When I got home I checked and discovered that the site is to be redeveloped as 163 bedroom six storey high hotel which will also include a smaller pub than whate is there at present.


This public house is described as a local landmark on a prominent site rising above the neighbouring terrace. Located on the corner of North Circular Road, which was laid out by the 1780s, and Dorset Street Lower, an ancient street formerly known as the Great Drogheda Road (later as Drumcondra Lane for its path north out of the city), a pub or inn has reportedly occupied this site since mediaeval times.

Huguenot settlers are also meant to have created Ireland's first Florists' Club and held its meetings at the Rose Tavern, on part of the site now occupied by this public house and supposedly established in 1453, to which a sign on the extant shopfront now refers. The name 'Big Tree Inn' is purported to come from Big Tree Lane, a former nearby site where five men, captured by militia in the 1798 Rebellion, were hung. The building once operated as a grocery and served as the Petty Sessions Courthouse for Drumcondra in the late Victorian period.