Thought I’d better stop in for a half pint of Guiness to quench the thirst I’d built up walking the massive cemetery that sits beside this iconic landmark.
John Kavanagh’s lays claim to being the oldest family pub in Dublin – it was established in 1833 and the current family are the 6th generation in the business. This is a genuine Victorian bar, totally unspoilt. Rough, rustic, unmodified. It’s like stepping back in time.
Better-known as Gravediggers, because the grave workers working at the adjacent Glasnevin Cemetery used to order sneaky pints on the job through a secret hatch in the pub wall.
Like many pubs in Ireland, they too have a resident ghost. This one has never been a threat and doesn’t set out to scare.
He’s an elderly gent dressed in tweed, apparently. Seen and reported by many though the years. He enters, stands at the bar, drinks a pint, then disappears. No one knows his name, but it’s thought he was a regular, just continuing with his daily drinking routine.
In the movie ‘The Irish pub’, one of the bartenders relates a story of a bottle of whiskey or something like that flying off the shelf by his head when nobody else was in the pub. There are said to be over one million people buried in the cemetery just metres away, including tens of thousands all thrown into ‘the cholera pit’. Other barmen have apparently reported seeing things that they can’t explain.
When I lived in Dublin this was my Local pub and yep it has that feeling when you first go in. There is a feeling of everyone staring at you when you are the only person there.