Pint Passport

19 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in Ireland

The short answer

Oldest claim

Sean's Bar

Says AD 900. The first record is 1738.

Grade C · Tradition

Oldest proof

Kyteler's Inn

On record from 1639; the building is dated to about 1275.

Grade B · Building dated

By claim, the oldest pub in Ireland is Sean's Bar on Main Street in Athlone, which dates hospitality on its site to about AD 900. By evidence it is a different house in a different county: Kyteler's Inn in Kilkenny, whose stonework the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage dates to around 1250–1300 and which is recorded in use as an inn from 1639. Sean's own building is dated by the same inventory to about 1725.

Ireland's pub claims run older than almost anywhere, and they are harder to test than almost anywhere, for a reason that has nothing to do with drink. The Public Record Office of Ireland burned at the Four Courts in June 1922, at the opening of the Civil War, and with it went centuries of wills, deeds and administrative record that would otherwise settle these arguments outright. What survives is patchy: estate papers, newspaper notices, reports of licensing courts, and the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, which dates buildings by looking hard at them. The inventory turns out to be the single most useful source on this page, because it repeatedly finds a well-built eighteenth-century house underneath a medieval story. That is the shape of the Irish evidence: a genuinely old trade, carried on for most of its history in premises that were later rebuilt, and recorded in documents that no longer exist. The pubs here are worth reading one at a time rather than as a league table.

Why the dates are hard to check

Almost every Irish claim on this page runs ahead of its fabric, and the gap is usually the same gap. At Sean’s Bar the founding story belongs to Luain, the ferryman who gives Athlone its name, and there is no record of him keeping a house of any kind. At the King’s Head in Galway the building is said to be thirteenth-century and the pub’s date is fixed instead by a story about the executioner of Charles I. At Durty Nelly’s the 1620 date and the landlady it honours are both the pub’s own tradition. None of that makes these poor pubs, and we have argued the Athlone case in full in our look at whether Sean’s Bar is the oldest pub in the world.

What the inventory does to a claim

Three of the most recent additions show the same pattern from the other side. The Norseman in Temple Bar dates itself to a first licence in 1696, and to a tavern called the Wooden Man in the 1500s; the inventory dates its building to about 1900, cites Thom’s Directory of 1862 for a vintner’s on the site, and records that Essex Street was not opened until 1674. The Bleeding Horse on Camden Street claims at least the seventeenth century in wording identical to its Wikipedia article, and the inventory does grant an earlier inn on the site — without saying how much earlier. At Holohan’s in Enniscorthy the owners have done the opposite of marketing: they have published a paper on their own house that lists the records which survive, the records which burned, and the one estate survey in the National Library that would show whether the Bear Inn was theirs in the 1740s.

The houses with something written down

Three stand out. Kyteler’s Inn has medieval walls, a documented association with Dame Alice Kyteler’s 1324 witchcraft trial and a record as an inn from 1639. The Brazen Head can be traced through a named property in 1613 to an ale licence in 1661. The Man O’War near Balbriggan cites deeds of 1595, which have not been published but are at least the right kind of document to look for. For the four Dublin houses and what the architectural inventory found under them, see the oldest pubs in Dublin; for pubs across the border, see Northern Ireland; for how we weigh a story against a record, see the methodology.

Map of 19 old pubs in Ireland

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The contenders, oldest claim first

Order the contenders

  1. Sean's Bar

    Grade C

    Athlone, County Westmeath

    The 900 AD founding by Luain is tradition with no archival support. The NIAH dates the building to c.1725 and describes the wattle partitions found in the 1970s as possibly 17th-century, not 10th-century; the inn is recorded as The Three Blackamoor Heads in 1738. Guinness World Records named it Ireland's oldest pub in 2004 but reportedly no longer keeps an oldest-pub category. The present trade is on the state's own

    Claims AD 900; first recorded 1738; building c.1725.

  2. The Brazen Head

    Grade C

    Dublin, County Dublin

    No record supports 1198. A property called the Brazen Head is documented in 1613 (Richard Fagan), an ale licence in 1661 and use as an inn by 1668; the present building was completed around 1754. The 1668 has a second reading behind it now: John Thomas Gilbert, in his History of the City of Dublin, written from the city's own records in the 1850s, says that the Brazen Head was an inn located from the year 1668 in a

    Claims 1198; first recorded 1613.

  3. The King's Head

    Grade C

    Galway, County Galway

    The pub claims a 13th-century building, once a mayor's house, seized by Colonel Peter Stubbers, whom it calls the executioner of Charles I; that identification is unproven. When the house became a pub is undocumented. The claim names a century and no year, so the ranking sorts it from the century's first year. The national inventory has now been searched, and it holds no entry for the house at all: within fifty

    Claims 1200; no early record found.

  4. Kyteler's Inn

    Grade B

    Kilkenny, County Kilkenny

    The stone building has genuine medieval fabric (NIAH dates origins to c.1250-1300) and is associated with Dame Alice Kyteler, tried for witchcraft in 1324. That she ran an inn here is tradition, and the contemporary record of her prosecution gives it no help: the narrative edited for the Camden Society in 1843, with extracts from the Irish rolls beside it, shows the family as bankers and moneylenders rather than

    Claims 1263; first recorded 1639; building c.1275.

  6. Abbey Tavern

    Grade C

    Howth, County Dublin

    The tavern markets itself as a 16th-century building but gives no licensing history or survey evidence; when it first became a drinking house is unknown. The claim names a century and no year, so the ranking sorts it from the century's first year. The building half of the claim now has an answer. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, read through its open data on 17 September 2026, carries record

    Claims 1500; no early record found.

  7. The Man O'War

    Grade C

    Balbriggan, County Dublin

    The 1595 is published by Visit Dublin, which says there has been a pub on this hilltop since at least that year; a travel guide adds that the figure comes from deeds the pub itself cites. The deeds have not been published, and the pub has no website of its own we could find. The national inventory has now been read, and it puts the house two centuries later than the claim. The National Inventory of Architectural

    Locally dated 1595; no early record found.

  8. The Bleeding Horse

    Grade C

    Dublin, County Dublin

    The pub says the house goes back at least to the seventeenth century, when this was St Kevin's Port, and offers two accounts of the name: a farrier who bled horses at the inn, and a horse wounded at the Battle of Rathmines in 1649. The wording on its site is the Wikipedia article's, word for word, so those two are one source and not two. The independent record is the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

    Claims 1600; first recorded 1871; building c.1871.

  9. Durty Nelly's

    Grade C

    Bunratty, County Clare

    The 1620 and the story of a landlady called Nelly are the pub's own tradition, and no documentary or architectural record of that date has been traced. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, queried again on 18 September 2026, holds no entry for this house: within five hundred metres it records Bunratty Castle, the bridge beside the pub and the house now used as the Bunratty Castle Hotel, and nothing

    Claims 1620; no early record found.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences, or in the public domain. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.

Common questions

Which is the oldest pub in Ireland?
By claim, Sean's Bar in Athlone, which says about AD 900. The architectural inventory dates its building to around 1725 and finds it recorded as the Three Blackamoor Heads in 1738. Kyteler's Inn in Kilkenny, with medieval stone and a record as an inn from 1639, is the better-evidenced answer.
Is Sean's Bar really the oldest pub in the world?
It was certified by Guinness World Records as Ireland's oldest pub in 2004, and Guinness reportedly no longer keeps that category. The buildings archaeologist James Wright points out that the wattle walling displayed in the bar was dated by the inventory to the seventeenth century, not the ninth.
Which is the oldest pub in Dublin?
The Brazen Head near Christ Church claims 1198. A property of that name is documented in 1613, an ale licence follows in 1661 and use as an inn by 1668, while the present coaching inn was completed around 1754. That makes it Dublin's best-documented old tavern rather than a medieval one.
Which Irish pub has the oldest licensing record?
The most striking single piece of testimony belongs to the Old Thatch at Killeagh in east Cork. At an 1867 licence hearing its owner told magistrates the house had been licensed for more than two hundred years, and was then refused a renewal over alleged Fenian sympathies. That is evidence of a claim, not a deed.