A HISTORY OF SWENY'S

F.W. Sweny and Co (Limited) opened its doors as a dispensing chemist in 1853. A fortuitous location in the heart of Dublin’s south inner city it lies within 100 yards of the birthplace of Oscar Wilde and within 50 yards of the location where James Joyce was stood up by Nora Barnacle on the 14th June 1904. Is this significant?

Two days later she would give in to his pressing advances and this day, the 16th June 1904, would go down in literary history as the day that forms the backdrop for Joyce’s Ulysses, arguably the greatest novel ever written. Sweny’s has the great honour of being described in sumptuous detail within the novel and that description stands to this very day as the premises has been preserved perfectly intact. The hero, Leopold Bloom, comes into the shop, admires its bottles of potions and compounds and ponders the alchemy that the place possesses and it seems impossible not to be caught up in the magical air of this wondrous place when entering its deep mahogany doors today.

Today the shop is maintained by volunteers, in the same condition as it was when the young James Joyce first visited. It has been here for Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and the residents of Fenian Street and Westland Row for over a hundred years.