THE CAPEL BAR AND LOUNGE I AM NOT SURE IF THIS I STILL AN EARLY HOUSE.
This is located on Green Street rather than Capel Street.
Even though I live nearby I had never really been aware of this pub so I know very little about it but a friend mentioned that it is an “early house” as are many pubs in the area. My friend also mentioned that it was open from 7am to 2pm.
When I worked in Dublin Docks [a long time ago] there were many pubs that were known as ‘early houses’. They were pubs [public houses] that were granted a special licence which allowed them to open from Monday to Saturday at 7am. Such pubs catered for milkmen, dock workers, market traders, fishermen, night workers and those attending early-morning fairs and markets.
I suspect that there are now new fewer than twenty early houses left in Dublin and that most of them are near Capel Street or the nearby markets. There may be a few on the quays and near Pearse Street.
Looking back to the ‘good old days’ they may not have been such a good idea. I worked for a shipping company that employed dock workers and seamen who earned good money but many of them hardly ever went home to their families because they spent most of their non-working hours in local early house pubs. On pay-day their wives or their mothers would visit the pubs in order to collect whatever money was needed to run the home but in many cases there may not have be much left because the men often had to repay debts. The unfortunate result was many earned really good money but their families lived in poverty. The company did try a scheme whereby wives could visit the wages-office and collect part of the weekly wage packet but that scheme did not even last four weeks.
