Noel Leonard sells pub to Diageo

Noel Leonard, proprietor of the closest pub to the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Leonard’s on the corner of Watling Street and Victoria Quay, is retiring as Dublin’s longest-serving barman after more than 50 years.

He’d been in the news recently for lodging an objection and appealing it to An Bord Pleanala to Diageo’s €153 million brewery expansion plans as it had located a water treatment plant ‘inappropriately close’ to the back of his adjacent 19th Century pub.

Noel lives above the pub and following negotiations with Diageo, it has been announced that the brewery has now bought the pub for an undisclosed sum and Noel will be moving out.

A noted Patrickswell hurler in his time, Noel, who’d been in the trade for the past 55 years, has worked in Searsons of Baggot Street, The Black Lion in Inchicore and the Punchbowl in Booterstown.

During all that time he’s served some of Dublin’s most famous characters including Luke Kelly, Paddy Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, Terry Wogan, Larry Gogan and Mike Murphy, Joe Dolan and Charlie Haughey.

His pub interior was recently used as the setting for ‘Napper Tandy’s’, the pub used in the Irish crime drama TV series ‘Love|Hate’.

With his moving out and closing down, another chapter in Dublin’s licensed trade draws to a close.