Life has a gentle pace in pub that survived the Tans and formica
CHOSEN as one of the top ten public houses in Ireland by The Guardian newspaper and featured in the coffee-table book ‘The Irish Pub’, Finucane’s in Ballylongford is simply a classic Irish bar.
Unlike so many other public houses, it survived modernisation and is testament to the timeless classiness of an earlier aesthetic — when publicans instinctively knew the optimal decor for making punters feel at home in a place. “It’s got character,” as its owner succinctly puts it.
Wood and glass and the countless ways they come together; that’s about the size of it in terms of this decor. Sadly, it’s almost completely gone now from Irish pub life and occurs all too sporadically. As Finucane’s highlights too, it’s a magic that can’t be recreated: this bar has pretty much kept all the original furnishings from when it first opened in 1808. “That’s what ruined the old bars of Ireland, formica and stainless steel,” proprietor Michael Finucane says.
There ain’t a hint of either — apart from the taps maybe — in this space. “The floorboards are the original Columbian pine from 1808, over 200 years old now and the bar counter’s the same age. We managed to keep it all somehow.”
The local Royal Irish Constabulary played no small part in the survival of the original fittings, as Michael explained. And in the telling of the story, his pub and home becomes far more than a mere village bar, for it was here that none other than 1916 hero The O’rahilly — the only leader cut down in the fighting — was born.
It was the O’rahilly’s grandfather, Michael O’rahilly, who bought the premises and opened it as a pub in 1808. Sixty seven years later Michael Joseph O’rahilly was born on the premises, ‘The’ O’rahilly of 1916. It was Michael’s greatuncle and namesake who brought it into the Finucane family when he bought it in 1898.
“The night Bally was burned, the Black and Tans burst in to burn the place because it was the home of The O’rahilly. They came in and asked Mike Finucane ‘do you swear allegiance to King George?’ Mike, of course, was a returned Yank and said ‘like hell I do!’ So the black and tans went to burn it but started looting the place first, taking all the goods out into their trucks as it had everything from drapery to a grocery. The head of the local RIC lived next door, however, and the two houses were interconnected by the old door behind the bar and he pleaded with them not to burn it, as his family home would go up to.. The bar as it is wouldn’t be here today but for that!”
For all the simple elegance of the interior, Finucane’s greatest asset is its landlord. Turtle Bunbury summed him up pretty neatly in The Irish Pub: “Michael Finucane is a large man with an easy smile and warm handshake.”
Today, he presides over a much quieter bar than the one he took over in 1985. Having lived for a few years in London in the late ’60s, Michael returned home to work at Tarbert Island power station. In the meantime, Finucane’s closed for over a decade after his father passed away and Michael took it over in 1985 to prevent the licence from lapsing under new legislation that was introduced at the time. He hasn’t looked back since.
Michael is philosophical about the massive downturn in the pub trade. “We were busy every night of the week throughout the ’80s and things only started to get quiet when O’sullivan’s closed in 1990. It was the big employer always and it came as a massive blow to Bally, but things move on. Our hope now is that the LNG project will finally begin, that will bring our young people back and give them a future at home. Wherever you have industry you have people spending money so it would be good for the pubs here. It’s so quiet now, but you just have to get on with it.”