What happened
A long, low house on the bend of Great George's Street, its mosaic-lettered timber front of about 1850 set on a building the architectural inventory dates between 1680 and 1720 and records as built to be a public house — which makes it, in the inventory's reading, one of the earliest purpose-built commercial buildings left in the old core of Waterford. The local press calls it the city's oldest pub. The house gave 1710; a further tradition puts a tavern here in the 1400s and makes the lounge wall part of the Norman city wall, and neither has been shown from a record. What is not in doubt is the trade of the last century: nightly traditional music, a spell in the ownership of the Clancy Brothers, and a counter that ran until 30 January 2014, when Eamon Reid retired after a lifetime of it. The premises were in receivership by the February, and the Irish Examiner carried them for auction that March at 330,000 euro, an agent talking up the tourist potential. The historian Patrick Comerford found the doors still shut when he came looking four years later.
What is there now
The building stands, protected, and nobody is served inside it. Waterford's local radio reported in September 2022 that 37,000 euro from the Historic Structures Fund had gone on the 1850s shopfront and its raised lettering, that work was under way and that there was hope of a reopening at some stage. It has not come: an OpenStreetMap surveyor marked the pub abandoned that same month, and in October 2024 a councillor told a Waterford meeting that neighbouring traders would be helped if Doolan's were open. One season of outdoor bar service in the summer of 2020, reported at the time as the pub coming back, is the only drink recorded here since 2014, and it has not been repeated.
Location recorded from OpenStreetMap way 772940370, T & H Doolan, 32 Great George's Street, tagged abandoned since 9 September 2022 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/772940370).
Sources
- wlrfm.com
- National Inventory of Architectural Heritagebuildingsofireland.ie
- irishexaminer.com
- patrickcomerford.com
- waterford-news.ie
- waterfordnow.ie, via the Internet Archiveweb.archive.org
- data.gov.ie
- openstreetmap.org
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