Thirst For Freedom Free Zoom Lecture, March 24th 2021

On Wednesday March 24th @ 8pm join Trasna na Tire and historian Eddie Bohan as he journey's through his new book 'Thirst For Freedom'. This is the story of the role of pubs, publicans and their staff in the role of Irish independence. Without the Pubs of Ireland, we could still be part of the British Empire. 

The lecture is free via zoom, sign up HERE

Signed copies of the book 'Thirst For Freedom' are available HERE

The Battle of Bass Ale

The Battle of Bass

Many moons ago when I was a bar manager, the pub I worked in had been renovated and a well-known Dublin politician was to perform the opening ceremony but the only stipulation was that I had to have a pint of Bass for him, a product that at that time was not a great seller and once the opening was performed within a week the tap had been removed. There had been a sea change in Irish politics after the battles of the civil war and Eamon DeValera had taken power in March 1932 but despite his movement away from the IRA, including naming his new party Fianna Fail, the IRA remained in the shadows. The organisation manifested itself under different guises including in November 1932 as the ‘Boycott British Goods League’. The Leagues campaign was aimed at one particular company, the British ale brewery Bass.

Bass had already been subject of an earlier boycott in Ireland from 1918 to 1924 as it was a huge seller in Ireland, probably second only to Guinness with a bottle costing the customer 8d and a draught Bass between 10d and a schilling. Bass was targeted because one of its directors was Colonel John Gretton, who was in 1932 a Conservative Party MP and an Olympic gold medallist in sailing, was seen to side with the Unionists in Ulster and during the conscription crisis he was quoted as saying ‘send every young Irishman to Flanders, then the Irish race will be exterminated’.  The Boycotters also advised that there were plenty of alternative Irish made Ales for the consumers.

In Dublin the company, Bass, Radcliffe, Gretton and Company imported their casks on ships to the Liffey Quays and then moved them by horse and dray to a warehouse they maintained on Moore Lane. From there the drays would deliver to pubs in the inner city, by truck to Leinster and by train to the rest of Ireland. In November 1932 came the first reports of draymen being attacked and their casks of Bass emptied into the gutter began to emerge.

In December especially in Dublin, publicans were visited by armed men and told that they had seven days to get rid of their Bass stock or face some serious consequences, some threatened with being burned out of business. The problem for publicans was that Bass ale needed to mature in stock before being served and with the run up to Christmas publicans carried a lot of Bass stock. The Minister for Defence Fianna Fail man and War of Independence veteran Frank Aiken said when questioned in the Dail by TD’s allied to the Licensed Vintners Association said that there seemed to be ‘concerted activity amongst members of the Irish Republican Army and kindred terrorist organisations’.  The ‘Army Comrades Association’ known as The White Army made up of veteran IRA men who had sided with the Treaty forces at a meeting in the Mansion House said that they were willing and able to assist the publicans in the protection of their businesses from what they described as ‘a bunch of hooligans’.

On December 14^th there was an armed raid on the Bass warehouse at Lavitt’s Quay in Cork with all the stock destroyed. Casks were emptied and bottles smashed although it was reported over the festive period that bottles of stolen Bass was seized in a pro-IRA shebeen near Macroom. The next day on Dublin’s north quays a dray moving stock from the port warehouse to Moore Lane was attacked and twenty casks emptied onto the streets. On the 20^th, sixteen men from the ‘White Army’ escorted a convoy of drays from the Quays to Moore Lane which itself was now protected by armed guards.

The campaign in early 1933 consisted mainly of attacking Bass signage and advertising inside and outside pubs and in some cases especially in rural areas, hammers were used to smash ads in pubs where only a barmaid was on duty. The boycott and intimidation campaign intensified once again towards the end of the year. In August there were attacks on pubs in Dublin, Killarney, Midleton and Waterford, with masked men entering the pub and ordering the publican to cease buying or selling Bass and destroying the Bass stock on the premises. In September there were more attacks in Dublin stretching from Sandymount to Pimplico Merrion Row to Patrick Street and Henry Street to Stoneybatter. Across the country there were attacks in Ballinrobe, Dun Laoghaire, Clonmel, Navan and Tramore. Armed Gardai were protecting trains as they travelled across the country. Thirty-five pubs were visited in Monaghan on one night by a large group of armed and masked men.

Some of those arrested were jailed for their offences and then in Mountjoy Jail they went on a failed Hunger Strike in an attempt to be released. The attacks trailed off, in October there was just one reported attack in Clare and in November only Tramore suffered the intimidation from the Boycott movement. Pressure from the DeValera Government had reduced the numbers involved and the fact that courts were not showing any leniency, the campaign against Bass ended.  

Sandymount Green Through History

The story of Sandymount begins with an area known as Scallet Hill in the middle ages. The area then was a swampy marsh land surrounded by the Irish Sea on one side and the unbridled River Dodder on the other side. In the late 1700’s Lord Fitzwilliam built an embankment to hold back the sea from Merrion to Sandymount. The course of the Dodder was regulated and the land dried enough to begin building houses. The area was renamed Brickfield and from the 1820’s onwards the development of Sandymount continued apace and is still evolving even today.

The centre piece of Sandymount is the Green. A triangle of recreational green space that was opened to the public in 1900 after Lord Pembroke donated the waste ground hoping that a nice park would allow him to charge higher rents for the many properties he owned in the area. In 1904 an ornate water fountain was erected as a centre piece but it has long since disappeared although the drinking fonts that were also put in can still be seen today.

The statue sculpted by Arthur Power in the Green is that of the great poet William Butler Yeats. His family at one time lived in the Castle at one end of the Green. Yeats himself was born on June 13^th 1865 on Sandymount Avenue. Yeats would be romantically involved with Maud Gonne and won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He passed away in 1939 in Paris France but it was not until September 1948 before his body was repatriated to Sligo and upon his headstone are the lines,

                        Cast a Cold Eye

                        On Life, on Death,

                        Horseman pass by.

The first recorded licensed premises on the Green was in 1834 and a hotel and tavern owned by Anne Tunstall. In 1850 Martin D’Arcy operated a public house at Number 5 Sandymount Green also known as ‘Tippers’.

The advertisement for the sale of White’s notes that Number One had the lease as a pub granted to it on September 29^th 1849.

  

In 1870 there were three public houses on the Green. Apart from D’Arcy’s there was Fox and Hanrahan’s and Peter Kenny’s. Michael Hanrahan was the first man to have a pub located at Number One Sandymount Green and named it the Sandymount Tavern. With his partner Fox they also had a pub located at 72 Upper Dorset Street on Dublin’s North side.

In 1875 Charles McCabe arrived in the Village with his brother Richard who opened a grocer’s shop next door which was numbered as 1a.

In 1880 Daniel Burke became the publican at Number One Sandymount Green. This was one of four pubs he owned in the city. He was also operating on Baggot Street, 2-3 South King Street near where the Gaeity Theatre stands today and at Number 4 Ballsbridge near where Crowe’s Public House now stands.

Much of Burke’s success was probably due to the arrival of the tram system that connected the village with the city centre. Sandymount became a popular tourist attraction with it beaches, open spaces and off course fine public houses.

In the early 1870’s tram tracks were laid from the city centre along Mount Street and through Bath Avenue and onto Sandymount village for a horse drawn tram service that connected the Martello Tower on the Strand Road with Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street. The service began on October 1^st 1872. In 1872 the service then began at Gilford Road where horse stables and garages were built. The journey with a two horse tram would travel from the Tower via the Green, Tritonville Road and down London Bridge Road until they passed beneath the railway bridge where a stable hand would be on duty with two extra horses to pull the tram up onto Northumberland Road and then return to Bath Avenue to await the next tram.

On January 14^th 1901, the horse was replaced with electricity on William Murphy’s Dublin United Tram Company route. It was one of the few routes served by a single deck tram known as a ‘bogeycar’ due to the low bridge on Bath Avenue.

In those days the routes were not numbered but name plates at the front of the tram indicated its destinations and in order to assist those many who were illiterate at the time in Dublin a green half crescent indicated that it was the tram required for any one travelling the route from Sandymount to the city centre.

The tram service ceased on the route on 31^st July 1932. For many years Coras Iompair Eireann, the forerunner of Dublin Bus operated the number 52 bus, a single deck bus that became a one man operation and ran from Lakelands School to Hawkins Street. The number 52 which was then used to service University College Dublin was removed from the route in 1998

Today the Dublin Bus routes Number Two from Parnell Square to the Green and the Number Three from Whitehall to UCD through Sandymount serve as the quickest way to find your creamy pint in Ryan’s. The Number Eighteen arrives at its terminus on the Green from Palmerstown. The DART stations at Lansdowne Road and Sandymount are only minutes away.

In 1890 John Butler a young publican arrived to serve the pints to the growing and affluent suburb. John Butler was a native of Annefield County Cork and died January 18^th 1890 just thirty three years old. He is buried in New Drom Cemetery, County Tipperary with a headstone erected by his sons Lawrence and Thomas. Thomas ran a pub at 18 Camden Street where Anseo is presently located. Thomas died two years after his father on March 4^th 1892 while Lawrence died March 31^st 1904 aged seventy three. Following the death of Thomas the pub was put up for sale.

In 1893 Patrick S Fleming arrived. Fleming saw in the new century and perhaps he was standing at his door when Leopold Bloom passed through Sandymount on June 16^th 1904. Bloom’s exploits were magically recounted in James Joyce’s work ‘Ulysess’

Then there was the exciting events surrounding the Easter Rising in 1916. No doubt many of the Irish Volunteers frequented his premises as they used the Sandymount Castle grounds as a training area under their local commander John McBride.

The 1911 Census lists the occupants of Number One Sandymount Green as

Patrick Fleming, 50, Roman Catholic born in Co Limerick and married for 17 years

Kate Fleming, 48, Wife Roman Catholic born in Co Tipperary mother of 4 Children

Mary Fleming, 15 Daughter Roman Catholic born in Co Dublin

Thomas Fleming, 14 Son Roman Catholic born in Co Dublin                          

Francis Fleming, 13 Son Roman Catholic born in Co Dublin

Florence Fleming, 11 Daughter Roman Catholic born in Co Dublin

Patrick McEvoy, 28 Boarder Roman Catholic born in Co Dublin Barman

Edward O'Grady, 26 Boarder Roman Catholic born in Queen's County Barman

John Hughes, 24 Boarder Roman Catholic born Co Roscommon Barman

James Cullen, 23 Boarder Roman Catholic born in Co Kildare Barman

James Hennessy, 18 Boarder Roman Catholic born in Co Tipperary Barman

Alfred Coffey, 18 Boarder Roman Catholic born in Co Meath Barman 

Margaret Connelly, 30 Servant Roman Catholic born in Co Wexford Domestic Servant

The Irish National Census of ten years earlier noted that Fleming’s staff were

Patrick Hedigan aged 26 born in County Limerick

Daniel O’Connell aged 26 from County Limerick

Gerald Barry aged 23 born in County Limerick

William Lawlor aged 18 from County Tipperary

Phillip Ryan aged 17 from County Tipperary

In 1920 Fleming’s friend and publican across the road Sylvester White bought the premises. White had been the landlord in what is today O’Reilly’s on Seafort Avenue and sold to the O’Reilly family arrived in 1922. In the Poor Law Elections the two men are noted as the proposer and second of George Bardon of Prospect Place. Sylvester then forty three years old was ably assisted by his older brother Denis.

In 1925 Joseph Ryan bought the pub and traded successfully through ‘The Emergency’, the Irish term for the Second World War. During the war years 1939-1945 the local air raid siren was located on the roof of the pub. Kevin Mullan remembered the night it sounded in earnest when German bombers flew over Dublin on May 31^st 1941 and dropped their deadly bomb load on the North Strand killing twenty eight people and destroying over three hundred houses.

In 1958 through the estate agency Morrissey’s, the pub was sold to Mary Heelan. In 1974 the same agency sold the pub for £172,000 and renamed ‘Fagan’s’.

In 1985 it became known as The Sandymount House and attached was the Le Detour Restaurant and the offices of Diamond Windows Limited. The pub was bought by well known Tipperary born Dublin publican Gus Ryan. In 2008 Gus retired from the business and his son Vincent and his wife Elizabeth became the publicans.

Today Ryan’s on Sandymount Green is a vibrant pub at the heart of the village. 

The Wren…….

If you have never heard of the ‘wren boys’ on St Stephen’s Day in Sandymount, where have you been?

The Wran - The Wran - the king of all birds
On Saint Stephen's Day was caught in the furze
Although he is little his family is great
Come out your honour and give us a trate

Hurrah me boys hurrah

The origins of the Wren Day are based on pagan legend and its true beginnings lost in the fog of history. In modern times, the Wren Boys descend on Sandymount Green on St Stephen’s morning to celebrate and enjoy the festive season. The Guinness Gig Rig, a mobile stage, is on hand to let hundred of performers play and dance to Irish traditional tunes and maybe to give the few bars of a song.

The tradition is marked with those involved dressing up in masks and straw hats and as colourful pieces of clothing as you have in your wardrobe. If you are in the crowd you are known as a mummur. In rural parts of Ireland, the children dress up and go from pub to pub entertaining the customers with music and dance and earning some pocket money along the way. Once the festivities on stage in Sandymount reach there conclusion perhaps on a cold December morn its time to repair to the warm comfort of Ryan’s for a few hot whiskeys and the sharing of the Christmas spirit.

The Good, The Bad and The …….

The Four Corners of Hell

THE FOURS CORNERS OF HELL, DUBLIN

In 2002, The Woods Band released a critically acclaimed album called ‘The Four Corners of Hell’. The title comes from the local name for the junction of Kevin Street, Clanbrassil Street and Patrick Street. It was so named as at one time there was a pub on each of the four corners of that intersection. In fact in 1960, you could start a journey at Harold’s Cross Bridge and walk the mile to Christchurch Cathedral and visit nineteen pubs. If you walked the same ‘Olden Mile’ today the people who preach responsibility in alcohol would be delighted as only five pubs would be entered.

The oldest licence is that belonging to the presently closed Man of Achill that dates back to 1760 or as it was known then as ‘Ye Olde Grinding Young’.  Many great bar names have disappeared over the years since1960, The Bunch of Grapes, Larkin’s, Nash’s, Biddy Mulligan’s and the Tap.

The Four Corners of Hell were Quinn’s at Clanbrassil Street and The Coombe, Kenny’s  on the corner of  Patrick Street and the Coombe, Lowe’s on the corner of Patrick Street and Kevin Street and O’Bierne’s on the opposite corner. Many of the pubs were demolished to make way for progress when in the nineties Clanbrassil Street, named after James Hamilton, Earl of Clanbrassil, was widened to cope with growing volumes of traffic.

One of Dublin’s major tourist areas is around St. Patrick’s and Christchurch Cathedrals and the terminus of the Viking Splash Tours. Patrick Street in 1960 boasted six pubs now there is none. In 1960 J.A. Maguire’s, The Tap was located at 12-13 Patrick Street on the corner of Dillon Place. Number 21was Michael Ryan’s on the corner of Hanover Lane. Number 25 was A. Brennan’s later known as Birchall’s between Hanover Lane and Dean Street while at 36 was  T. McDonalds and finally down to the Corner of Hell with Kenny’s (Once known as Pat McManus’s) facing Lowe’s the last pub to disappear in 2005 when then called Nash’s and owned by the famous English Channel swimmer Pat Nash it was demolished.

Patrick Street is not the only street in the area to see all its pubs disappear. Bride Street in 1960 had John Corry’s at Number 33, The Sinnott Brothers and 85, the Napper Tandy. P. McColgan’s, Mrs O’Bierne’s and Thomas Kenny’s pub at the corner of Golden Lane all now demolished and banished from the landscape. No smoking ban will affect them.

With Farrell’s pub currently closed, New Street is also devoid of pubs when it once boasted The White Horse Bar, the New Inn and O’Bierne’s on Hells Corner.

1960                                                    2005   

Upper Clanbrassil Street

No. 1 Patrick Doyle                             Leonard’s Corner Café

            (Once Known as Christy Carr’s)

No 29 Cyril McDermott                       McKenna’s

            (Once known as The Fiddlers Green)

No. 30 The Poplars                              CLOSED

No. 35 Carroll Brothers                        The Harold House

Lower Clanbrassil Street      

No. 30 William J Barrett                       GONE

No. 56 Thomas Keogh                        The 57 Headline

No. 67 T MacDonagh’s                       GONE

            (Also known as Biddy Mulligan’s & Pearse Bar.)

No. 91 J Fitzpatrick                              GONE

            (Once known as The Bunch of Grapes)

No. 108Larkin Brothers                       GONE

No. 116                                               McAuleys

New Street    

                                                            No. 35 James Kavanagh                       Farrell’s

                                                                        (Once known as Donlon’s)

                                                            No. 45 Pat McAuleys                           GONE

                                                                        (Once known as The White Horse Bar)

                                                            No. 65 The New Inn                            GONE

                                                            No. 1   O’Bierne’s                               GONE

Patrick Street                                    

No. 12 J.A. Maguire                            GONE

                                                                        (Once known as Dunne’s)

                                                            No. 21 Michael Ryan’s                        GONE

                                                            No. 25 A. Brennan’s                            GONE

                                                            No. 36 T. McDonald                            GONE

                                                                        (Once known as Donnelly’s)

                                                            No. 49 Pat McManus                           GONE

                                                            No. 50 JD Quinn’s                               GONE

                                                                        (Also known as Lowe’s & Nash’s)

Dean Street                                       

No. 7 W. Lowe’s                                 GONE

Bride Street               

                                                            No. 33 John Corry                               GONE

                                                            No. 85 Sinnott Brothers                        GONE

                                                                        (Once known as Finnegan’s)

                                                            No. 87 Thomas Kenny                         GONE

                                                            No. 101 Sean O’Connor’s                   GONE

                                                                        (Once known as The Napper Tandy)

                                                            No. 102 P. McColgan’s                       GONE

                                                            No. 104 Mrs A O’Bierne’s                  GONE

Gone but not forgotten.