Local connection to new Brendan Gleeson film

Hughes publicans hailed from Nenagh area

Brendan Gleeson's new documentary film about a now-closed Dublin pub has strong connections to the Nenagh area.

‘Farewell to Hughes's’ centres on an early house pub, Hughes' of Chancery St, that for 35 years served as a mecca of traditional music, as well as a libation station frequented by those attending the nearby Four Courts of Justice.

It was run by Michael Joseph Hughes, whose father Martin hailed from Knockahopple, near Dolla, where he was born in 1906. Martin moved to Dublin and purchased the pub in 1953. He died at the young age of 51 - his son Michael was only 13 at the time. Martin's wife Rita died when Michael was 26.

Michael took on the running of the pub. He maintained his links with the Nenagh area and married Marie Loughnane from just outside the town at Islandbawn.

He died in 2019 at the age of 75. Writing his obituary in the Irish Independent that year, Ray Managh told of how Hughes's pub became famous with people from all over the country who had to travel to the Four Courts for business. Generations of judges, barristers, solicitors, court staff, journalists and gardaí frequented the premises, given its close proximity to the Bridewell Garda Station, the Four Courts and Dublin District Courts.

EARLY HOUSE

Hughes's was an early house; it was licensed to open from seven in the morning to facilitate night workers finishing their shifts at the nearby fish and vegetable markets. Those with legal affairs to attend to in the morning used to also take advantage of the early opening hours, among them “a well-known High Court judge” involved in one famous occasion that is alluded to in the obituary.

Michael Hughes, “a man of great faith and the highest integrity and discretion”, was educated in Sutton, Dublin, before moving to Belvedere College. He was interested in many sports but particularly soccer, which he played from his youth into his early 40s. He also hurled for a now defunct club called The Young Irelanders, which had been by founded by, amongst others, his father Martin.

Michael met Marie, a podiatrist working in Dublin, in the mid-1960s. The Nenagh native was living in Kilbarrack, north Dublin at the time. He first met her when delivering an item to the house she lived in; he subsequently saw Marie at a dinner in the North Star Hotel in Amiens Street and asked her out.

Michael was a member of the Licensed Vintners Association and became its president in the early 1980s.

Much of his pub's custom was lost by the transfer of the criminal courts to Parkgate Street and with the development of the Luas line, which passes outside Hughes's. The family continued to the run the pub, with one of Michael's sons Martin following him into the business and becoming manager.

BECAME ILL IN NENAGH

Michael was with his wife in her native Nenagh, on Friday, June 14, 2019, when he was taken suddenly ill. He died from a suspected aneurysm while still receiving medical treatment on his way by ambulance to hospital in Limerick. Many of those that attended his funeral were members of the legal profession from Supreme, High, Circuit and District Court judges, to those just setting out on legal careers, who lunched daily in his pub.

Two years later, Hughes's closed its doors for the last time. There remain many memories buried it its walls, among them the great traditional music sessions that were held over the years.

Award-winning actor Brendan Gleeson played music there often. ‘Brendan Gleeson’s Farewell to Hughes’s’ is an ode to those years, a documentary on the history of the pub that concentrates mostly on the music. Filmed over five days in January 2022 in and around the pub, it records and interviews various musicians, dancers and singers, as they gathered one last time to revisit those memories, with archival footage inserted throughout to tell the story of Hughes’s contribution to both the traditional music community in Dublin and the city as a whole.

‘Brendan Gleeson's Farewell To Hughes's’ is in cinemas now, screening at the Lighthouse Dublin and Palais Galway.

Thanks to Siobhan Harrington of Silvermines Historial Society for helping with this article.