Through Famine, Rebellion,
Civil Unrest, World Wars,
Economic Downturns & Pandemics,
one place remains the same…
A Brief History
1833
Starting out as a Private Residence, in a quiet farming area in 1831. The owner John O’Neill, Hotelier and businessman saw an opportunity for a new venture when word of a new and all-inclusive cemetery was to open next door to his home.
It was planned that Prospect Cemetery would be open for all of Dublin’s dead by 1832. It is said that John O’Neill sold the front portion of his house to Prospect cemetery as a Gate or Sexton Lodge, keeping the rear portion to make a bar on the ground floor and a private residence on the first floor.
In 1833 he open the bar, conveniently located beside the main entrance of Prospect Cemetery and meant a brisk trade as funeral corteges and mourners would come in to await the gates opening. Where better to wait than a warm interior with a gracious host? John’s daughter Susannah married a John Kavanagh in 1835 and John O’Neill transferred the business to them a generous wedding gift indeed!
Susannah and John Kavanagh not only had a busy public bar to run. They also had a busy private life with no less than twenty four children to attend to, all at No1 Prospect Square. Three of Susannah & John Kavanagh’s sons left for the United States to fight in The War of Independence and are mentioned in the chronicles on The Battle of Gettysburg. In 1867 one son Joseph returned to Dublin only to flee again as a suspected Fenian activist.
Young Joseph Kavanagh returned again in 1877 to assist in the business and to eventually take over. Joseph was ambitious and ran for local office, for a brief time the facia above the bar would read his name. At this time Prospect Cemetery had grown and had moved the main entrance to the Finglas Road causing a sharp fall in business. Undeterred he installed a Shooting Range and Skittle Alley to entice new customers. He handed out bill heads at the new gate guiding curious and potential customers to take the stile gate (interesting in itself) via the original coach road to the pub on route to The National Botanical Gardens.
Business did drop but still the Kavanagh’s and the Bar survived. The area remained a quiet enclave with a dairy and pig farm and orchard nearby. The gavel and stone square was a wide-open space where wind would wipe up the dust. In the early 1911 Josie McKenna Kavanagh from Howth in Co Dublin was licensee. Josie had married the younger John H Kavanagh, when
she was employed as a servant by his mother. Josie with two of their sons would run the business till 1943.
Josie added a grocery shop, some of the remnants can still be seen today, a private meeting room was also added to the bar business. It is said many a republican meeting was held here in the early days of a fledgling Nation.
Josie & John had four sons, Fintan, John M, Michael & Gerard. Gerard became a printer and Michael went into carpentry. During Josie’s’ era, the Pub would be known locally as Josie’s or The Widows a nickname many locals used up until the 1990s. In 1943 Josie’s son John M took over the pub and ran the business alongside his brother Fintan. Michael Kavanagh died young leaving a young wife and five young children. To keep this young family together John M married his sister-in-law and became a surrogate father to his nieces and nephews. One of his nephews was Eugene Kavanagh, Michael’s youngest son, from the age of eight Eugene would work behind the counter with his Uncle Fintan and his second father and Uncle, John M Kavanagh.
Eugene’s tutorage would serve him well and he in turn would tutor his own children. In the 1970s after a successful career in Guinness’s Eugene Kavanagh bought the pub outright from his family becoming the sole owner. He and his beautiful Yorkshire wife Kathleen not only ran the pub but renovated the residence on the first floor and raised a family of six children. Together in the 1980s, they built a Lounge Bar, No2 Prospect Square. This lounge catered for couples, and children and crisps were not allowed in the Lounge that had carpeted floors & flocked paper walls! A luxury Lounge.
Not until 2000 when the family refitted the Lounge did this rule
change and children were welcomed into this adult space. The pub has changed little the area has built up around it and the dusty gravel square is now a lovely green space with mature trees. However, some things remain the same, there has never been a television or public phone in either Bar or Lounge. There is a no music policy, live or piped. Stories abound of rowdy wakes, feuding locals and forgotten heroes.
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One story goes that in the 1990s the crème of Irish & International Music descended into the bar to mourn the loss of a much-loved Dublin Folk singer. As the crowd cleared their throats and started to tune up instruments, Eugene turned to the glass washer (his son) ‘What do they think
they’re doing?’ .. on being told they’re tuning up for a wake, they were quickly informed, no singing, no music, no exceptions! Simply because it would mean the locals could sing every night and they were not in the same league as these musical legends, oh but what a session that would have been!
The great thing about this bar is the continuous family link from John O’ Neill to the current Kavanagh family. It is perhaps the longest generational bar in Dublin and even Ireland. Often three generations 7th , 8th & 9th Kavanagh family will work alongside each other that is pretty
special, if not unique.
So it could be a Kavanagh serving up a Coddle or a pulling a Pint. You never know who you’ll find there perhaps even one of The Gravediggers from the Cemetery next door?