Back Lane runs between High Street and Nicholas Street in the heart of the Liberties, one of the oldest and most historically dense parts of Dublin city. It is a street where the medieval and the post-medieval overlap – Tailors’ Hall, the oldest surviving guildhall in Dublin, stands directly across the road, and beneath the ground, 2006 archaeological excavations at the Mother Redcap’s site revealed deposits stretching from the Hiberno-Norse period through to the post-medieval era. A Jesuit chapel and college opened on this ground in 1628. The old city walls ran through here. This is not a part of Dublin that lacks for history.

The building most people know as Mother Redcap’s Tavern was erected in 1875 as a shoe factory for James Winstanley – his initials are carved into the keystone above the door. The pub itself dates to 1760, and by the late 1980s the complex had become home to one of Dublin’s most beloved indoor markets, a weekend maze of antique stalls, bric-a-brac, Guinness mirrors and Dublin memorabilia that drew collectors and browsers from across the city until its closure in the early 2000s. It has stood empty since, caught between demolition proposals and heritage objections, its future still unresolved.

The name comes from an 18th-century Dublin pub landlady – a formidable, fiery woman known for her red cap – whose tavern became a fixture of Liberties folklore. “Mother Redcap” was a title applied across Ireland and Britain to strong-willed ale wives and inn keepers, women who ran houses that didn’t ask too many questions. In the Liberties tradition, she is remembered as someone who sheltered those the law would rather have found.

The paranormal reputation of this part of Back Lane is inseparable from the wider atmosphere of the Liberties – and in particular from the story of Darkey Kelly, whose shadow falls across this entire district. Kelly ran a brothel in the Liberties in the mid-18th century and moved in the orbit of the Hellfire Club, whose members included Simon Luttrell, Sheriff of Dublin. When she and Luttrell fell out, Kelly was accused of witchcraft and murder. She was hanged and burned at the stake in 1761. Whether she was guilty of what she was charged with, or whether she was a woman who knew too much about powerful men and paid for it, has been debated ever since.

Her ghost – known in the Liberties as the Green Lady – is said to haunt the steps leading down to St Audoen’s Church, a short walk from Back Lane, where witnesses have described a misty green form drifting above the steps before disappearing into the old stone wall. Dublin City Council’s own folklore record places her here. Ghost tour operators have documented alleged EVP recordings and temperature drops in the area.

At the Mother Redcap’s building itself, those who have spent time in and around the complex have reported cold drafts in enclosed spaces, footsteps from the cellar levels, and dark figures on the surrounding cobblestone streets after dark. Whether these belong to the tavern’s own history, to the woman whose name it carries, or to the deeper layers of occupation that the archaeologists found beneath the floor, is a question the building keeps to itself.

The tavern remains closed. The carved keystone above the door still bears Winstanley’s initials, and the building still stands – for now.