The Brazen Head, Dublin

The Brazen Head is the pub you’re looking at, a Dublin coaching inn whose present buildings date from 1754. Its story reaches further back: a merchant’s residence occupied this site by 1613, and permission to sell ale arrived in 1661. The place entered the records as an inn in 1668.

Archaeology beside the pub found traces of activity from the 13th century, including woven foundation mats and part of a timber-and-wattle wall laid across reclaimed marshland. The inn also preserves a connection with Robert Emmet: until the late 1960s, a room carrying his name contained the table he used, positioned so he could watch for approaching enemies. That combination of medieval ground, coaching-inn history and revolutionary memory gives this working pub an unusually dense past.