This old pub situated on part of the monastic site of St. Kevin’s Monastery in Kilnamanagh has been serving food and drink to travellers for over 250 years. Once famed as a high class inn and coachhouse on the old Turnpike Road this house has in its time been owned by a Goldsmith, the pawnbroker, a Solicitor, a wandering Yank and a minister of the Protestant Church, Rev. George Bradley, who inherited it in the Fenian era of 1864. But the Rev. George didn’t stay too long, realizing that there were easier and less complicated ways of acquiring money - such as passing the basket around during Sunday service.

By 1912 this house had acquired a ballroom license which attracted all the eligible and not so eligible ladies and gents for miles around. However a rumor still abounds that certain members of the ecclesiastical profession were not too happy about this departure on the grounds that many matrimonial ceremonies were taking place in a rather hurried and unorthodox manner.

In this ere Kilnamanagh was the heartland of culchie Dublin – green fields, trees and blossoming Agricultural and Dairy produce. There was no mention of the Tallaght Bypass. The many trees surrounding the premises were inhabited each summer by flocks of nesting cuckoos, and from this appears the most likely explanation of the title Cuckoos Nest.

By 1962 Proprietier Larry O’Neill was tiring of the licensed trade and sold to the late Peadar Lynch who was then preparing for marriage.

In August of that year the newly weds Peadar and Phyllis Lynch, who delayed the closing of the sale because of their honeymoon, crossed the threshold of the Cookoos Nest. But , on this location they were accompanied by Cavan apprentice, John McKeown and another Cavan boy Nick Farrelly guess what, after 30 years , John has only retired still a young man at heart who could write a book about the Cuckoos and maybe some day he will. For both of them it was a culture shock and a new world despite their rural origins in County Cavan. Within a year, however, the Lynch’s found new methods of boosting turnover by creating what was to become one of Dublin’s best Pitch & Putt courses.