It’s fair to say that we’ve made no secret of the fact that DublinByPub can sometimes be a Brendan Behan fanzine disguised as a Pub Blog. We adore the man – firstly for his literary genius, but also, and perhaps controversially (though unsurprisingly), for his stature as a renowned drinker and pub-dweller extraordinaire.
And though we’ve often thought of compiling a Brendan Behan pub crawl, it had always been evident to us that if you were to make a crawl of Dublin Pubs that Behan had been known to frequent – you would be creating both an unassailable task and a public health risk.
However, to mark the centenary of the great man’s birth this coming ninth of February, we thought we’d throw together something that that’s more of a pub walk than a crawl. Call it a ramble through Brendan’s Dublin with a few pints thrown in for good measure.
The walk does cover a fair bit of ground – notably the distance between the last two pubs – and though I think it’s certainly doable by foot – feel free to substitute foot for whatever means of transport is more preferable to you, where needed.
The Map
We’ve put a google map together, plotting out all the sites mentioned. Visit the link here, or use the window, below.
Stops Number 1 and 2: Glasnevin Cemetery and The Gravediggers
So just like Brendan himself, we’re going to start on the Northside and end up on the Southside. Our first stop is Glasnevin Cemetery – the last resting place of Behan and the site upon which he fired at members of The Gardaí in 1942, earning himself a 14-year sentence in Mountjoy Prison.
Some might view it as a little contentious to have the first pub on a Brendan Behan pub crawl be one that there’s no record of Behan having actually frequented, but Kavanagh’s (better known to Dubliners as The Gravediggers), we think, has earned its place in the story of Brendan. Being located a two-minute walk from Brendan’s grave, staff from the cemetery speak of how they often return pint glasses to the pub from the plot containing Brendan’s mortal remains, having been left there by thirsty pilgrims who have made the journey out to see the grave.
We could think of no better way to start this walk than by bringing a pint up to Brendan.
Stops Number 3 and 4: The Royal Canal
What Behan walk would be complete without including The Royal Canal. Through his association with the song – The Auld Triangle, and his being domiciled close to its banks on two separate occasions in his life, Brendan has arguably brought the man-made body of water more fame than any other individual ever has.
When you walk its banks, leaving Phibsborough and heading in the direction of Drumcondra, it won’t take long before you reach Stop 3, where you’ll be able to look upon the vista of Mountjoy Prison – where Brendan himself was incarcerated and the location he set one of his most famous works – The Quare Fellow. Continue to walk the canal and you’ll come to John Coll’s statue of Brendan which was unveiled in 2003.
Stops Number 5, 6 and 7: The Russell Street District.
The next street that crosses the canal after Drumcondra Road if you continue towards town is Russell Street, our fifth stop. Though demolished now, Behan was raised in a tenement house on Russell Street until the Behan family were relocated out to Suburbia (or Siberia as Brendan would quip) in the 30s – ending up on Kildare Road in Crumlin. As you come to the top of Russell Street, you’ll see an Italian Restaurant on the right – Asti, which contains a courtyard named Behan Square to its rear.
At the top of the street, on the left, you’ll see stop number 6 – James Gill’s pub. A pub that is synonymous with Brendan and indeed all the Behans – them all having frequented it in their day. The pub can be seen in the film Brendan Behan’s Dublin, which is thankfully on youtube. Unfortunately, Gills tends to only open on big match days when they occur in nearby Croke Park – so you could decamp to Hogan’s or The Hideout for a pint at this point if there’s no drink to be had in Gills. The aforementioned Italian restaurant is an excellent choice, should you want to fuel up with something more substantial for the walking ahead.
A short distance from Russell Street, you can find Shane Sutton’s astonishing mural of Brendan, painted onto the side of a dwelling on Richmond Cottages. (Hint: Be sure to also check out Shane’s nearby Joyce Mural up the road from this one)
Stop Number 8: The Abbey Theatre
The National Theatre, The Abbey has shown numerous productions of Brendan’s plays throughout the years. The theatre, itself, relocated to The Queens Theatre on Pearse Street after a fire for much of the time that Brendan was alive and in the public eye – but has long since been on Abbey Street. A large portrait of Brendan hangs at the top of the stairs as you walk up to the first floor of the Theatre. There’s a café in the theatre now, and depending on the time, you might find the bar open upstairs too. The pint is surprisingly decent.
Stops Number 9 and 10: The Palace Bar and McDaid’s
The Palace and McDaid’s could be considered the two pubs most closely linked to the post-war literary boom in Dublin. Behan was known to frequent both but was possibly more synonymous with McDaid’s which seemed to be the rowdier of the two, at the time.
John Ryan captures this in his memoir –The Way We Stood, when recounting a time RM Smyllie, editor of The Times, chanced his arm at frequenting McDaids:
Rumours of literary goings-on in MacDaid’s must have reached the master’s ear because Smyllie turned up there one night, having made the prodigious journey (of about half a mile) from the Palace. It was about the time that this pub was beginning its long history as a poetic glue-pot. A fight over the use of spondees was going on in one corner between two wild men in duffle coats, Brendan Behan was standing on a table bawling his rendition of ‘I was Lady Chatterly’s Lover’ and Gainor Crist, the Ginger Man, was getting sick, evidently into someone else’s pint. It was too much for the great man, who finished, in one vast swallow, his large Irish, gave a final, baleful owl-like glare at this frightening assembly, and waddled out into the Harry Street night and the ultimate sanctuary of the Palace as fast as his trotters could take him. He was never seen in McDaid’s again.
A brass plaque commemorates Brendan on the ground outside The Palace. In McDaid’s, various portraits of The Borstal Boy, himself, can be seen hung about the place.
Stop Number 11: Site of The Pike Theatre.
Not that you’d think to look at it, but the unassuming premises of Number 43 Herbert Lane, a coach-house/mews for its corresponding canalside residence, once contained The Pike Theatre. A provocative small-scale theatre which staged the world premiere of The Quare Fellow.
Stop Number 12: The Waterloo Bar
Though unrecognisable from how it would have appeared back then, The Waterloo was once a known haunt of Brendan’s. As a nod to this, the pub has named one of their snugs after him. An artwork on a street side cable cabinet outside the pub depicts himself and his best frenemy – Patrick Kavanagh, the two former kings of Baggotonia in a cartoonish form. See if you can spot it in the image below.
Stop Number 13: Brendan & Beatrice’s Home
Described as “my present to you” by Brendan, to his wife Beatrice. It was bought in 1959 when it had an asking price of £3,000. It was up for sale with an asking price of €1,200,000 in 2005.
Stop Number 14: Harkin’s – Harbour Bar.
I suppose we’ve finished this walk in as macabre a fashion as we begun. Harkin’s Harbour Bar, the pub now closest to The Guinness Brewery, is the last pub to ever host Brendan. Sadly, he collapsed here in March of 1964 before dying, aged a mere 41years, in The Meath Hospital several days later.
Last Thoughts / Summary
If you wanted to extend the walk from here, you could opt to next head out to Crumlin and check out The Crumlin Kremlin, as it was termed. 70 Kildare Road is the abode in which the Behans were resettled after they had to leave Russel Street. Obviously, in the case of this one, and 5 Anglesea Road in Stop #13, we’d urge you to be respectful – given that these are both homes belonging to people.
So, whether you do some of the walk, or all of the walk, or just enjoyed reading it – we’d urge you to raise a glass to Brendan on or about the 9th of February to mark the hundredth year since he was born. Ni bheidh a leithead aris ann!
A great number of writers are synonymous with a great number of things for different reasons. And a great number of writers are synonymous with the city of Dublin. But when it comes to levels of synonymy with this city of ours, there’s little arguing that Joyce is its foremost considered literary son.
A great number of writers are synonymous with a great number of things for different reasons. And a great number of writers are synonymous with the city of Dublin. But when it comes to levels of synonymy with this city of ours, there’s little arguing that Joyce is its foremost considered literary son.
Joyce knew Dublin – in fact, Joyce knew Dublin so well that he was able to write Ulysses in exile from the city. And to know Dublin is to know its pubs and unsurprisingly enough, Joyce knew all about them too.
Most will have heard Joyce’s most famous quote about pubs – it being the moment that Leopold Bloom envisages a puzzle whereby one would try to cross Dublin without passing a pub, but his involvement with pubs doesn’t stop there. Joyce was said to have had argued with publishers over the inclusion of pubs in ‘Dubliners’ even at one point offering to get the go ahead from the publicans themselves adding that they would be ‘glad of the advertisement’.
So without further ado, let’s get down to the pubs. We originally compiled this crawl in conjunction with fundraising efforts that were being undertaken by Sweny’s Pharmacy – a 172 year old premises which features in Ulysses – to this day it remains mostly unchanged from the days when Joyce would have visited and conjured up the initial image of Leopold Bloom stopping in for his wife’s face lotion and his lemon soap.
With this crawl we had two main criteria in mind. Firstly and compulsory is that the pubs on the crawl are mentioned in the writings of James Joyce. Secondly is the idea that these pubs retain some of the character that they once had in the early 1900s – this is more so a desirable quality rather than a necessary one.
A pub crawl of some of the pubs mentioned in the works of James Joyce
1. Davy Byrne’s
This pub is probably regarded as the ultimate Joycean watering hole in Dublin, and no James Joyce pub would be complete without it. Featured in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom stops in and orders a glass of burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich.
“He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leap year once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.”
Truth being told, we put this one first to get it out of the way. It’s not one of our favourite boozers, it’s pricy and a bit too plush for any proper comfort. It contains little or none of the visual characteristics it would have had in 1904.
But it’s carved out its niche as a cornerstone of Joycean Dublin by retaining the original name and purveying cheese sambos and glasses of burgundy to Bloom wannabes all year round.
2. The International
Known as Ruggy O’Donohoe’s at the time of Ulysses, we’ve chosen to include The International as it’s one of Dublin’s original Victorian pubs and retains a similar aesthetic. The pub is mentioned in Episode 10, Wandering Rocks, as below:
“Opposite Ruggy O’Donohoe’s Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the pound and a half of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s, porksteaks he had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from Tunney’s. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the whole blooming time and sighing”
3. The Oval
The Oval is another pub which retains the same name since its mention in Ulysses. It crops up in Episode 7:
“–What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone? –Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round to the Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night. –Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat?”
While the fittings and furnishings in The Oval may not be the same as they were in the early 1900s, given that the pub was destroyed during the 1916 Rising, the pub does still have an old time charm which should satisfy most trying to conjure up Joyce’s Dublin.
4. J. & M. Cleary
More known for its ties to Michael Collins than Ulysses, it’s mentioned in Episode 16 of the book. Back then it traded as The Signal House.
“So, bevelling around by Mullet’s and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus”
J. M. Cleary’s two nearest neighbouring pubs were both mentioned in Ulysses too. Mullets still trades under its 1906 name and Llyod’s was known as Dan Bergin’s when it was mentioned in Ulysses. You can add in these two pubs to the crawl here if you wish.
5. Mulligan’s
“When the Scotch House closed they went round to Mulligan’s. They went into the parlour at the back and O’Halloran ordered small hot specials all round. They were all beginning to feel mellow. Farrington was just standing another round when Weathers came back. Much to Farrington’s relief he drank a glass of bitter this time. Funds were getting low but they had enough to keep them going.”
I always wonder why Davy Byrnes’ is perceived to be more associated with Joyce rather than Mulligan’s. Mulligan’s features in ‘Counterparts’, one of the stories in ‘Dubliners’, as prominently as Davy’s does in Ulysses, and as well as this, the pub’s appearance is far closer to that which Joyce would have seen when he was writing Dubliners.
Be sure to go into the bar on the left side of the building (pictured) and try to get a seat in the parlour down the back, where Counterparts is set, it’s just beyond the Grandfather Clock.
6. Kennedy’s
Formerly known as Conway’s, this pub is mentioned in Episode 5 in Ulysses when Bloom meets M’Coy:
I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.
And so brings a conclusion to our James Joyce Pub Crawl. We finished at Kennedy’s intentionally due to its proximity to Sweny’s – so when you’ve finally reached the final boozer, do nip across to see Dublin’s greatest living Joycean relic, and grab a bar of lemon soap yourself too, you might need it after all that walking.
Notes:
Obviously, for convenience’s sake, we kept this crawl within the city centre. But if you wanted to elongate it a bit, we’d recommend you start in The Gravedigger’s, which sits beside Glasnevin Cemetry – the graveyard where Paddy Dignam is buried in Ulysses. From there, you could continue to The Brian Boru (Hedigan’s) which is also noted by the men in the car on the way out to the funeral. This will bring you onto the Canal which you could follow all the way to The North Strand and within the vicinity of Llyods, Mullet’s and J.M Cleary’s.
“If you’ve got any kind of a heart, a soul, an appreciation for your fellow man or any kind of appreciation for the written word or simply a love of a perfectly poured beverage then there’s no way you can avoid loving this city.”
So were the words of celebrity chef, author and globetrotter Anthony Bourdain when he came to describe our own city on one of his many TV shows – The Layover.
“If you’ve got any kind of a heart, a soul, an appreciation for your fellow man or any kind of appreciation for the written word or simply a love of a perfectly poured beverage then there’s no way you can avoid loving this city.”
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So were the words of celebrity chef, author and globetrotter Anthony Bourdain when he came to describe our own city on one of his many TV shows – The Layover. If you’ve never sat down and watched any of Bourdain’s travel shows let me tell you that I truly envy you, you get to discover someone with a contagious vigour for life. Travelling to well and lesser-known corners of the world, he at all times conducted himself with childlike curiosity, compassion and humility, all while exuding a sort of rock star sort of panache and rarely being seen without a bottle or glass too far from his hand.
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The terrible reality about Anthony Bourdain is that he took his own life on the 8th of June 2018. His death was a terribly tragic event – a big news story in the media at the time given his fame and fortune.
But more seriously and importantly is the tragedy of how Anthony is yet another soul to succumb to the peril of an untreated mental health issue. So I’ll go no further before imploring anyone who is in that dark place or upon its periphery to please reach out to somebody that they can talk to or to contact any of the organisations below.
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I wanted to mark the first anniversary of Anto’s (yes I will be referring to him as Anto from here on out) passing by compiling the pubs that he visited (and mentioned) in the course of the Dublin episode of The Layover.
The Layover is a fantastic TV show created by The Travel Channel whereby one episode encompasses Anto on a short layover in a city taking in the best way to spend limited time there. It’s a fantastic format. I’m not affiliated with The Travel Channell and stake no claim in any of their content.
So at the beginning of the Dublin episode Anto describes Dublin as a city he knows and loves, it’s not a statement that I personally found any insincerity in but if I had, it would have certainly been charmed away after he poses himself the question ‘What does Ireland do better than any other nation on earth?’ and answers with one word – pubs!
So without further ado, let’s get into the pubs he visits.
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The show starts with Anto professing his love for a pint of Guinness and alluding to the widely accepted adage that it’s a drink that tastes better in this country than anywhere else on earth, so it’s only fitting then that he should start the show on the premises that purveys the finest pint in the country- The Gravediggers. Any of you reading that follows our page on Instagram might know that we’ve been writing and rewriting our thoughts on The Gravediggers, or John Kavanagh’s to give it its proper name, for a number of years now (UPDATE: We finally wrote our piece on The Gravediggers). It’s still something we continue to chip away at because it’s just too difficult to conjure up the magic of this pub in words. Bourdain, however, manages to elicit the type of thing we’re going for in just a few words when he signs the guestbook – “Heaven looks just like this”.
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Mentioned as worth a visit, though not visited by Anthony in the show himself, is The Cobblestone in Smithfield. A Dublin mecca for authentic trad, it’s a pub we love too. The pint is great and as of April 2019 is still under €5.
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So the next act of the show presumably follows a healthy feed of pints in The Gravediggers the evening before. We find Anto and his drinking companion the worse for wear as they wander the abandoned early morning streets of Dublin. In search for the cure, they pass empty pubs as Paddy explains the concept of early houses to Anto. With him in full understanding that these are pubs placed close to markets and ports with special licences to open early, they head into one such pub – Slattery’s. While here they have a proper cure – a big dirty fry and a pint to wash it down – the proper way to do it. And ne’er a painkiller in sight.
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Opting not to add to the fuel in the tank from the previous night, Anto heads off and fills his day with other activities away from those solely focussed around boozing. Once he’s thirsty again, he heads for the Palace and sets his sights on whiskey. Speaking to the barman, owner – Willie Ahearne, he’s recommended a nine year old Palace Bar branded single malt, single cask whiskey which he takes and chases with a pint. He presumably repeats this process as in the next scene, still in the bar, he declares himself to be drunk.
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Next stop for Anto is The Long Hall. He arrives alone having been up to Ballsbridge for a bit of soakage and continues his round of a pint and a chaser. The whiskey, though not described, looks to be a Redbreast 12. Shortly afterward then he’s joined by a hipster restaurateur type named Joe who he had shared a meal with in a since-closed restaurant earlier on in the show. Joe then proceeds to put the entire country to high and holy mortification when he orders his usual drink – whiskey and diet coke. Even Anto picks up on this and pulls him up on how careful he had been to drink all of his whiskey in Ireland neat. Joe doesn’t take much heed of this.
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Another of the pubs mentioned but not visited by Bourdain is Mulligan’s. A Dublin institution, this is a pub trading since 1782 and renowned to offer one of the best pints in the city centre. We’re quite fond of it ourselves and love the links that it has with all sorts of famous figures from Joyce to JFK.
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So with last call having been made in The Long Hall, Anto and Joe head off to Hogan’s for a late jar. And Hogan’s is just the spot for a late jar. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life been in Hogan’s before midnight. Joe may be a decent restauranteur, I’m not sure – but he’s certainly no master wordsmith when you consider his description of Hogan’s to Anto. Describing it to the best selling author as “one of the deadliest pubs in town” and “the go-to for cool and deadly”, you can’t help but wonder if he’d have done a better job if he stuck with pints instead of whiskey and mixers.
It’s at this point that the conversation turns to what local delicacy the lads will satiate their drunken hunger with at the end of the night and Anto, in this writer’s own opinion, seems to be looking for someone a little less pretentious than our buddy Joe.
Luckily he strikes gold and finds three pint-drinking hardchaws who immediately set about advising him on the merits of taco chips, a meal Joe describes as a “gross habit”. Explaining the meal’s similarity in appearance as it both enters and leaves the digestive system, the lads win Anto over and it’s on up the road to Roma II for a feed of chips.
Resigned to his fate, Joe joins in on the craic as Anto orders half the menu for everyone leaving the table full of enough brown paper to cover your school books for the entire of secondary school. He enjoys the spiceburger, and doesn’t mind the batterburger either. Curry chips, however, seem to perplex him to such a degree that he asks “The curry sauce, how did this happen?”
“It’s The Celtic Tiger that started it all” replies one of the lads to a cacophony of laughter.
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The next morning Anto is hungover again and heads to Matt The Threshers on Pembroke St. for the cure – a pint and some oysters. I haven’t included it on the crawl because it’s more restaurant than pub really. After that he opts for a quick sausage roll from Lolly & Cooks in the George’s St. arcade, which he eats on a bench on Drury St and heads for the airport – never to be seen on our shores again, sadly.
So if you do wind up doing this pub crawl, or even supping in any of the pubs mentioned, give Anto a thought. Maybe raise a glass to him. And remember to mind the aul head, and look out for the heads around ya.
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The Ginger Man Pub on Fenian Street is a pub that we’ve always had a fondness for. Over the years, as we’ve come to darken its door more and more, we eventually queried its name to discover that it was the namesake of a book written by author J.P Donleavy.
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The Ginger Man Pub on Fenian Street is a pub that we’ve always had a fondness for. Over the years, as we’ve come to darken its door more and more, we eventually queried its name to discover that it was the namesake of a book written by author J.P Donleavy. The book, set in Dublin in the 1940s, follows a hard-drinking, womanising American Trinity College student – Sebastian Dangerfield through the trials and tribulations that he finds himself encountering as he schemes his way through life.
If you haven’t managed to get around to it as of yet, it’s a superb read and comes highly recommended – not just by us but by countless others far more qualified to say so.
So having scrubbed through the book again we’ve compiled a list of the pubs that we’ve identified in it, one or two may take a bit of artistic licence and could be better labelled as educated guesses.
So if you want to take to the streets of Dublin and drink ‘really big lashes of Gold Label’ just like Dangerfield did, consider this to be something of a guide to do so – but leave it at that. We won’t be held responsible for any bottles of brandy that happen to get smashed over the heads of any barman who refuses service.
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While not featured in the book itself, we couldn’t but help include it here – after all, it’s probably solely responsible for us having wound up making this list. A good pub which is tremendously popular come Christmas time when they overdo it on the decorations.
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This falls under the educated guess category. The opening chapter of the book occurs in a pub on or around Tara Street. We do note that Ruin Bar and The Long Stone traded as Regan’s and The Tara Bar during The Ginger Man’s Era and it’s possible that either of these is the pub in question. But given Mulligan’s has been associated with Trinity College in the past and also considering that the Long Stone is now closed and that Ruin Bar is about as reminiscent of 1940s Dublin as the dark side of the moon is, we’ve decided to opt for Mulligan’s here.
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Our first confirmed pub of The Ginger Man, Sebastian visits here with the Laundry Girl – Christine. He gives away the location by mentioning that it was the birthplace of Thomas Moore.
EDIT: Sinc the time of writing, this pub has been refurbished and re-opened as The Thomas Moore Inn.
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Purported to be one of Dublin’s oldest pubs, Sebastian passes by here with Christine at its first mention, he later lowers a Gold Label in the pub after his session with Tony (AKA Tone).
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Another educated guess, this one. But we do know that Sebastian takes the tram to Dalkey after being refused service in Kelly’s Garden Paradise (a pub we couldn’t identify). Finnegan’s is regarded as one of Dublin’s remaining authentic Victorian pubs and would have only been a short walk from the Dalkey tram stop – we reckon this is the one Donleavy had in mind when he was writing this chapter.
(Image from Independent.ie)
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This is one we’re not entirely sure of. O Keefe is dragged in here by Dangerfield after their breakfast in Woolworths Café o Grafton St. O Donoghue’s is then mentioned by name. This could either be the Suffolk Street or Merrion Row pub. We recommend the Merrion Row one, but you could always visit both, just to be sure.
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The first pub that Sebastian and Tone enter is described as a ‘house on the corner’ of Lower Baggot St. While it’s not named, we do know that Toner’s is on a corner on Lower Baggot St and would have traded back then so it’s possible that Tone and Sebastian started their session here.
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Described by Dangerfield as ‘a public house which I have always found very special’ which ‘can’t be beat for the mahogany or barrels’, he enjoys a foaming pint of plain here with Tone.
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So that’s it for our Ginger Man Crawl. Our knowledge of London is non-existent so you’ll need to get onto a London Pub Blog to see where Sebastian went boozing across the pond.
Be sure to go easy on the Gold Label if you’re thinking of doing all of these boozers in the one day and do give us a shout on email, in the comments or on social media to let us know how you got on if you do do the crawl.
Oh and any clarifications or recommended amendments are welcome too.
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