Another 'outlier' pub, like Brown's, this one on the Doon Road, sometimes known as McCullagh's. This was a very lively place back in the 1960's with plenty of young people and singing galore. It was far enough away from the most frequented pubs to be a haven for the more discerning drinkers who did not find the growing "lounge culture" to their taste.
|
Yet another outlying townland pub. Nothing left of the old place except this view of the rolling hills of Ballinascreen that the drinker of old might have seen, if fit to see, as he or she came out the front door of Mickey Paul Kelly’s Doon pub which has the distinction of being the only Ballinascreen pub to get blown up during the “troubles”. Mickey’s descendants now live in a fine new bungalow on the actual site. It was the favourite pub of the young ones of the 1950’s and 60’s when Joe McAllister remembered some fine nights there with John Leyden and Joe Convery singing “oul songs”. "Mickey Paul" was no relation of the poet "Johnny Paul" Kelly.
|
Prior to 1922 this bar was originally part of a spirit grocery business in a two-storey building which now houses the O’Kane "Irish News" newsagents shop to the left of the Cellar Bar. Partition of Ireland also saw the government mandated partition of grocery and licensed trades so the Rogers family who owned it then had to build a separate bar where the Cellar is today, at the entrance to the Shambles (salesyard). The original bar may be the one mentioned in Johnny Paul’s poem as that belonging to “Patrick Rogers” because Patsy McShane tells us that Willy in the photo, his uncle, bought the spirit grocery business from Paddy Rogers, of the same Rogers family. Willy had worked in the bar and shop for Rogers from he left school in 1930 until he bought it some years later. I can remember the shop in the 1950’s but it was by then a chemist’s shop belonging to the O’Keeney family. Mrs Angela O’Keeney was the daughter of Paddy Rogers and she would later write a pictorial history of the parish called, Looking Back on Ballinascreen (a valuable source for this website).
Willy’s brother, John McShane (Patsy’s father) managed the pub from 1962 to about 1969. An O'Kane from Swatragh (a brother of Jim O'Kane who is married to Mary O'Kane of Derrynoid and now lives in Australia) then leased it for one year and it was then sold in 1970/1971 to David O'Kane who still owns it but no longer uses the premises as he converted the cellar into the bar. |
A traditional spirit-grocery small bar that has survived the lounge and club era. The McAuley family has been giving Ballinascreen comfort with their coal, milk and bread deliveries for a few generations and this extends into their licensed premises, "a comfortable place to take a glass in", Laughlin McNamee's mandate in a much earlier generation.
This wee pub doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the big, brash places that are now popular in Draperstown but it has a loyal clientele and a reputation among knowledgeable, local connaisseurs of being a place where you don't have to shout to be heard, a place where the craic needs neither a traditional nor a techno music soundtrack. It does have an extended back room but generally whoever is in the wee bar is part of the conversation! Barney McAuley is the genial proprietor and Deirdre, his equally genial daughter, is often behind the bar in the early evenings. |
From here on we go rural, in the townlands surrounding Draperstown. This bar in Drumderg, on the way from Draperstown to Moneyneena, has changed hands a number of times in the past 50 years. In my own young days it was Pat McCormick’s. I was in it many times in my early teens in the summer of 1960 ... no, not drinking, but as an electrician’s helper with Pascal Kelly who was at that time bringing electricity to many places outside of the town. I remember the “roadmen” coming in at lunch time for a bit of refreshment but was never around when the evening crowd got down to more serious tippling.
|
When the sun sets over Erin, the land St. Patrick Blessed
I’ll go for recreation into The Shepherd's Rest Where the Hills of Carnanelly, in the pale moonlight they gleam Across the great Moyola where it’s just a little stream. from the song "The Great Moyola River" by Gerard Conway (Broughderg) "The Rest" has long been associated with local song and poetry (as many pubs have been) but it goes farther by positively promoting poetry and local literature judging by the pictures on display above. To reinforce this, there is to be a special night on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, to celebrate the life and words of W.F. Marshall, the poetic parson of Drumagh, Omagh, Co Tyrone, famous for that venerable, old verse chestnut, "Drumlister". We hope to post some details of that special night here. |
McAllisters’ warm kitchen would have been the preferred location but this would be more for Johnny’s closer friends. I can remember being sent for some grocery item to the shop in the evening and having to knock at the kitchen door to get someone to serve me, seeing into the kitchen where an assortment of patrons would be sitting around the stove and table drinking, smoking and chatting amiably enough while Pauline, Johnny’s wife, moved among them doing kitchen chores, or the young McAllisters running in and out along with furtive hens, sleepy dogs and, during pigging time, the odd pet pig nosing around the hearth. On some evenings there might have been an edge to the atmosphere especially on Fair Days when the drinking might have been a bit more excessive and old rivalries would emerge.
This is in no way meant as an insult to the McAllisters. After all it is supposed to be Mrs Kelly's kitchen! The illustration on the left may be of the stereotypical "pigs in the Irish kitchen" variety but it is still reminiscent of the scene in McAllisters' kitchen on some evenings. There were no floor -sitters, bare feet or long beards in the 1950s but it conveys a similar feeling of warmth and contentment about the hearth for animals and humans that was evident in that Straw kitchen. |
“John Toner, farmer, was killed in the year 1834 by Philip Kelly, farmer. They both lived in the townland of Straw. The cause was a drinking dispute. The murderer absconded and fled to America.”
|
The Bard of The Bar
|
Opposite is a poem that Gerry McAllister (above) came across - he remembered Mick O'Neill (the Bing) used to say it in the bar (McAllisters). It was sent in a letter from America by a fellow, Tommy Keenan, who used to live in Tonagh Lane (now River Road/Strawmore - as you go round to Paddy McGlade's) Tommy's father came from elsewhere to work in Kelly's mill and he had been known as "Miller Keenan." Tommy went to America later and wrote this to his friend Mick O'Neill.
One Straw man has this to say about Tommy Keenan. “When Paddy told my uncle Tommy that he wanted to go to America he told him to get in touch with Tommy Keenan. I think he eventually sponsored Paddy who went to his hometown, Beacon on the Hudson and started work in the local asylum (a common job for Irish Americans.. I even worked for a week in an asylum in Westchester County). When I spent a summer in White Plains with my Uncle Matt he brought me up to Beacon to meet his friend Tommy. Matt's son, my cousin Tommy who lives in Florida went on some of these visits too. My uncle Matt used to say that he could remember everything about Ballinascreen just the way it was when he left. Obviously Tommy Keenan remembered it well too and wrote these verses. A boul bunch of boys they were!” |