I WAS SURPRISED TO DISCOVER THAT THIS IS A WETHERSPOON HOTEL

THE OLD BOROUGH HOTEL ON MAIN STREET IN SWORDS

The building was described as follows: “Detached nine-bay two-storey former national school house, c.1810, on a T-shaped plan. Attributed to architect Francis Johnston. Pair of single-bay single-storey projecting porches to front and three-bay two-storey return to rear. Now in use as offices. ROOF: Double pitched; slate; concrete ridge tiles; granite coping; roughcast chimney stack; yellow clay pots; timber eaves; cast-iron rainwater goods; hipped roofs to porches; slate; rolled lead ridge tiles. WALLS: Roughcast over rubble stone; unpainted. OPENINGS: Square headed opening; granite sills; 6/6 timber sash windows; cylinder glass; replacement timber panelled door to left porch; sidelight and overlight; round headed door opening to right porch; timber panelled door; overlight.”

J D Wetherspoon’s first hotel in Ireland (ROI) is set on the bustling main street of Swords. This boutique hotel has 14 en suite rooms, including an accessible room, complete with full DDA-compliant bathroom facilities. Each room features tea- and coffee-making facilities, hair-dryer, flat-screen television, unlimited free Wi-Fi and digital air-conditioning. The Old Borough is one of the town’s best-known buildings, designed by noted Irish architect Francis Johnston. It was a school for 191 years.

J D Wetherspoon plc (branded variously as Wetherspoon or Wetherspoons, and colloquially known as Spoons) is a pub company operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company was founded in 1979 by Tim Martin and is based in Watford. It operates the sub-brand of Lloyds No.1 bars, and around 50 Wetherspoon hotels. Wetherspoon is known for converting unconventional premises, such as former cinemas and banks, into pubs. The company is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Tim Martin opened his first pub in 1979 in Colney Hatch Lane in Muswell Hill, London. Many of the other early Wetherspoon pubs were also in the western part of Haringey. The name of the business originates from JD, a character in The Dukes of Hazzard, and Wetherspoon, the surname of one of Martin’s teachers in New Zealand, who had told him that he thought he would never amount to much.

During the 1990s, Wetherspoons began a policy of routinely closing its smaller or less profitable outlets, often replacing them with larger premises close by. In 1998, Wetherspoons introduced the oversized pint glass to promote the “full pint”. This initiative was withdrawn, supposedly because customers were still asking for top-ups, but arguably because other pub chains did not follow its lead.

Wetherspoons pioneered non-smoking areas in pubs before the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005, The Smoking (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 and the Health Act 2006 in England and Wales became law in 2006.[

The company produces a quarterly in-house magazine, Wetherspoon News, which contains information on the company’s activities, its employees, pubs, political views and comments on recent media mentions. The chain also offers a mobile app from which customers can order food and drink to their table to avoid using the bar, even from outside the pub.

On 16 April 2018, Wetherspoons deleted all of its social media profiles. Chairman Tim Martin cited the “current bad publicity surrounding social media, including the trolling of MPs and others” as a reason for the decision.

The first Wetherspoons pub in the Republic of Ireland, The Three Tun Tavern, opened in Blackrock, County Dublin, in 2014. Another opened in Cork in 2015. The Three Tun Tavern closed in January 2022 after it was bought by a consortium of former and current Irish rugby players including Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip.