It’s a sign! Miraculous return for pub artefact
A RARE piece of Irish pub memorabilia which left a bar up to 70 years ago has been returned to its original owner – after a chance encounter in an Irish bar halfway across Europe.
The sign written As Gaeilge for renowned Tayto crisps is thought to have been removed from MacGroary’s Bar, in the village of Mountcharles, Co. Donegal, in the 1950s.
Nobody knows how the sign left the bar or where it went. But a chance encounter in a bar in the Netherlands set about a chain of events that would see the sign being reunited with its original owners. That encounter came when Niamh Dalton, from Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, travelled to Rotterdam with friends.
On a night out she ended up in Murray’s Irish Pub & Whiskey Bar in Spijkenisse on the outskirts of the city. Niamh noticed the sign and got chatting to bar owner Danny Murray.
Anxious to return it to its rightful owners
Danny asked Niamh if she happened to know anybody from Mountcharles, as it was signed by the then proprietor Josephine MacGroary, as well as Robert McConnell, Francis Meehan and John Fitzsimmons.
Danny explained he had bought the sign at an auction but was anxious to return it to its rightful owners.
Niamh’s uncle by marriage, Paul Jordan, is from Mountcharles and she arranged to bring the sign back to Paul so he could set up a reunion. In recent days, Paul called in to see Josephine’s son Turlough at MacGroary’s Bar – now known as The Shamrock Inn – and reunited him with the Tayto sign. Turlough is delighted to have his mother’s sign back and has promised not to let it out of his sight.
The sign is thought to be one of the first ever made to advertise the famous Irish crisp brand, which were first produced by Joe ‘Spud’ Murphy, in 1954, at a time when most crisps were imported from the UK.