Every Pub In Celbridge

It should be clear that I've mostly run out of topics here, having finished off "normal" pubs in August 2025 and only having new openings, reopenings and edge-case mop-ups left to actually visit.

So I need to find something else to do. I actually live in Kildare, and have done so for this entire time; but Every Pub In Kildare would need a driver and some exceptionally long trips to the South of the county. It's never going to happen.

But I may as well sweep up the towns around me. I had already drunk in *some* of the pubs in Kildare, and I revisit one on this trip just to confirm what I thought about it, but one other previously visited place did not need another so quickly. 

So here are the pubs in Celbridge, closest to Dublin to furthest:

KDP0077 McNamees Abbey Lodge

Really worryingly quiet, in the bar at least, with a small crowd in intently watching the Liverpool game. I assume it gets busier at other times. This pub has a large car park, which used to be leased to the council; and has used this to develop a (food) cafe and coffee shop business since the pandemic. But the bar itself might need a bit of work - in particular, the door to the street is shut up and you need to enter through the car park. Or maybe it's going just as well as they want

KDP0175 Village Inn

I have eaten in, or picked up takeout from the restaurant upstairs here (an absolutely fantastic Indian, formerly located above the old Quinnsworth - I've been going there that long) so many times I couldn't even try to count. But I've never actually gone in downstairs before today.

The lounge was rammed. The bar was little better, but I found a table which had limited view of either the racing or football screens - hence why nobody was sitting there. 

KDP0093 O'Connors / Kildrought Lounge

I had been to O'Connors before, in 2005 before going to see a school friends band play in The Mill across the road. 

I had also been to the Kildrought Lounge before, many times in fact, as a common location for fundraisers and other events. The function room upstairs here also performs as a small theatre, used by the local Insight amateur theatre group.

What I wanted to do was confirm that the small O'Connors, on the main street and in a traditional building, actually linked through to the modern Kildrought on the side street behind it. 

They do.

O'Connors is a nice, small, and fairly cheap old fashioned pub; and at least last time I visited, the Kildrought is a fairly standard big suburban pub.

The name comes from a different anglicisation / corruption of the original Irish name of Celbridge - Cill Droichead - than is accepted on.

KDP0161 Castletown Inn / Speaker Bar

Another twin setup with the bar having its own distinct name, but in this case, the Speaker Bar is beside the Castletown Inn rather than in front of it.

I have had food in the Castletown Inn before, but not drunk there. I headed in to the Speaker, rather than the main section and had a decent quiet pint here.

The bar name here references the same person as S2493 The Speaker Connolly in Tallaght, a rare enough case in my remit of two completely distinct pubs being named after the same person.

KDP0128 McMahons 

A branch, kinda, of one of my local pubs in Maynooth - or are they all branches of the NYC chain that provided the money to set up the Kildare pubs? Difficult to say.

This is the former Celbridge House and latterly Henry Grattan - Celbridge loves pubs named after 18th Century MPs - pub, an exceptionally UK style premises; being an octagonal-ish premises in a housing estate.

I was here recently enough - winning a fundraiser table quiz for the Catherine Connolly election campaign - that I didn't bother revisiting today. I'm not a fan, I prefer the "original" Maynooth pub. 

Closed premises:

Feehans / The Riverside / The Whistling Pig / The Duck / The Mucky Duck 

The pub with a million names... I've eaten here, a lot actually - they did a damn good breakfast during the Riverside and Feehans era - but I can't recall drinking here. Currently for let.

Celbridge Manor Hotel / Setanta Hotel

I've drunk here. It isn't open.