‘It’s like something from The Simpsons’ — Dubliners slam ‘gaudy signage’ on former Sackville Lounge pub

Dubliners have slammed “gaudy” new signage above what was once The Sackville Lounge, a traditional local pub just a stone’s throw from O’Connell Street.

The Sackville has been closed since 2020 when it was taken over by Mulligans Leisure Group.

The new signage, which only appeared in recent days, is dotted with shamrocks and reads: Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale & Stout House, Public House since 1914.

Dubliners have since compared it to “a fridge magnet you’d buy in a Carroll’s gift shop”, or looking like “a cheap and tacky tourist trap”.

Dublin by Pub, a popular blog which has been building an archive of the city’s pubs, said small, intimate bars like The Sackville are rightly held dear by those who frequent them.

“People naturally get upset when someone wants to overhaul such places that they hold so dear,” they said.

“To see the gaudy signage that heralds ‘Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale and Stout House’, we make a fair assumption that the pub’s target market will no longer be the GPO and Dublin Bus workers you’d often see frequenting the place.

“Over the last 24 hours, the name has been likened to something from The Simpsons or any of the generic Irish bars on a Mediterranean budget package holiday destination.”

They also added that the name Biddy Mulligan comes from a folk song about a street seller who lived on the other side of the city around the Coombe.

“Dubliners have a special place in their hearts for their pubs – and why shouldn’t we? We have some of the best public houses on earth,” they said.

“Ours are the archetype, the ones against which all others should be measured, and the idea that someone should take an original and transform it into a gaudy pastiche, mainly for profit, is offensive to a lot of us.

“These public houses are part of our built heritage, and the reason a lot of people come to this city in the first place.

“There’s an onus on us to make sure as many of them stay as authentic as possible – and as Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale and Stout House does not scream authenticity to a lot of us, I think we’re entirely validated in bemoaning that fact.”

Donal Fallon, Dublin historian and Three Castles Burning podcaster, added that most tourism is motivated by a search for “something authentic”.

He said a prime example of this exists in the neighbouring Piper’s Corner, a pub that supports traditional musicians with a mostly local clientele with occasional visitors who stumble upon it who feel they found “something real”.

“There’s a great moment when those worlds meet, something we all look for when we travel,” he said.

Looking at the new signage above the old Sackville Lounge, Mr Fallon compared the signage to a “poor imitation” of McSorley’s Ale House in New York, which is a very historic institution.

“To try and recreate something distinctly Irish American here falls flat,” he said.

“May is the centenary of Sackville Street becoming O’Connell Street and it was one of the last little nods in the area to that past.

“Ultimately, public houses are privately run commercial enterprises and they can do as they wish with these things.

“A number of pub interiors are rightly protected architecturally, but it’s ultimately people that make a public house special,” he added.

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