The Pubs of Ringsend Walking Tour - Episode One 'NORTH'S'

 

Coming in 2022, following the successful ‘The History of Sandymount’s Pub Walking Tour’ and ‘The Pubs of Rathmines Tour’, we will be bringing you ‘The Pubs of Ringsend Heritage Walking Tour’. To whet your appetite for some of the stories and tales you will hear, we will bring you over the coming weeks some of the histories of the pubs no longer open. Today we will be starting with North’s public house, in coming weeks we’ll bring you the histories of The Sign of the Highlanders, The Old England Tavern and the Hobbler’s End.

 

Now just a memory, but for many of an older generation in Ringsend and Irishtown, Peter North’s pub on Bridge Street in Ringsend brings back happy memories. Alas long gone but if you walk through the lounge door of John Clarke’s public house today you will have walked the route of many of North’s customers.

Peter North was a popular publican who received extensive coverage in Irish newspapers in October 1967. Peter was celebrating his hundred birthday and was described in the Irish Press as ‘probably the oldest publican in the country’. While still living above the pub, he had retired from serving pints to the locals just three years earlier as his health began to fail.

 

He had been born on Upper Baggot Street and served his first pint, aged sixteen, in the pub that had been opened by his father Morgan North in Ringsend. A lively sportsman, Peter, along with his brothers Francis and Bartle, played for the Isles of the Sea GAA hurling club and they won the Dublin County Championship in 1890. Peter later recalled,

‘it was some sight with 42[1] players on the field. There used to be some awful scrimmages.’

Source: The Irish Newspaper Archives

His brother Bartle was the first superintendent of the electricity generating station at the Pigeon House when it opened in 1904[2]. His son Bartle junior became a popular bookie in Ringsend with a shop on Fitzwilliam Street. Morgan North’s public house was located on the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Thomas Street as it was known then, now known as Irishtown Road. The newspapers reported that in 1910 Peter North of 16 Fitzwilliam Street was fined by the courts for allowing children on his premises despite the fact that their mother was with them.

Morgan North pictured at the door of his pub on Fitzwilliam Street pictured in 1910

Source : Brian Siggins through his son Gerard

Today that former North public house is home to the National Council of the Blind shop. Morgan’s only daughter Mary Catherine married Valentine Nelson, the son of another Ringsend publican Joseph Nelson. The Nelson’s also ran a butcher shop on Bridge Street. In the early twentieth century, following a Pembroke Estate decision to renovate many of the properties on the part of Fitzwilliam Street that connected with Cambridge Avenue, by 1916 the North’s had moved their public house to a building next door to the Nelson’s on Bridge Street. Peter often fell foul of the licensing laws and was raided and fined on a number of occasion for serving outside permitted hours including on Good Friday 1940 after which he was fined £2 and had his license endorsed. The following June he was raided again for serving afterhours with thirteen customers on his premises. He was fined twenty shillings and was lucky not to lose his license.

Source: Google Maps

Source : National Archives of Ireland

The pub on the Fitzwilliam Street had seen previous owners Michael Holden in the 1830’s and Edward Smith in the 1850’s before the North’s arrival. Following Morgan North’s premature death at the age of just forty five, his pub’s license was operated by Anne Lowe who seemingly employed the young Peter North as a barman until he became of age to run the pub himself.

Source: Brian Siggins

Having celebrated his centenary in October 1967, just three months later in December the popular local Ringsend publican passed away peacefully and enjoyed one of the biggest funerals seen in the south Dublin suburb. When both Nelson’s[3] pub and North’s pub were sold they were joined into one pub with a bar and lounge owned by the popular Dublin publican family, the Dwyer’s.  Today the pub is occupied by John Clarke and family who had traded for many decades successful just up the road in Irishtown.

Peter North's pub receiving a delivery of beer.

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[1] 21 per side was replaced by the current 15 a side

[2] Died September 1936

[3] Sold 1968

The Ringsend Publican Killed During The Easter Rising

 

One of the little known stories of the 1916 Easter Rising was the sad death of Ringsend publican Robert Woodcock. Robert and his brother Samuel were born in Mothel, Co. Kilkenny just north of Kilkenny city. After serving his apprenticeship in a public house in Dun Laoghaire, Robert purchased his first pub on Tyrconnell Road, Inchicore in 1909 on the banks of the Grand Canal known as Murrays, where the Black Horse pub traded for many years. His brother Samuel also bought his own pub on the corner of Thomas Street and Meath Street, now Baker’s Corner.

 

Meanwhile Carlow born Peter Clowry, who owned the pub at 16 Thorncastle Street, now known as Sally O’Brien’s (or the Shipwright), died in January 1916. The Woodcock’s, as well known publicans in the Dublin, attended the funeral but also spotted an opportunity. In February, thirty three year old Robert purchased Clowry’s from his estate for £3,200 and immediately began trading. Robert was an active member, like many of his fellow publicans in the South Dublin Union.

Two months after his arrival in Ringsend, he decided to use the Easter bank holiday weekend to travel home to Kilkenny to see his elderly farmer father, a widower. He travelled down in his motorcar on Saturday and decided to return on Monday but in his absence from Dublin, rebels from the Irish Volunteers, Cumman na mBan and the Irish Citizens Army took to the streets of the capital and seized control of a number of buildings. One of the battle sites seized mainly by members of the Citizens Army was St. Stephens Green. As word of trouble spread around the country, Robert decided to drive back to Dublin to look after his businesses. He arrived first at Tyrconnell Road and decided to drive across to Ringsend but he met a DMP policeman who asked him to give him a lift to Phibsboro.

 

They drove down Harcourt Street onto St. Stephens Green where they were met by rebels on the road who held them up at gunpoint. The two men were taken prisoner and removed into the green itself where they were greeted by Countess Markiewicz and Michael Mallin. Woodcocks’ car was made into a barricade at the top of York Street. Robert Woodcock was tied to a tree in the park while the policeman joined other prisoners being held in the gate house in the park. At one stage after a number of hours of being tied up, one of his captors decided to release Woodcock but another rebel recognised Woodcock and harboured ill feeling towards him as he appeared to side with the employers during the 1913 Lockout and was suspected as being anti Larkin. He remained a prisoner in the park throughout the night but by Tuesday as the British troops on the roof of the Shelbourne Hotel began to attack the rebel forces. The rebels, who had dug trenches in the park, had no answer or cover from the machine fire that was now focused on them.

 

The commander’s decision was to retreat from the park itself and take the College of Surgeons as their headquarters. Woodcock was taken across to the building but his exposure throughout the previous night had an immediate detrimental effect on his health.  Woodcock was seriously ill. He was taken by ambulance to nearby St Vincent’s hospital on St. Stephen’s Green, where he died twenty minutes after being admitted on April 28^th of double pneumonia ‘brought on by exposure’, becoming a fatality of the Rising.

 

On May 16^th the Evening Herald reported that on that day,

‘At the City Sessions, before the Recorder Mr. T.R. Holmes solicitor applied on behalf of Mr. Samuel Woodcock of 45 and 46 Thomas Street that he should be at liberty to carry on the licensed trading in the premises 16 Thorncastle Street, Ringsend until the Quarter Sessions. The licensee, Mr. Robert Woodcock, applicant’s brother, had been kept prisoner by the insurgents in St. Stephens Green during the recent insurrection and died subsequently from pneumonia brought on by exposure. The recorder granted the application.’

The Freeman Journal[1] reported in June that Samuel had been granted permission by the Dean’s Grange Burial Board to disinter his brother’s body and have it removed to Kilkenny. The Journal did report however that Robert had been accidentally shot during the rebellion. According to the Irishmedals.ie website,

‘While the area Woodcock was buried in was being cleared 2014, a headstone with the name Robert Woodcock, it is likely the disinterment did not take place because Robert Woodcock buried with others without coffins and the bodies were decomposed to such a degree the disinterment did not take place. The new headstone was erected in 2016.’

In July, Robert’s brother Samuel applied to the courts to transfer the license into his name which was approved. The pub was sold two years later. The sadness of his passing was compounded that when the at time controversial memorial wall to the victims of the 1916 Easter Rising was unveiled at Glasnevin Cemetery, the memory of Robert Woodcock was somewhat obliterated when the engravers decided his name was ‘Richard Woodcock’. Surely this should be corrected immediately to honour both his memory and show respect to his family.

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[1] Saturday June 10^th 1916 Freeman’s Journal