This fascinating
and authentic pub is located just nine miles from the capital on the north
coast of Dublin.The coastal seatown of Malahide is today properly celebrated
as the mecca of Dublin social and leisure activities but some fifty years
back it was merely a country village surrounded by pasture and cornland.
And when the Gibney family first arrived here on 6 December 1937 (in plenty
of time to catch the Christmas drinks trade!) they were entering what
was essentially a 'spit and sawdust pub' with a back yard that contained
an apple garden and a pungent-smelling piggery.
For the Gibney family, who have been five generations in the Dublin licensed
trade, this may have appeared an unusual acquisition, but it continued
the family migration trend northwards towards the coast. At the time James
Joseph Gibney paid £2,500 for this pub, he also owned the Royal Hotel
in Howth and the famous Phoenix Bar in Parkgate Street – the once-famous
refuge of Michael Collins. It was here that the young Jack Gibney learned
to ploy the wares of the licensed trade before moving to Malahide. His
father, James Joseph, was regarded as something of an entrepreneur in
the trade and had also owned the Abbey Tavern in Howth, which he sold
in 1925. His forebears were also conspicuous in the Dublin trade, having
served at Bow Lane Street, the Haymarket in Smithfield, where they ran
a bakery, grocery and eating house, and also at Benburb Street. In 1937,
and for many years beforehand, the Malahide pub had been known as the
Abercorn Tavern – the name which had been adopted by Henry Barton Cooke
on 6 June 1890, when he acquired the pub from James O’Hara and the ground
landlord, the Right Honourable Richard Hogan Baron Talbot De Malahide.
By 1917 Henry Cooke was suffering financial distress and the premises became partly invested in Ormond Quay Auctioneer and Valuer, Andrew Keogh, who had forwarded Henry some £400.
On your next visit you should pay particular attention to the pitch pine, Liscannor-slated Well Room. Here you will see a wishing well which is not just another gimmick of contemporary pub modernization. This was previously used as the Wash Room where all the bottles were washed before bottling. Don’t be tempted to stick your nose into the wishing well. It holds some 14,000 gallons of water and was used for many years as the village well.
While you are
there, ask Tony or one of the lads to show you some of the five-gallon
porcelain casks of whiskey from Locks Distillery in Kilbeggan and Powers
of John's Lane.
You can then wander into the courtyard and enjoy the quality of the Malahide sea air washed down by some healthy libations from the bar. For a nocturnal fling, try the caughoo bar named after the legendary horse who raced, fleet footed as a stag, through the mists and fog of Aintree to win the 1947 Grand National.
But don’t try to emulate him – you may not be quite as fleet footed as
you think when you leave the bar.