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Monday, July 3, 2023

Richardsons Pub

One of Galway city's most prominent locations with prestigious "1 Eyre Square" address, this hotel and bar was run by the Richardson family between 1955 and the start of July 2023, when they decided to retire and closed the pub.

It featured a large downstairs bar, a second bar and attached meeting room upstairs which in later years served as a meeting room for a wide range of causes (including many anti-establishment groups), the smallest off-license in the city, and accommodation on the upper floor.  

With a great view over Kennedy Park and Eyre Squire, the building sported many different colour schemes over the years, always including the motto Nil Satis Nili Optimum ("Nothing but the best is good enough").   

It fitted symbolically into Eyre Square's bar and hotel offerings, with the very stylish and conservative Hardiman in the south end, the large and popular Skeffington Arms in the west side - and Richardsons' diagonally and metaphorically on the opposite side of the square.



Richardson's Pub, April 2023


Young lads overheard in Eyre Square in 2023:  "Imagine the grottiest pub you've ever been in. Now imagine something just a bit grottier.   That's what Richardson's is like".

The least-salubrious of Galway city-centre's pubs - with the best address.

Pub wall with plaque of Rita Ann Higgins's poem 'Men With Tired Hair' was unveiled by Professor Adrian Frazier at Richardson's Bar, No. 1 Eyre Square, Galway as part of the Cuirt International Festival of Literature on April 8th, 2014.   The poem:    On a bank holiday Monday in Galway you can see old men sitting on window sills in Prospect Hill.  Time is not a factor here only images, pleasing and displeasing to the men with tied hair.  Despite this easiness with life there is waiting a look-out in anticipation of something  The looking up and down continues the awaited stimulus always comes  Days it's a young woman Streets it's a fire. Years it's news of a tragedy in far-off Dublin.
"Men with Tied Hair"

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