METICULOUSLY RESTORED Bob Griffin's Pub in Dingle, County Kerry. A jewel in Ireland's boozy crown!

Today’s visit is very special. You may remember a while back I took a walk around the town of Dingle in County Kerry? Well on that occasion I passed this beautiful little pub in Strand Street and couldn’t resist nipping in for a couple of pints.

A lot of work goes into these videos as you can well see! You can now buy me a pint as a means of appreciation for my work on Naked Ireland, no obligation, obviously - only if you can afford it... I appreciate it. Cheers.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/NakedIre...

Now you will already have assumed that Bob Griffin’s pub is owned, or at least was once owned by a guy called Bob Griffin. Wrong! In fact Bob Griffin was a lady (who I presume was called Roberta Griffin?) whose maiden name was Devane and who married fisherman, Patrick Poggin Griffin.

And I think it’s fair to say that there’s a tradition of women running pubs in Ireland. There are many pubs up and down the country with women’s names above the door, and it’s obvious that if her husband Patrick was a fisherman then he could be of limited use behind the bar.

The bar first opened in 1937 and is typical of old Dingle pubs close to the quay, in that it would have had its bar in the front (as you can see here) and a fish curing business at the back. So back in the day you could have bought yourself a pint and a nice piece of mackerel – what a lovely combination.

The space out the back today serves as a lovely terrace area in the good weather. But the entire quirkiness of this pub is completely intact. The pub was entirely restored and reopened in 2019. Fortunately it had previously escaped the trend in the 70s and 80s for pub modernisation.

Bob Griffin, had retired at the age of 80 in the very early 2000’s, and more recently the pub was bought by Ricky and Dawn Keane. But thankfully their approach to the pub’s rebirth was more about preservation than simply to refit the place. This meant that everything you see had to be taken down and numbered, so that it could be placed back in its position after extensive works were carried out to bring the place up to standard. This entailed numbering each removed item so that when reinstalled, the bar would appear not to have been changed at all.

There’s a real beauty about this wee place, and I think its beauty is enhanced by the fact that this is a living, working pub and not simply a museum piece. Laughter, jokes, songs can still be heard in here in the evenings as in bygone years. And the pictures on the wall tell the story of the people and the of land on this Dingle Pennensula, going back to a time when it wasn’t tourism that sustained it, but backgbreaking work in the fields or out on the sea.

Such is the restoration here that all the patina is preserved. This is a finish that for most people would have been ready for a fresh sand and coat of gloss, but not here. The paint layers reveal the years as a clock tells the time.

But I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look at this quaint old pub. Good to get to do it during the day when it’s empty too so that we can properly see the place, though I’m certain the craic is 90 here in the evenings.