We know that we tend to be biased toward pubs on the north side of the Liffey, but this week, we travel (relatively) far into south Dublin – all the way to Blackrock and . Once a quiet fishing village with a sideline in early modern highway robbery, Blackrock is now one of the bougier parts of suburban Dublin, as evidenced by it now being labelled Blackrock Village (with a capital ‘V’). But given its handy coastal location and useful DART station, it’s no surprise that this area, with its mix of historic homes and railway development, would have become spot for both day-trippers and locals.
And while the town Village centre is not huge, it has an excellent off-license in the form of Blackrock Cellar, as well as some other independent stores, though there is not a vast array of pubs. Happily, though Jack O’Rourke’s serves many constituencies very well indeed. The pub is beautifully decorated in a broadly high Victorian style, with plenty of stained glass and deep colours. Indeed, records suggest that there has been an inn or pub here since at least the 18th century, which fits well with tales of highwaymen and shipwrecks that are tied to Blackrock. But Jack O’Rourke’s is very much a family pub, now in its fourth generation under the care of the O’Rourkes, and its design and décor fit well with the ‘1897’ date on the façade.
There are some lovely little snugs and the pub also has a bit of a nautical bent – the seafront is right here, after all – but it’s very welcoming to all; the standard Guinness (and Beamish!) is on offer, and there is good support for independent offerings like Hope and Wicklow Wolf, as well as Legacy Cider – craft ciders are especially hard to find across Ireland, so this is a nice bonus for fans of the apple.
All told, it’s a real gem of a pub: something of a combination of the best aspects of an Old Man Pub, paired with a welcoming atmosphere for well-behaved children, good food, local beer and excellent service. Well worth the trip on the Dart!
Where: 15 Main St, Blackrock, Dublin, A94 HN66
Access from the city centre: Buses 4, 7, 7A, DART
Food: Pub grub
Sport: Major events shown
TVs: Scattered around the pub
Music: Fairly MOR soundtrack in the background, never too loud for easy conversation
Family-friendliness: Children welcome
Pub-crawl-ability: Low – local spots like The Blackrock and The Wicked Wolf are nearby, but it’s a small selection without travel further afield
Local sites of note: Frascati Shopping Centre, Blackrock Park, Blackrock Historic Baths
Haunted: There were two massive shipwrecks just off the coast here…
Other notes: Rock Shandy was invented here – iconic!
Socials: N/A
Dublin excels at 
There’s a warm welcome, and not one, but two local independent beers offerings: Hope and O’Hara’s are always well-kept here. The bar serves two separate sections, each with their own respective snugs and other seating, and there are lots of little corners to duck into if you’re looking for that quiet solo pint. And it’s interesting to note that while everything you see now is very much hearkening back to the late 19th century, this is, in fact, an older pub – the original building(s) is/are Georgian, and its first license 
Our one knock on many Old Man Pubs is that they rarely offer any beers beyond the usual Guinness and Heineken (though to be fair, it’s usually an excellent Guinness from scrupulously clean tap lines), but as mentioned above, at Gaffney’s, there is good support for other choices, plus Beamish as another stout option. This beer selection, combined with the attractive interior, might just make it the perfect Dublin Old Man Pub.
The staircase formerly connected floors in Trinity College, and the beer garden out back can even be heated when necessary (though as with so many of the more interior-feeling beer gardens in Dublin, it can tend toward feeling very smoky). All told, it feels very ‘pubby,’ but what strikes me is the very noticeable vibe shift when the tour groups leave. It took a few visits to realise that it wasn’t just the freeing up of part of the pub that made the real difference; rather, it was the music. When the groups are in, the music is not just trad (there is, after all, plenty of good trad out there), but full-on diddly-eye trad – the sort of music that might have been featured on an American PBS station 40+ years ago. But once they go, there’s a break – either no music, or a change to something a bit more current. Perhaps it’s coincidence, but it’s something we’ve noticed on multiple visits – and it’s no bad thing!
Now, this is not to say that some of the more touristy pubs are doing their customers a disservice in any way; to the contrary, they are doing a great job of catering to multiple demographics, and more power to them. And Nancy Hands also does a great job of supporting local writers – 
Sometimes, it really is all about The Socials.
Last week, we asked whether 
The pub has been here since the 1850s, and in the Hedigan family since 1904, and you can’t miss their name in neon, either. Of course, like so many pubs along this route, it’s name-checked in Ulysses, and has a useful write-up 
Well, there have been proposals to 
We are back this week with a ‘request pub’ – one that’s much further north than our more common north-of-the-Liffey-but-still-pretty-central stomping grounds. We’re heading out of Dublin City proper to Howth; it’s an easy trip on the DART, but a bit of a pain if, for example, you needed Dublin Bus to deposit you to a nearby spot at a predetermined time. Dublin Bus is not always especially good at the concept of ‘on time’ (but it’s pretty great on ghost buses), so the journey in this general direction involved more taxis than I typically take in a 6-month period, but we got there in the end. Our (eventual) destination was 
I’d recently had an exchange on the socials lamenting the lack of railway station bars in Ireland, and while we have nothing here quite like the small-but-mighty 
We enjoyed excellent food and service when we stopped in, which isn’t necessarily a given in some pubs mid-week in the middle of the afternoon (hardly a fruitful time for most), so it was much appreciated. There is outdoor seating as well around both ends of the pub, but we kept to the more dimly-lit interior on a lovely sunny afternoon. Having offspring who actively avoid the sun may be odd to others, but hey, at least their vampiric ways are preventing long-term sun damage, and the pub interior really is lovely, all stone and dark wood.
A proper ‘Pubs of Croke Park’ roundup is long overdue, and with so many events on this summer, we may as well finally start working on that. While we’ve already covered a few handy ones like 
It’s very much a ‘locals’ pub most of the time, but a welcoming one; I’ve had out-of-town guests wind up there and have great chats with the barstaff. No frills, but no pretention, either. If you are looking to pre-game before an event at Croke Park, it’s hard to be better-placed for an easy walk in to the stadium. And, of course, the pub’s name 
While it may seem that we rarely venture south of the Liffey (true, really), we recently had occasion to be down in our old Ballsbridge stomping grounds, and so returned to 
There has been much local discussion surrounding the launch of 
And that may be all well and good for many customers, but these new brews haven’t (mostly) muscled out the usual macro suspects; it’s the ‘good’ beers that have been jettisoned to make space, including – really a loss here – the Pilsner Urquell. Removed from The Bridge’s menu now are Rye River Upstream Pale Ale, Warsteiner lager and, er, Madri. The Madri may be no great loss, but the others are keenly felt (especially if, say, A Friend were really looking forward to a Pilsner Urquell, sighed to make do with a Warsteiner and then realised that the only drinkable lager was Carlsberg). To add insult to injury, the hand-painted panel all about Pilsner Urquell has been partially, but not entirely, covered by a television. Ouch.
While our stats here show that you seem to be extremely interested in 
Of course, Walsh’s is far from new, as it’s been trading on this corner since 1826, so it’s coming up on two centuries in business. One wonders if there is to be an epic celebration next year…but back to the pub itself. It’s got a beautiful mix of stained glass and dark wood, cosy nooks and a fantastic snug…really, it’s quite close to the Platonic ideal of a late-19th century Dublin pub (albeit with televisions for the footy), so its recent restoration work has been well-planned and executed. The look and feel is certainly closer to the end of the 19th century than the beginning, but that’s no critique. And while it is best-known for its Guinness, they also serve Beamish, and there are also fresh lines of Trouble’s Ambush and Kinnegar’s Scraggy Bay – it made an ideal stopping-off point for my traditional 
And Walsh’s has another point or two in its favour: it has the full-on Victorian pub splendour, without the crush of tourists you can get at The Long Hall, and it has more variety on offer, drinks-wise, than 
While it was likely something akin to a coaching inn in that earlier phase – again, like its not-too-distant neighbour in Drumcondra – having a tourist site spring up nearby in the form of the National Botanic Gardens in the 19th century was a boon to business, similar to the relationship between the nearby 