Christmas: tables, and Lauren’s for groups, are booking now. Ask for a date

The Bar · 52 O’Connell Street

The house,as it is now.

The front bar by day: light from the tall window across the floorboards, red candles on the tables, stools drawn up and the gilt mirror over the fireplace.
  • A bartender straining a cocktail into a coupe, the lit back bar behind him.
  • A corner of Lauren’s: a banquette, a candle and framed prints on the damask wall.
  • A trad session at the tables, guitars and a fiddle under the framed posters.
  • The corner at night, the terrace lit under the trees.
  • The terrace on a summer afternoon, striped umbrellas and every table taken.
  • A clover club in a coupe, the bottles glowing red behind.
  • The fireplace under the old gilt mirror, a candle on the table beside it.
  • A session in full swing under the photo wall, players and listeners packed round the tables.
  • A fiddle player at a session, under a lamp and the framed pictures on the red wall.
  • Looking in from the terrace at night, the gold lettering of The White House Bar on the window.
  • A pint of Guinness on a mirrored table, a lamp glowing on the wall behind.
  • A brass lantern lit beside the old whiskey mirrors, the bar busy below.

Since 1812

A date on the mirror

The year is in gilt over the fire: The White House, Est. 1812. The house is a red-brick corner townhouse from about 1810, with a late-Victorian shopfront and an interior the national survey calls largely intact.

It has been a public house for most of two centuries, and a home to Limerick’s poets, who still read here on the first Wednesday of the month.

Now it’s music every night, cocktails, a pint given time to settle, and Lauren’s downstairs.

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