by Mark Sheehan

Created on: September 07, 2008

There's a joke amongst Dubliners that if tourists ask for a good pub to go to, send them to Johnnie Fox's and leave the city to the locals.

The joke is not as mischievous as it might seem since at the end of the 35-minute drive out of the city and up the mountains that crescent the south of the capital, is a traditional pub that has become the quintessential Ireland for tens of thousands of holiday makers.

The truth is, if you wish to visit a pub in Dublin that is enveloped in as much history and folklore as it is "craic agus ceoil" then you'd struggle to find one with more historical worth than Johnnie Fox's Pub.

Everything about it is history. High in the Wicklow mountains, just outside the city, in the village of Glencullen, it was founded in 1798, the year of one of the bloodiest and most famous rebellions in Irish history.

It is situated in a village that served as home to Daniel O'Connell, the "Great Emancipator", who championed the fight for equal rights for Catholics at the end of the 18th Century and start of the 19th Century. A few minutes' walk away, and marked by an inscribed stone, is the site of one of O'Connell's "monster" rallies.

Being outside the city of Dublin, and on the fringes of the bell heather-covered slopes of the Wicklow mountains - one of the deadliest routes for the marching British military - the pub itself was a regular meeting point for Irish patriots. The leaders of the 1916 Rising famously congregated there to discuss on-going plans for the imminent rebellion, with Michael Collins, later to be assassinated by his former comrades during the Irish Civil War, amongst them.

Even the great Irish play-write, Samuel Beckett, is linked to the place, with the story that his father took him as a 10-year-old boy to the top of Glencullen Road, minutes outside the village, to watch Dublin burning during that same uprising on Easter weekend 1916.

The pub itself, now a honeypot for intrigued tourists and indulgent Dubliners, boasts a decor and character that is steeped in the past and can successfully hide away its clientele from the monotonous labours of modern life.

Its exterior is reminiscent of a 1930s picture postcard, complete with a tiny two-seater Austen parked, flat-tyred, outside the entrance. Inside, it boasts a mini-labyrinth of tiny corridors which network its series of small rooms together. The roof is low, the rooms are square and small (though cosy) and the flagstone floor ensures a rustic flavour to the atmosphere.

Pitchforks, scythes

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