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Disney's Ragland Road Irish Pub History and Tour

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• Raglan Road covers 20,000 square feet (Equivalent of 3 basketball courts) and that the average Irish Pub as about 150 square feet?
• the Raglan Road Music Room contains two portraits, many photos and a collection of bric a brac that is synonymous with Irish traditional music?

The History of The Location of Downtown Disney's Raglan Road Irish Pub

• A Carousel - hence the rotunda or round room of the main bar
• It then changed its function to a Food Emporium serving different ethnic foods.
• After that life on this site changed again and it became a Jazz Bar.
• Finally in 2005, Disney invited Great Irish Pubs to develop an Irish Pub and Restaurant with quality food drink, music and staff.

The Origins of the Irish Pub

• The Irish Pub finds its roots in the Irish home. The traditional Irish pub was part of the home. When you were finished, you locked up the pub and went upstairs to sleep - in other words you "slept over the shop" or store.
• "Pub" = "public house" (a private house licensed to sell beer and liquor).
• In Irish towns, the private home could be composed of as little as four rooms - two bedrooms on the second floor and two rooms (kitchen and social room) on the 1^st floor. The "social room" (the dining-room) would become the bar. When customers would become too many in number, they would migrate to the kitchen ..and even outside the premises (drinking from glasses, bottles or cans in the open air is quite normal in Ireland).
• The pub also doubled as the local convenience store where fruit, vegetables, meats, and bread could be sold in addition to essential consumer needs
• From simple origins, the Irish Pub evolved into a two room structure - the "Bar" and the "Snug". Women and men drank separately - the women in the snug and the men in the bar. The two areas were separated by the timber screens or glass separators. Raglan Road is a fine example of this. 
• In time the Snug evolved into a "Lounge" and this still exists today in the Irish Pub - a basic Bar with stools and timber/ tiled floor and a carpeted lounge with soft seating (similar to the Music Room or the Main Bar). The prices of drinks will be marginally less in the bar than in the lounge.

Patrick Kavanagh - Man and Poet

• Patrick Kavanagh was born in 1904 - in a county called Monaghan..
• He was a "small farmer" - he had only 30 acres of poor quality land.
• Kavanagh's love of nature was the driving force behind his poetry.
• He suffered poor health in his early years with Tuberculosis
• He studied Arts at Trinity College,Dublin
• Fell passionately in love with a woman when in his 30's. He wrote "Raglan Road" for her. She rejected him. He remained single until 1967 - when he married at 63. Tragically he was to die that same year.
• Kavanagh was grumpy of nature like many artists. But he never lost his love of farming and nature.
• He was shy, insecure, he resented the institutions of Church and state - but God and nature were very important to him.
• He wrote in one of his last poems
• Patrick Kavanagh died in 1967 of lung cancer. He was 63.

Now is the time to begin our REAL tour of Raglan Road Irish Pub. We hope it helps you gain a deeper insight into the genius that brought together so many different strands of life in all its forms to make Disney's Raglan Road what it is today.

Essential Facts about the Raglan Road Irish Pub

• Everything in the Pub has been imported from Ireland - with the exception of the toilets. They came from Kohler in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• The panels in the Raglan Snug and the Raglan Room are more than 180 years old. 
• The antique furniture throughout the pub (e.g storage and work stations and Raglan Room) are valued at over $5000 each...Be careful....

Raglan Road - The Snug

2 Portraits

• George Bernard Shaw - with beard and his hand to his mouth. 19^th century playwright and critic - writer of  "Heartbreak House" and "Joan of Arc".
• Samuel Beckett - 20^th century a Modernist playwright and critic. His best known plays are "Endgame" and "Waiting for Godot"

Lead-lined tinted translucent glass and section separators are characteristic of Irish Pubs and can still be seen in many of them today.

The photos ( starting with top row - left to right)

1. Grafton St - This is Dublin's "5^th Avenue" and is right in the heart of the city center. Most things about Ireland when viewed thro American eyes are very small and Grafton Street is no exception. This street is only 25 feet in width from sidewalk to sidewalk and the street is about 200 yards in length from top to bottom. Grafton Street is also home to Bewleys Tea and Coffee - which we offer.
2. Kavanagh the Man  - a rare portrait
3. Baggott St Bridge and the Grand Canal - A place where Kavanagh loved to walk and ponder life as he wrote his poetry
4. Kavanagh in his younger years
5. The Wedding Couple - this is Kavanagh on his wedding day - he was 63 and he was to die later that same year
6. A Barge on the Grand Canal - the Grand Canal is only 30 feet in width and runs to a depth of between 3 feet and 8 feet. This photograph is taken from close to where Kavanagh would sit and contemplate life. While Claude Monet would paint canals and lilies, Kavanagh would write of them in his poetry where his troubled and agitated spirit was often soothed by the stillness of the water
7. The Wedding Photo - Kavanagh, his wife and guests on his wedding day.
8. Davy Byrne's - this is well known Irish Pub where Kavanagh used to drink. It is close to Grafton Street (remember - this is the 5^th avenue of Dublin).

The Raglan Room

Raglan Road is found in an exclusive part of Dublin where you will also find the US Embassy. The accent on the Raglan Room is on luxury/refinement. This is characterized by the two high armchairs, the fireplace and the Georgian furniture (3 pieces), the onyx lampshades and timber panels - part of which have come from refurbished houses on Raglan Road. There are also 2 false doors in the panels - one is on the right of the fire place and the other is to the left of the mural of Kavanagh and Kelly.

The Photos

1. The Ivy Market -in Dublin's Inner City known as "The Liberties".
2. Street Vendor: Sellers of flowers, vegetables, fruit or fish. These women still bring their produce on old prams and they are renowned for their wit.
3. Kavanagh going home on the Landau after a long day composing in Davy Byrne's...say no more.
4. The 5 Lamps - a landmark in Dublin at a major intersection - these lamps were originally gas-fired.
5. Dame Street with a view of Trinity College Dublin, the first University in Dublin straight ahead - and the Bank of Ireland on the left which began life as the Irish House of Parliament.
6. O'Connell Bridge (upper picture) which is at the heart of Dublin - a feature of this bridge is that it is wider than it is long because the Liffey is only 150 feet wide where it flows through Dublin City Center.
   The Barge on the Royal Canal Canals were used to transfer non-perishable goods. There were two in Dublin - The Royal and the Grand Canal - and they stretched over 70 miles from the middle of Ireland to Dublin Bay. Constructed in the 18^th century, the barges would be towed by horses that walked alongside the canals. The speed of the water was controlled by "locks" or huge timber sluice gates that could be manually controlled.
7. Grafton Street (facing North)
   We have already seen one photo of Grafton Street. Now we are looking in the other direction (towards Trinity College)
   
   Shop Fronts
   
   Compare the window with the width of the doorway to see just how small these shops could be - some were no more than 150 square feet - or 15 feet by 10 feet.
8. Shop Fronts

This is the last of the photos of the Raglan Room and backs onto the Rest Room Corridor. Note the cornices at the top of the pillars or shop-fronts. If you look at the Main Room in the bar you will see similar cornices at the top of the pillars just under the roof.

The Main Room

• Note the photo of a man playing a "Bodhran" (pronounced Bow-rawn) The bodhran is a traditional Irish instrument made from animal hide which is stretched over a circular piece of timber at high heat and then nailed down with tacks. The facing side of the bodhran is often painted with Celtic designs.
• Note the photos on the right - especially the lowest one. This is an "uileann" pipes ( pronounced "ill-in").
• These pipes are different to the Scottish bagpipes as they have no mouthpiece thro which to blow; rather they are inflated by the arms of the musician who has a cord strapped to his arm which is attached to a bellows. When he raises his arm, the bellows inflates and the sound is similar to that of the bagpipes.

The Ceiling:

• A series of faces at the top of the pillars. These are characteristic of Georgian architecture which can be found throughout Dublin. Remember that Ireland only got independence from England in 1922. Before that, it was part of the British empire. In fact Dublin was the second city of the British Empire after London. This fact explains the abundance of fine architecture throughout Dublin.

• Cornices just under ceiling are also characteristic of Dublin's architecture.

• Dancer's stage in the center of the room was formerly a preacher's pulpit. Like the furniture, this too was imported from Ireland.

• The "High Falutin" Snug is designed much like the small snug; the people in the portraits are not of any great significance. The snug also contains other photos of everyday life in Dublin.

• The drawers you see before you were actually made from an old chemist's shop in Ireland and are at least 160 years old.
• The handles on the drawers are the names of original lotions and potions used to cure all ills. They are typical of the kind of drawers you would find in the Irish Pub.
• The traditional Irish pub would double as the grocery and retail store. Therefore, these drawers could contain everything from shoe laces to Tylenol, combs, cookies, bags of tea leaves or even home stationary - the pubs was truly the local convenience store. (Think Walmart + Walgreens + ABC Liqour Store within an a room of no more than 30 feet by 30 feet!).
• The shelves on the back wall  include the following:
  • Glass Urn, Oil Lamp, Ceramic Hot Water Bottle , Tea Caddies (containers for loose tea leaves - this preceded the tea-bag and is still extremely popular in Ireland) and Pewter tea-pot,

The Music Room

1. Bob Geldof -

• Geldof d started a band called the "Boomtown Rats" - they were a punk rock group that shot to fame in Ireland and Britain in the late 1980's. 
• also known for his achievement in making the 1984 "Live Aid" concert a reality. This concert was run simultaneously between London and New York and raised awareness about the plight of famine and Aids in Africa.
• In the last year he organized "Live 8" - a new initiative with Bono which sought to remove World Debt.

• Wonderful Irish bands called "Planxty" and "Moving Hearts". 
• Moore is the ultimate truth seeker as is evident in his music.

• The photo collection illustrates traditional Irish "Ceili" (pronounced "Kay Lee") dancing.
• Romance was an element that was rarely in evidence in Ceili dancing - the accent is on the community and the group - not the individual or the couple.
• If you look at the top photo of the pillar near Paddy's Bar you will see a man sitting at a table with a fiddle under his chin; before him are his pint and his paper - behind him are a group of people (possibly family or visitors) who can only find a seat on the stairway. This is a classic traditional Irish session.

• Contain items that are up to a century old. If you study them you may be able to pick out a Phonograph for playing vinyl records, , a Seltzer, a Hohner accordion, a fiddle and a variety of Music manuscripts that predate the Second World War.

• was developed as Patrick Kavanagh studied at Trinity College.
• the high tops of the tables close to the Bar which are reminiscent of a Library

• James Joyce -Ireland's greatest writer. His portrait is near the door.
• Joyce's greatest works include "Ulysses", "Finnegan's Wake" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". Joyce died in the 1920's.
• Sean O'Casey - Irish playwright behind the Main Bar -  dressed in red.
• His most famous plays are "The Plough and The Stars", "Shadow of A Gunman" and "Juno and the Paycock". O'Casey also lived in the 20^th century.

• modeled on an old pub in Dublin bars that is over 180 years old.
• The small "Stamp-like" tiles were all placed there individually in the original bar.
• Other features include the marble-top counter and the Black/Amber/Red tiles on the floor which are characteristic of 19^th century architecture.

Now that you have ended up looking at your feet, it's perhaps as good a time as any to let one or two small details about the pub penetrate your already overloaded brain.

• Raglan Road covers 20,000 square feet (Equivalent of 3 basketball courts).
• The average area of the Irish Pub was about 150 square feet.
• What makes the Irish Pub special is a basic interest in people - to communicate that will be of more value than all the details you have read here

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