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MCDAIDS

3 HARRY STREET, Dublin

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Pub details

Address
3 HARRY STREET
County
Dublin
Eircode
D02 NC42
Licence reference
S0093

Building and heritage

Modified during the early-twentieth century, the slender rendered façade stands out against the backdrop of largely red brick buildings. Retaining a good decorative shopfront, a good interior and original windows, the building forms part of a collection of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century buildings that gives Harry Street its character. McDaid's was noted as one of the city's literary pubs.

From the record · Verified background

What the archives say

Independent reporting and heritage records on this pub, drawn from a curated list of Irish news outlets, Revenue Commissioners, NIAH, and the Dictionary of Irish Architects. Every claim links to its primary source.

Listing historyCultural mentionsNotable events

Revenue's renewed-liquor-licence register lists licence ref S0093 as a Publican's Licence (7-Day Ordinary) for MCDAIDS at 3 HARRY STREET in DUBLIN CITY with COSGRAVE (MOUNT MERRION) LIMITED as licensee.[1]

NIAH identifies McDaid's as a regional-rated public house at 3 Harry Street, records its original and current use as public house, dates the building to 1860-1880, and notes a 1873 date on the corner-sited building with an early-twentieth-century shopfront.[2]

The Irish Times reported that McDaids sold at a Morrissey auction for £2.9 million on 2 December 1998 and was bought by Oliver Cosgrave, owner of The Druid's Chair in Killiney.[3]

In a 2018 Irish Times books article, Eamon Maher linked McDaid's with Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien and Anthony Cronin, and NIAH describes McDaid's as one of Dublin's literary pubs.[4][2]

Sources  (4)
  1. Revenue Commissioners · Register of Renewed Liquor Licences · 2026-05-08
  2. NIAH · Registry entry, ref. 50920052 · 2015-09-22
  3. Irish Times · "McDaids Pub make £2.9m at auction" · 1998-12-02
  4. Irish Times · "Irish writers and the pub: a dying tradition" · 2018-03-15

Reviewed pub lore

Local notes

Established

Trading on Harry Street, just off Grafton Street.

Earlier uses

The building was once Dublin's City Morgue, and was later converted into a chapel for the Moravian Brethren. The high ceilings, almost-Gothic windows and stained-glass borders are surviving traces of both lives.

Literary links

McDaid's was the literary pub of mid-20th-century Dublin. Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien, J.P. Donleavy and Liam O'Flaherty were all regulars; Behan based characters in *The Hostage* and *Borstal Boy* on publicans and patrons he met here. Joycean scholars identify McDaid's as the setting for the opening of Joyce's short story *Grace*.

Architecture

The high, almost-tomb-like ceiling and Gothic windows survive from the building's chapel period. Little has changed since.

Regulars

Patrick Kavanagh held court from a special seat at the end of the counter through the 1950s. Brendan Behan didn't take his arrival well — the two writers spent years hurling insults at each other across the bar in a vicious public feud, with the regulars generally siding with Kavanagh.

Community memories

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