“I’ll be in tears,” says long-time customer John Murphy of the prospect that Smyth’s of Haddington Road may be demolished to make way for a new apartment block, as recently approved by An Coimisiún Pleanála.
Enjoying a post-work drink in the venerable Dublin 4 pub, he has fond memories of the place, dating back to rugby weekends in the 1980s. “I’ve been here at times when it was so crowded you had to take turns to breathe,” he jokes. “But you could still always get a pint. That’s the definition of a good pub.”
He recalls an Ireland-Scotland game from 1990 when he arranged to meet a group of friends down from his native Ballymoney, Co Antrim, and a visiting Scotsman who was hoping to pick up a match ticket then turned up late for both.
By kick-off time, the Scot had a ticket all right, but the company had got the better of him. “You take it,” he told Murphy. “I can’t see any more.”
RM Block
This is not just a post-work drink, it turns out, it’s a post-career one. Murphy has just retired from the Housing Agency, in nearby Mount Street, and is celebrating with colleagues, all of them saddened at the thought of losing Smyth’s.
Niall Egan finds it ironic that Ireland is “crating up” old pub interiors for export abroad when the originals are increasingly under threat. You can visit an authentic-looking Irish bar “in a shopping centre in Melbourne”, he says. “But soon, young people here won’t know what one looks like.”
Although only three weeks into a job at the Housing Agency, Waterford man Paul Martin has a decades-old relationship with Smyth’s via his father Bill, who worked there in the late 1950s. “You should give him a ring,” he says.
So I do.
Martin snr served an apprenticeship as a barman in Smyth’s before getting a lease on a pub near the Guinness brewery at St James’s Gate, then buying one of his own in Waterford. The Smyth family still lived upstairs then in what was also a family home.
Now in his 80s, he came back to Smyth’s two years ago and found it almost unchanged. “They knocked a couple of small livingrooms to make a lounge at some point,” he said, “but that was it.”
His memories include an occasion when Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan were simultaneously barred from the premises. The men were already sworn enemies by then and usually tried to avoid each other.
But Smyth’s is wedged between two roads, with twin entrances to match. On the night in question, Behan came in from the Haddington Road side, Kavanagh from Percy Place. They met in the middle and such was the fracas, both were thrown out.
By contrast, Bill remembers Brian O’Nolan (aka Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen) sitting quietly in the snug: a tiny, narrow room, like a long cupboard, with swing doors marked “private” that could be locked from inside. It might fit 10 people at a squeeze, but O’Nolan sat in it alone “talking to himself”.
A picture of the still perfectly preserved snug, posted on Twitter/X with a link to the story about the planned demolition, has drawn pained reactions.
“Awful news” tweeted one former regular. “This should be an Unesco site,” posted someone else. A third poster replied with “#SaveSmyths”.
But Joe Gaffney, another veteran customer, was sceptical that the planned development – which is also to include a bar at ground level – would happen any time soon, if at all.
A former accountant and IT manager with “a large construction group”, Gaffney has been visiting the pub for “about 45 years” and says: “This is not the first time there’s been a planning permission.”
Even with approval from An Coimisiún Pleanála, the development would face “many obstacles” before becoming reality.
“If I was Hugh [Courtney, the current owner] in there,” said Gaffney, nodding towards the back office, “I’m not sure I’d want all that hassle at this stage of my life. But planning permission might make it more attractive for potential buyers. And selling for 10 or 12 million ... that would make a nice pension pot.”
On the other hand, Smyth’s is a rare, surviving piece of old Dublin on the city end of Haddington Road, now dominated on its northern side by soulless redbrick offices, as the corporate world spreads over Baggot Street bridge to colonise the once residential neighbourhood.
“There’s very little like this left in Dublin 4,” a female customer who preferred not to be named laments. She would feel personally bereft if the pub disappears, but it would be Dublin’s loss too, she thinks.
“If we keep knocking down places like Smyth’s, soon there’ll be nothing interesting left for tourists to visit.”
