donegal town of Glenties - population 927 as of the 2022 census, a significant increase on the 805 from 2016; which I think is roughly what the baseline was for many decades before that.

There's a recently modernised, but old/classic rural town hotel which is about the furthest I'm willing to drive to after work on the way up to Donegal (and its usually cheaper than the hotel in Dungloe). My Dad was also born in the town, back when Glenties had a hospital (closed 1960) and that sort of care was hyper-localised.

My main memory of Glenties of old was that the town was absolutely rammed with pubs; and with such a small population to support it. Even to this day, there's a reasonable number, but far less than what there was.

The town was once more important than its nearby neighbour Dungloe (which I have previously written about), with the workhouse - which became the hospital; a thriving market - the market house still stands and is used as a community centre, and there are occasional street market days and so on; but Dungloes industry has helped it grow to become the retail and commercial centre for all of North West Donegal, leaving Glenties to fall behind. 

Despite the changes in business and administrative focus; Glenties has some literary history to fall back on. Brian Friel, who set most of his plays in a fictionalised version of the town, is to receive a visitor centre here shortly in the former courthouse; and the poet Patrick MacGill is remembered annually with the MacGill summer School. The local museum features items relating to both men (and to some of the former pubs, as we'll get to).

Working North to South down Glenties Main Street, I'm going to list the pubs that I'm aware of having existed - and I'm absolutely sure I'll miss some out here. I have drunk in all of those that are trading as of August 2024; bar potentially one - see the Inishkeel Co-op entry.

That many of these closed premises still have current licence numbers, or were licenced within the ~15 years for which I have old registers, but are not trading shows that you cannot use the Revenue register as an indication of how many pubs are still going.

Kelvon House / Glenmore House 

This Victorian (probably) structure is a former hotel and nightclub, but which has not traded for a very long time - the latest reference I can find to the Kelvon House name is 1998,

The oldest Streetview passes - 2009 - show it in a state of dereliction, albeit still identifiable as a pub, and even the 1998 Tidy Towns judging report, when it was probably still trading, refers to its poor state. A discount store has recently opened in the former bar area of the pub.

DOP156 The Limelight and M25 Superpub

An immense late 80s nightclub, the club section initially closed in 2012; while I believe the pub section struggled on until at least when it entered receivership in 2014. The entire site was described as "derelict" when planning was granted to demolish in 2016, but it briefly reopened that year and only closed finally in 2018.

The Limelight opened in 1988, converting the former St Dominics Hall - a 1940s dance hall and sometimes cinema, which played host to all the famed showbands and even Phil Lynott on a solo tour in 1982 - and the adjacent McHughs pub in to a 1,800 square meter nightclub and bar complex. 

This conversion is claimed to have cost IR£750,000 (now about €2.7m with inflation) with a fifth of that on the lighting alone. Some newspaper report reports refer to it having been "on the site of" St Dominics Hall, but it is clear from old photographs that they are the same buildings, just with that quarter of a million spent on them.

As the largest nightclub in this part of the county, the Limelight was known for people coming in by bus from all around. It was one of a number of clubs across Ireland that would open at midnight on Christmas night; a thing of borderline legality (although endorsed by local judges) but probably providing an escape from stifling family events for hundreds in the process.

I was actually in here in my teenage years, but don't remember much about the night at this stage... or possibly didn't remember much about it the morning after either!

This is still licenced, as of August 2024.

Kennedys

I... think... this was a pub - it now appears to be a house, but still has the Kennedys name sign-written on to the wall, this sign writing being reinstated after building repaints. It is somewhat hard to find out, as another pub in the town is owned by, and was formerly called, Kennedys. 

DOP149 The Tavern Bar

This wonderful single-roomed pub is still open, and is like going back in time - the pricing alone (€4.50 for a Guinness) is enough to bring you back. Cash only, Guinness and Carling only on draught when I visited.

DOP152 Roddys

Another survivor, this is a little bigger and a little more modern than the Tavern. Has a back/outdoor area for live music.

DOP155 Mellys / Glen Inn

Attached to Mellys supermarket, this does not seem to have traded for some time - the licence seems to go away in ~2016

DOP154 Sonnys Bar

This only closed in September 2023, is listed for sale as a pub, and as such is something that may reopen. Was also Keenys Bar prior to being Sonnys.

DOP158 O Faolains

This premises still shows signs of having been a pub, with fading Guinness and Bulmers stickers in the windows; but has not traded in a very long time despite the licence hanging on until at least 2020. 

In 2024, the former bar counter was donated to the local museum, where it now forms the reception desk

DOP150 Leo's Bar

Not to be confused with the famous Leo's Tavern further North in the county, this trading premises is a small pub but which manages to wedge in live music acts.

DOP151 Inniskeel Co-op

This co-op supermarket and hardware store states it has a pub in it on the outside. And it has a pub licence. But the shop is never open in the evenings, and doesn't have a website, so I haven't been able to figure out what precisely is going on.

It's next door to Leo's, and until checking for licence numbers I didn't realise that Leo's was not the pub in question!

DOP153 Highland Hotel

The aforementioned renovated older hotel - apparently built as a hotel in the 1830s, used as a private guest house by the Marquess of Conyngham thereafter and returned to hotel use in 1882. Bought by a Canadian financier in 2016, he funded the full modernisation, but died in 2019. The hotel has since been sold and is operating normally.

DOP159 The Thatch

Recently reopened after having closed only in January 2024, this is a modern bar and restaurant that wouldn't look particularly out of place in any much bigger urban centre. This has also been called Paddys Bar, An Cluid and Kennedys Bar in recent years.

RetroReview: S2949 The Old Storehouse (Eamonn Dorans)

I was in Eamonn Dorans once.

I may have been 17. Probably 18, but maybe not.

A band consisting of lads I was in school with were playing, and we left after they finished; as it was expensive by 2004/5 Kildare standards 

But a tick is a tick. And the new version does not appeal to me at all.

S2096 Finches

There's another set of pub tickers that always seem to come to bother in pubs that most people wouldn't even consider vaguely rough. So its not that much of a surprise that they don't appear to have gone here at all.

I'm not scared of "rough pubs", most of the ones that people - one set of other pub tickers particularly, it seems - consider "rough" are nothing of the sort; but this is the first pub where someone sort-of warned me about it when I was going in; claiming to recognise me and asking why I'd go to a "pub like the Finches". 

I didn't know who they were, they may recognise me from the very public place I work (a non promiment or public facing job) in; or they may have just realised I wasn't local and thought I needed warning.

The only thing I needed warning about were that the jacks are particularly smelly, and actually make some seating areas a bit unpleasant as the smell comes out. 

Don't bother coming here on a "rough pub" safari - actually, please don't do that anywhere, its ridiculous and someone has already done the video - and maybe it will be different if you're not a physically huge male, going in daylight.

RetroReview: S2747 Conrad Hotel (Alfie Byrnes)

I drank here which the bar was Alfie Byrnes - named after "The Shaking Hand of Dublin", the multi term Lord Mayor and sometimes IPP MP / Independent TD Alfie Byrne. He also has a road named after him that's usually best known for the wars over coach parking on its cycle paths.

This was a Galway Bay Brewery pub when under that name, potentially their largest; and usually also quiet enough to hide away in on busy days in the city centre - just being a tad outside helps.

The bar is no longer GBB, and now seems to be called Lemuels, Lemuel being the first name of Gulliver in Gullivers Travels. 

I already feel like I'm in Lilliput a lot of the time, due to my (increasingly less - late Gen Z are tall) abnormal height; so I don't think I'll bother going back.

S1476 Rory O'Connors

Another pub that was replaced after redevelopment? 

Well, yes, but the redevelopment was a very long time ago. The large 1940s Submarine Bar, formerly Hills Road House, on this site was subsumed in to the Ashleaf Shopping Centre when it was built; and continued to operate as a similarly, if not even more vast venue until the financial crisis, at which time it reduced down to just the bar area - trading as Rory O'Connors

This closed, I believe, at the start of the pandemic; but reopened this years - ruining a nicely ticked off area of the map for me. So I had to head back.

What is still open is a medium sized single area bar; with exceptionally cheap Beamish (fiver).

Some of the rest of the Submarine still sits empty, which other bits have become a gym - an odd conversion that has afflicted a number of other huge pubs like Liz Delaneys (The Blacker) and the upper portion of the former Night Owls in Ranelagh; the ground floor being a Supervalu.

(The latter still features some of the artwork from its brief latter incarnation as Il Mondo; making me wonder if there's any Submarine related stuff left in this one)

RetroReview: S1510 The Patriots Inn

The summer of Outdoor Dining decided for me whether somewhere counted if I only drank outside it - it does; its my blog and my rules. But on recollection, I probably needed to make that decision when doing up the initial "already visited" list; as I never actually drank a pint *inside* the Patriots.

Instead, I drank on the footpath; like thousands of people a year do after attending gigs in Royal Hospital Kilmainham. 

The interior looked nice enough, I think....

1017978 The Traders

Like S2821 Kingswood Lodge, a recent writeup, this is a suburban-pub-with-parking which has reopened after the complete redevelopment of its site with apartments. Although this time, it looks like relatively little has actually gone on top of the pub unit itself.

Another reopened after redevelopment suburban pub. This one reopened in an area I had previously finished ticking, so I have legitimate reason to grumble about the bus trip out pic.twitter.com/6abqlQdl9o

— Cian Duffy (@cian_duffy) July 27, 2024

Indeed, looking at Streetview I'm beginning to wonder if some of the actual core of the pub was retained, as there is no shot where its a completely empty site... and certain features of the pub inside have definitely been salvaged from before, like branded mirrors, doors, older tables and so on. 

And the layout inside is a bit, well, weird too - there's what looks like a door from outside, but has tables across it; and its a bit tight around the bar area. 

Odd layout and questions about just how demolished it was, this is a perfectly normal suburban pub. Formerly themed as "The Colosseum", it is now thankfully just the type of pub you'd expect to have in any similar part of Dublin.

Regardless of whether it was demolished or just built-around, it is clearly possible to not have to entirely eradicate this type of suburban pub; and this would have been a pub desert without it - until the Cuckoos Nest reopens (planned for late 2024) there really is nothing even vaguely nearby.

 

RetroReview: S1308 Kellys Hotel / Bar With No Name

I have been in here a few times, weirdly never at my own behest. Every single time has been meeting up with someone, generally before heading on somewhere else - but I've been early, or they've been running late.

This area of the city wouldn't generally be my sort of thing - as you'd be able to tell from the quite late reviews of 1008192 Drury Buildings and 1007719 Fade Street Social - both visited in odder circumstances too; but The Bar With No Name is fine. I just won't be going back, until next time someone needs to meet me for a gig in the Olympia and is already there, probably.

S2287 Red Cow Inn

Want to drink in a hotel lobby but not a hotel?

Well, you're in luck here. The hotel (S3276 Red Cow Hotel) might actually be closed currently, but this pub in its carpark, with the same owners, is definitely open; and definitely feels like you're still in the hotel lobby. 

Some of this is because this functions as part of the hotel normally - a second eating area, the entrance or side rooms to some function rooms and as part of one of the last remaining hotel nightclub complexes anywhere in Dublin - currently branded as Buzz.

But with the carvery, the hotel signage, the huge windows and the rather odd mix of customers; the main bar area of the Red Cow Inn cannot escape feeling like it is a hotel. And there's rarely a reason to drink in a hotel lobby, unfortunately.

There aren't many pubs nearby, but there's also not many *people* nearby - those currently living in the hotel and the tiny amount who live amongst the industrial units in Ballymount are the only real population bases that aren't closer to another pub. I'm not sure who the crowd here are, but it was still pretty busy.

RetroReview: S0967 River Bar

I visited this pub long enough that you had to make a special effort to find places showing Brighton matches on TV - mid table Championship teams don't get the same coverage that any team at all gets when in the Premier League; and when they do, there's often another game on as well. But the River Bar has lots of areas and more than one satellite box; so I was able to watch it there,

This bar has existed, under one name or another, since O'Connell Bridge House was built in the 1960s; but it effectively replaced McDaid's White House; which stood on this site originally - its closure was covered on the then very new RTÉ in 1962, the licence was transferred to the new premises.

One notable feature of the pub was the Wetherspoons-alike epic (in length) trip to the toilets, albeit rather than through corridors, you pass through the underground section of the bar - which had a latin dancing class on the evening I visited.

It was also one of the only places that was serving Harp in Dublin, prior to its post-2020 relaunch at least.

This pub is run by the Meaghers, who also have a pub directly across the river, and the suburban N1433 Hartstown House; making up one of the smaller pub chains in the city.

EPITR: LEP208 Jimmy Johnnies (O'Donnells Bar)

This substantial premises was once a railway hotel, as Burtonport was the terminus of the Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway. It is still quite an imposing structure for a small village to have:

Pub 4, the old railway hotel, apparently should be open. It isn't. My ferry goes from here anyway so I'll be hanging around waiting regardless pic.twitter.com/TPW6aPZKiE

— Cian Duffy (@cian_duffy) June 18, 2024

(this photo looks quite dark because it was actually incredibly bright, despite the clouds, which was overloading the camera sensor - it just wasn't very warm!) 

But it doesn't have the same effect as when it had the ornate pediment that it once had, as seen when captured in the Lawrence Collection.

The bar and lounge occupy pretty much the entire ground floor, and while I think I can remember a different layout - possibly more snug-like in the lounge - from when I was a kid; it has been recently renovated in part so this may have changed recently enough.

When I turned up, the bar was not actually open; but the owner turned up shortly after; and within an hour was replaced behind the bar by the afternoon shift staff member - presumably he decides whether to bother on quiet days, and it was indeed a very quiet day; with just me and one other customer there during the time he was solo on the bar. That owner is the fourth generation of his family to run this pub; having had it since its first days as a hotel.

The wooden pods visible outside in my photo are seen all across this part of Donegal, a standard addition during the pandemic outdoor service era and possibly subvented by the council or another body. They have stood up quite well to the harsh weather conditions in this area.

S2821 Kingswood Lodge

This is a suburban pub with a carpark that has survived the biggest threat to suburban pubs with a carpark - redevelopment.

It has not survived being redeveloped - far from it. Instead, it now exists on the ground floor of an apartment block. Something so incredibly normal across the world, but something that is exceptionally rare in Ireland, outside of city sites.

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What exists in the new premises is probably - I was never in the old Clocktower, so I'm guessing here - quite different to the old pub; in that its mostly a single big room with no bar/lounge separation. 

Beyond the building, nothing massively stands out here for me - its a very normal big suburban pub. Plenty of people have these pubs as their locals, and they are a critical part of the pub culture of Dublin  - I doubt I'll ever be back here, as I have no reason to; but there's no reason I'd not come back if I was nearby.

August 2024 Licence Update

Revenue have removed the .csv format of the licence update, so this took a while to do and could actually miss some minor changes... but it'll do

New:

1021189 Ruby Molly Hotel, Arran Street East - new hotel opened earlier in 2024

RetroReview: S0336 Johnnie Foxes

This is not the highest pub in Ireland. It is probably the highest pub in Dublin; but it gets away with stating it is "reputed" to be the highest pub whenever the statement can be legally challenged.

The pub is an incredible tourist trap, but I'd still consider it worth a visit - the interior is greebled to a ridiculous extent with proper antiques; there's a lot of archival materials on the walls about celeb visits, and the food I had was pretty decent - although I was not there when it was busy by any means whatsoever. And it was a decade ago.

S3208 Boomers

A decent pub with a terrible name - "boomer" isn't an insult for a generation here like it is in the US, mainly because we didn't have a baby boom at the same time; but we're all aware of it.

I visited the pub on the first day proper - the day after the opening ceremony basically - of the 2024 Olympics; which is apt as the bar has piles of memorabilia relating to their local Olympian, Kenny Egan, who won Silver in 2008. There's photos, gloves, and something that at first glance looks like a medal; but is not - its bronze-coloured, for starters. 

I should probably have asked the barman if he knew what it was, and if the gloves were from the actual Olympics fights come to think of it.

This is a big pub, with a large outdoor area and also a large lounge; neither of which I headed in to. I'm never a fan of betting machines in pubs, but I can easily ignore them in somewhere with a decent atmosphere and good staff like there were here.

Something interesting to me is that the pubs extremely neglected Twitter page has a header photo featuring some of the great artwork on old Trouble Brewing bottles - I like their current can artwork too; but miss the old designs - and the naming scheme that implied various types of trouble too.

Revisited pubs July 2024

(note: I did not revisit any pubs in June, or more accurately, did not drink in any - I ate in 1003309 Hogs & Heifers though)

S0115 The Bankers - a rapid reoccurance here - I had to pick a (sonically) quiet-ish, city centre pub to meet someone in

S0106 Tapped - for the first time since its rebrand, albeit I was actually in Hartys, for the first time since its own rebrand. The roof leaked.

N0097 Underdog - days late for its 7th birthday

(I also revisited a pub in The Rosses, but I'm not going to make that summer series take over every regular feature)

RetroReview: S0237 Kodiak

This is going to be the most useless RetroReview ever; as not only was it a different operator and name - Copan - when I visited, I had a single pint early in the evening; in what was then very much a night venue.

Like a few other of the pre-2016 premises that are quite different to my usuals; I visited this one while doing the tech operations for an outside broadcast here, in late 2013. This was from 7-9, so I arrived at about 5:30 and had dinner and a pint before setup; and barely left the area around the front door of the pub the entire time

I really need to revisit, but as yet, haven't