As regular readers know, we are always on the lookout for a pub with a good ghost story, whether it’s October or, really, any time. The pub in question we’re visiting this week doesn’t feel particularly spooky, but it does have an interesting history to go along with the ghost story, even if they aren’t perfectly well-connected. Without further ado, we make our way to The Portobello Bar.
While the ‘since 1793’ date is a little shaky, given the current building’s construction in the 1870s, it seems entirely plausible that there was, indeed, an inn or pub around here earlier. The Grand Canal’s proximity – just across a heavily-used road – supports the possibility of an earlier date, and it’s also what supplies our ghost story. Construction began on the Grand Canal in the late 18th century, and it was a key piece of infrastructure in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Our ghost – a ‘vengeful’ or ‘drunken’ lock-keeper (take your pick/why not both?) – is alleged to originate in the middle of the 19th century, forever haunting the lock just outside the pub. He’s even meant to be responsible for multiple deaths, appearing as a shapeshifting light-into-human-figure. As an aside, we don’t get enough shapeshifting ghostlore any more – there used to be a proud tradition of spooks turning into hay bales or cows and horses, and that seems to have vanished in modern ‘it happened to me stories’ – someone should get on that. But we digress…
But there was a very real tragedy just opposite the pub’s location in 1861, when a horse-drawn omnibus went off the nearby bridge into the canal, killing all the passengers as well as both horses. While ‘some’ attributed the accident to the spectral lock-keeper, it would be an interesting exercise to trace back the origin of that part of the story, especially since the current pub (or, at least, most of it) would have been built or re-built at least a good few years after the accident.
So, ghosts aside, what is the pub like? Well…most definitely not creepy. If anything, it’s a bit too polished to feel at all like a liminal space. There are several very different sections of the pub with their own character, but none are especially dark or gloomy. The front is much more ‘pubby’ and the rear more of a restaurant or hotel bar vibe (the many large TV screens are part of what gives that impression), though it’s worth knowing that the back bar is where the sole local-craft-beer representative is; there’s a Rye River tap if you know where to look. Indeed, the food was very good – a step up from a lot of pub food, though the enormous portions are perhaps created more for tourists than locals. There’s also the usual Guinness – and Murphy’s – plus some Warsteiner.
There’s a covered outdoor space too, more Pavement Pints than beer garden, given the amount of traffic nearby, but you do get a view of the canal lock and the (haunted?) bridge. And even if you’re not into the ghostly folklore, The Portobello Bar does have other legitimate historical claims: back when it was called Davy’s, it was an important site during the Easter Rising in 1916, and that history is very much remembered in this pub.
We may not have seen the vengeful lock-keeper at The Portobello Bar, but we did have a good burger and pint. We’ll keep trying to find some good haunted Dublin pub stories…
Where: 33 South Richmond St, Dublin, IE D02 CF40
Access from the city centre: Buses 9, 15, 15A, 15B, 16, 83, 83A, 140; 25-ish minute walk
Food: Elevated pub grub, carvery, weekend brunch
Sport: All the sport, football especially
TVs: So many large screens in the back that it can feel a bit sports-bar-y
Music: DJs and live music at weekends
Family-friendliness: At the usual times
Pub-crawl-ability: High – Camden street is full of pubs and bars like The Bleeding Horse, Devitt’s, Teach Tábhairne Ag Teach, The Camden, Whelan’s, Anseo, Ryan’s of Camden Street…and the local ‘Spoon’s, Keavan’s Port
Local sites of note: Iveagh Gardens, St Stephen’s Green, National Concert Hall, St Kevin’s Park, Grand Canal
Haunted: Is it the lock-keeper? The tram passengers? The horses? Everything to play for here
Other notes: Main-floor toilets, though no specific disabled toilet
Socials: Facebook, Instagram
The 1884 is so called after 
And like many pubs in the more suburban parts of Dublin, it’s absolutely enormous inside – indeed, somewhat barn-like. But it’s all very tidy, and there’s plenty of space to spread out. There are much-appreciated coat hooks under the bar, which really should be standard everywhere, but here we are. Only a few years ago, this pub was known as Grainger’s, and it had, well, a 
And while the beer selection is mostly the usual Guinness-and-Heineken-and-so-so-much-Rockshore (despite being listed as a stockist of Hope, brewed just a bit further north), there is also the lesser-spotted Kilkenny, which has been popping up here and there of late, and it’s a nice alternative. The real hidden gem of The 1884, though, is the enormous 
Cask ale, as we have often complained, is something of a rarity in Ireland. While there are a few more pubs with a regular cask offering up in Belfast, here in Dublin, it is simply not a regular feature in most pubs. Happily, though, a tipoff from a reader (cheers, Ciaran!) alerted us to a beer engine in regular use at Harty’s Bar. Naturally, we dropped everything to go investigate.
One reason this pub had not been on our radar is that, appearances notwithstanding, it’s a fairly new establishment (but also not; bear with us) – until about 18 months ago, it was the Dingle Whiskey Bar. But like its neighbour, 
While it doesn’t have the selection of beers next door in Tapped, with its enormous bar, for a small space, it has a good lineup of some of the more standard Porterhouse beers – the Plain Porter, Yippy IPA and Red – as well as Trouble’s Ambush. There’s also Guinness, of course, and Beamish. But as you know, we were here for the cask option: this week, it was 
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 
And while the 
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 
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