On-trade

Bailey re-opens

Following its €200,000 revamp, the Bailey on Dublin’s Duke Street officially re-opened recently with the help of some ‘pop–up’ theatre.

The refurbishment of the popular city centre bar has resulted in a newly-invigorated, more welcoming venue. The recent makeover also created a completely new outside area.

Marks & Spencer, which owns the freehold on the building, sold the lease (formerly held by the Thomas Read Group) to hotelier Michael Holland’s Ampleforth for just over €1 million this year. Ampleforth also owns the Fitzwilliam Hotel on Stephen’s Green and its sister company, Hotel Partners, manages the Park Plaza Hotel in Belfast and the Fitzwilliam Hotel there.
Ampleforth will pay a considerably reduced annual rent of just over €200,000.

The Bailey decided on the ‘Pop Up’ Theatre concept as it directly taps into the bar’s rich literary and cultural past. In the 50s and 60s writers like Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan and Flann O Brien used frequent the pub and the door of No 7 Eccles Street (the fictional home of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses) was exhibited in The Bailey until it was moved to the James Joyce Centre.


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