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.

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.

EPITR: LEP073 McCaffertys, Dungloe

There aren't all that many pubs in The Rosses; but as two of them are operated by the one chain, and they also have one in Dublin; I need to put the town name in the title to clarify it.

This is a large pub, fitted out to a very high standard, and you may end up paying for that depending on what you buy - a €6 pint is exceptionally expensive for Dungloe; but I was drinking a local APA rather than my usual for ticking Smithwicks, which I imagine is a bit cheaper.

They also do food here, which most of the other pubs in the town don't.

EPITR: LEP079 Patrick Johnny Sallys

This is the first individual writeup for my summer/holiday fill-in series of Every Pub In The Rosses.

Patrick Johnny Sallys was not open on the day I attempted to knock off every pub in Dungloe; but opened again shortly afterwards. It had not opened at any point during the restricted opening periods during the pandemic - it does not do food, and although it does have a very nice deck area at the back, Donegal weather is rather against outdoor drinking outside of peak summer!

This is a nice pub, semi recently extensively renovated - there are photos of the premises before and during the renovation in the toilet lobby - and filled with historical artifacts. One display case contains the log book of the local midwife during the 1940s, another various receipts from the local co-op for hardware, and a further display had a programme for the towns former Ritz Cinema (a Donegal-wide chain in the 50s and 60s), the site of which is now partially used by The Bridge Inn which was visited in the previous attempt to cover the town.

Had it been slightly warmer I might have stayed a bit longer here, out on the deck rather than inside; but this was not a warm June in Donegal and I also needed food, so on to the next one...

Many Of The Pubs In... Tullamore

Unlike my two previous "travelogues" of sorts, I was never going to get close to full completion in a day. Tullamore has a population of ~15k, but the pub to population density is much higher in many provincial towns - particularly with the large GAA stadium bringing in visitors and the hospital providing significant employment.

A quick check of the licence register shows 21 pubs and 2 hotel public bars in Tullamore, but this is not always a guarantee that there aren't either more currently unlisted, or some listed but not open. I didn't even complete half of these, albeit I'm sure it was more than half of those open. One of these licences is the distillery (1018528), and another is the former, closed, distillery heritage centre (1014867) - which I'd actually been to anyway.

First pub up was TUP448 Eugene Kellys, a relatively small and quite traditional pub sitting beside the Grand Canal. With no TVs in the lounge, relatively low lighting and significant greebling, you get more than slight feelings of N0221 The Glimmerman in Dublin, albeit somewhat smaller, and without a smoking area of the same scale. The pub was very quiet when we went in, but picked up significantly with fans attending the Louth vs Kildare match in O'Connor Park nearby - something that would provide a large customer base for the next number of pubs.

A very short walk down the road to TUP447 The Goalpost found the first of a number of pubs that have clearly had quite a bit of cash spent on them recently. Small enough inside, but with a vast covered and heated outdoor area featuring a second bar, toilets and TVs, this place was quite full with match attendees but still had plenty of available seats outside. The outdoor area looked to have been rebuilt in the last year or so, with sockets and USB chargers at most tables

A few doors down, TUP446 Digans provided much of the same, but bigger - a larger bar comes with an even larger outdoor area - this one maybe prepped a bit more for locals trade than the matchday traffic. A pizza oven and DJ box were part of the fittings out here. This somehow feels like my local in Maynooth (O'Neills) to me, even though it has more indoor space and a less cohesive outdoor area (and a better drinks selection - it was notable that nearly everywhere sold the same, limited beer collection with Moretti or possibly Madri as the most interesting tap)

It was getting towards the match start time, making it a good time to try find a quieter pub. The walk to the next pub brought us past the first obviously closed pubs, The Hideout - which seems to have maybe shut in 2016 and is not currently on the licence register; and TUP425 Annie Kellys which seems to have closed after 2018. Both were for sale in recent times.

However, there is still a pub open on the street - TUP514 Wrafters Old Habour Bar. Although it doesn't actually look up from the street - only a side door was open, and the internal layout is... strange to say the least. Another odd feature was a CRT TV showing the match - with only the green and blue electron guns still working. There is something particularly surreal seeing a team that play in red and white playing a team that play in just white, on a TV with no red. 

The fifth pub was the one I have least interest in going back to - albeit its still not an obviously bad pub. A sports bar, TUP470 Fergies seems to actually be named after a person and not the former Man United manager; but there is plenty of Man United stuff inside so I may be wrong. There is also some greebling that relates to the Irish Brigade in the Spanish Civil War... I don't usually judge any political stuff up in pubs, but I don't think there's any way to see O'Duffys "efforts" in Spain as having been anything but on the wrong side of history. A large pub, there are signs up relating to its Black & White Pub Awards win in 2003 and I suspect that may be roughly when it opened. Of the pubs we visited, this was probably the one most in need of investment - and yet was still in quite good nick. 

Food was now obtained, not in a pub.

Another closed pub was now passed on the way to the next boozer - The Hole In The Wall. This has been up for sale for years it seems. 

TUP422 Joe Lees was our next pub, a Victorian pub - albeit without as much of a Victorian interior as a Dublin drinker might expect. The match was now over and some people were starting to return back to the pubs afterwards - and most were tapped up for the local GAA club lottery by one of the barmen. We felt somewhere left out not to be asked!

TUP423, the Newtown Bar was nearby and is similar to the Goalpost and Digans from early - a relatively long pub with a modern smoking area out the back and which seems to have had quite a bit spent on it in recent years. There weren't quite as many match attendees here, although the barman did notice my Kildare non-accent and ask if I had been at it. Apparently this was owned by D. E. Williams, e.g. Tullamore Dew, at some point, according to an extensive local history of Tullamores pubs.

This street featured another closed pub - TUP424 Gallaghers Manor, which was also recently up for sale with eight apartments above. This has a recent-ish name change on the licence file so may be about to reopen.

TUP434 The Brewery Tap back on High Street was populated with a significant amount of GAA players, rather than fans this time, all in their finery. The annual dinner dance was on (I believe in TUP488 the Bridge Hotel) and this appeared to be the main pre-drinks, but they cleared out quite quickly. The pub name does relate to having been a Brewery Tap, for Egans, the long defunct local brewery who also had a distillery - but not the local D. E Williams distillery that is much better known.. This brand has been brought back in recent years, albeit using sourced whiskey. Interestingly, this was the only pub where I saw any non-macro products on tap - a single Wicklow Wolf tap - which is suitable for its history connected to an independent brewery.

The final pub of what had been a very long day was 1014867 The Phoenix, which seems to have only opened in 2018. Fitted out to a very Southside Dublin standard, this is a late bar and presumably targets the younger population of the town. Multiple wines on tap

This wouldn't have been the final pub, except there was a pay in event at TUP436 Hugh Lynchs that we decided not to bother paying in for. I'll be back to complete the town at some stage anyway.

Every Pub In... Arranmore

Welcome to the second in a rare series where I try to document all the pubs somewhere in a single day. Having done (or failed to do, looking at it another way) Dungloe a few weeks ago when storms affected my weekend; this time I drove up rather than face Dublin Airport's security queues. And while driving and pub bagging are incompatible, I was able to park up and do this the next day - and drive home two days later!

Arranmore currently has six licenced premises. I have now drunk in all of them, but I can't document all in this post.

The first problematic premises is LEP015 Killeens Hotel - up for sale for some years, it is not currently trading. I last drank here in ~2016. If anyone wants to run a 24 bed hotel, please study the sale (or rent, as I now notice) documents. 

The second problematic premises is LEP431 Smugglers Nite Club. I also last drank here in ~2016, and would have gone back - except it rarely opens before midnight. There is a conventional bar (the Seaview Bar) attached to the club, but it has not opened regularly for decades (as far as I'm aware, but I have been in it); and I wasn't up for turning an afternoons drinking in to an exceptionally late night. 

This leaves me with four operating premises. When I was a kid, there was a seventh pub - Pallys - but it closed for good in 2002. There was another pub in the 60s/70s - Proctors - in the "factory" - a Gaeltarra Eireann facility in a former dance hall which still exists now as the community centre, sans licence.

[not sure] Neilys

My local up here. My Grandads local til he stopped being able to go to the pub (in ~2005). In the middle of the island, there was an adjoining shop here until Summer 2021 and this was where my interactions with it as a kid were. Neilys now manages to succesfully ride the line between being a locals pub most of the year, and the coolest place on the island when there's lots of tourists and holiday home owners in during the summer - cocktails, craft beer and a pizza van in summer give way to pints and football on Sky in the winter. I started and ended the days trip here - being closest to my house and on the way to and from anywhere else. 

Neilys appears on the licence registers as LEO002 - an off-licence code, and recorded as a spirits off licence; and I've never seen its pub licence recorded, but a pub it absolutely is so this is likely a Revenue issue - some Dublin pubs have been unlisted for years. Neilys is the most modern looking and feeling of any of the pubs and worth the walk in to the middle of the island.

1009262 Phil Bans 

The only pub I hadn't yet drunk in, despite often being in it as a kid - and always using its shop. Right on the beach near the ferry, I suspect that Phils gets the bulk of the lazier tourists, and is a decent pub despite never having fallen to my drinking patterns before. A larger front room is somewhat divided off from a back room that often matches the surface of the sun in air temperature - due to a turf fire - which has waves almost lapping against its windows at spring tides. Phil Bans shop fed my Irn Bru and McDaids Banana consumption as a child - I only took to Football Special as a teenager. 

For whatever historical reason, like Neilys the shop has its own spirits only off-licence with the fantastic licence number of LEO001 - Letterkenny court area, off-licence, licence number one

LEP014 The Glen Hotel

Paging Francis Brennan....   After nearly a century operating as a hotel, there is a need for significant investment in facilities and services here. Unbeatable beer garden when the weather suits, though.

LEP013 Earlys Pier Bar

The place that gave Daniel O'Donnell his start, and the only pub that consistently has food available all year (as of the time of posting this). We got a decent dinner here; and left just as a huge hen night arrived for theirs - thankfully. Jerry Early is very active in promoting the island for tourism; and supporting the remaining commercial fishermen, so this is the pub that most media people end up going to. With a small front bar and a large performance space out back, this pub is least like the others - which are all really single room affairs, albeit maybe big rooms (Neilys) or with a divider nearly splitting them (Phil Bans). Earlys has been modernised significantly in recent years, albeit not the level of Neilys

Every Pub in... Dungloe

Dungloe, Co. Donegal - Population 1164 in 2016 - is one of those towns that has - or had, really - A Lot Of Pubs. During my lifetime, I believe the peak was 12. I spent last weekend up there, and decided to try visit as many of them as I could, but closures and weather intervened significantly, with 5/6 being all I was able to do

Starting from the South end of the town, there are/were:

LEP079 (I think...) Patrick Johnny Sally - this was open pre-Lockdown but I'm not sure if it has opened since. 
LEP078 The Midway
LEP077 Teach Owenie Bán
The Central Bar - closed for quite some time
(can't find a number) Mulherns Corner Bar
LEP083 Beedys Bar - open recently, for sale.
Sweeneys Hotel - long closed and derelict; but currently under redevelopment
1006226 The Bridge Inn - rebuilt from near dereliction in 2011
LEP084 Atlantic Bar - currently closed and for rent according to signs in window
LEP073 McCaffertys (The Bayview until recently)
Braeside House / Forkers - closed for quite some time
LEP086 Waterfront Hotel (formerly Ostan na Rossan)

Expecting to get a few pubs in before dinner in the hotel, and a few after, I started at the furthest away point, with a pint in The Midway - a small guesthouse with a bar and restaurant. I can't actually remember much that stands out here, which is not a bad thing,

Crossing the road to Teach Owenie Bán brought us to the most traditional/rural of the pubs, albeit one with two pool tables and a number of fruit machines out the back. Signage outside advertises jiving classes, and signage both outside and in makes it clear this pubs football allegiances - to Liverpool. The Rosses is far less of a GAA-supporting area than most of rural Ireland, although their is still support for the GAA and an established club in Dungloe, so seeing this is not that unexpected.

The next open pub is Mulhern's Corner Bar, recently enough refurbished in to a very comfortable space. There is more obvious football club support here, this time for Celtic; 

The most recent "addition" to Dungloes bars - in that the building was nearly entirely replaced in early 2010s - is the Bridge Inn. There was a very run down pub of this name on this site before, with a "niteclub" in the basement, but what's there now is a very modern premises similar to any modern or modernised pub in any urban area. 

What is interesting is that all four of these premises, from the very traditional to the very modern, charged exactly the same prices. Which are low, by Dublin standards - 4.60 for a lager and 4.40 for a Smithwicks.

It was time to get out of the rain and get ready for dinner at this stage, so back to the Waterfront.

The hotel pricing was also relatively low by Dublin standards, albeit not quite as low. Bottled Kinnegar beers were 5.10, and it was these I finished my night with - as extremely squally weather had closed in, and there was zero chance that I was going to walk down to McCaffertys. I'll have to return to actually close off the town as "done", but I'd expect at least a few more premises to be open for the Summer tourist season anyway (Beedys, Sweeneys as soon as its ready, Patrick Johnny Sallys)

London Calling

There's still a decent backlog of Dublin posts to be put up, but a potential prime weekend of pub visiting was replaced by a visit to Wembley instead last weekend. But London has pubs too!

Admittedly, it has a hell of a lot less pubs than it had before - about 30% have closed since 2002 with some boroughs losing 50% but there are still over three times as many as in all of County Dublin - and I suspect that a decent number in Dublin would not be covered by the methodology used to decide what is a pub for those official stats (theatres, aerodrome licences and so on).

First pub for me was a quaint Victorian boozer down the road from my hotel - The Rose in Vauxhall. The two bouncers outside on a quiet enough Friday evening pub me off slightly, but in its quieter daytime form on Saturday afternoon, it provided a decent if phenomenally expensive pint of Beavertown Gamma Ray while giving me somewhere to search for a more interesting pub. This was located down the road, but first I needed something from my hotel room and decided to take a look at its bar

Chino Latino provided a cabaret singer and pianist - at 1pm - and has only two taps, both from Curious Brewing, and both priced at an eye-watering level of nearly £7 a pint after the 'service charge' has been added. The hotel next door featured a slightly awkardly named bar, but I decided that hotel bars were probably not worth bothering with - and anyway, I'd already decided where to go next.

Mother Kelly's Taproom & Bottle Shop in a railway arch on the way towards Vauxhall station has over 30 taps and a significant bottled/canned range to pick from. The range of choice here approaches the unwieldy almost but there should be something for everyone.

The next and final drinking location for the day was the lower concourse of Wembley, where the choices were Budweiser or cask Hobgoblin, the latter of which was extensively spilled over me when someone bumped in to me...


The next day, with some hours to kill, I decided to experience a Samuel Smith's pub, due to the reputation of their owner having preceded them to such an extent. On my way there, I passed this humorously named pub which I decided not to go in to!

The pub in question was the Windsor Castle, with a fine - and completely fake - Victorian interior. It was refurbished and renamed to its original name about 8 years ago. It has a subset of the Samuel Smiths beer range on offer - three lagers, the India Ale, stout and one of the Bitters - but no Mild which is what I was hoping to try as a style that doesn't really get to Ireland very often.

Beers ranged from very cheap for central London (the Bitter) to still reasonable (the India Ale), and the food was acceptably priced and of acceptable quality. Contrary to very recent media reports, phones and tablets weren't banned as even some of the staff were using them!

After finishing eating, I decided to head closer to the airport for my next pint - although I still had a vast amount of time to kill. So the relatively new Brewdog Canary Wharf was next up. This is in a low building beside vastly taller buildings and as such gives an impression of what the new Dublin branch is likely to be like, except for the brewkit in Dublin. The bar is card-only (well, I presume phone pay apps work too) and offers a beer - Hop Exchange - the price of which is index-linked to the FTSE - presumably safe in the knowledge that any deep drops will reduce the spending power of the local workers anyway!

My final beer of the day was a pint of something so forgettable that I have forgotten it, at The City Bar in London City Airport. This was picked as it was the only one with a free seat in it!