Actors drank there, now you can as well
KILKERRIN, Ireland — It’s a quiet Thursday evening in Ireland’s rural midlands, and Mee’s Bar in Kilkerrin, County Galway, is hardly buzzing.
Still, even in this tourism drought between Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, a man raises himself from the counter and wanders toward the pub’s backyard. He just needs to see it, he says.
The “it” is nestled under a tin overhang, with bright yellow walls and a hand-thatched roof, a shrine to a fictional Irish darkness: the salvaged set of J.J. Devine’s, the claustrophobic bar that served as a main stage in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Academy Award-nominated 2022 film set on an isolated island off Ireland’s west coast.
It’s a bizarre but charming juxtaposition in this quiet beer garden. Where’d the set come from? How’d it get here? Why in Kilkerrin, hours from the sea or any “Banshees”-related setting? Just — why?
The answers are simple and mostly wholesome, far more so than the dark story told in the movie itself. Where? From a backyard off Ireland’s western coast, discarded after filming. How? Hand-carted by locals who loved the film, directed by Mee’s savvy proprietor. Why? Because no one else did.
But after dealing with a wave of new visitors since constructing the fictional pub last year, Luke Mee, its proprietor, is ready to sell. He expected J.J. Devine’s would be a part of whatever comes next for the place; there are dozens of bus companies interested in including the “Banshees” bar on its tour stops, he said, and tourism officials are exploring ways to promote it.
With a dark pitch typical of much Irish humor, “The Banshees of Inisherin” centers on the bizarre, abrupt ending of a friendship between two local men, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, on an isolated island off Ireland’s west coast during the country’s civil war in the 1920s. Among other indignities, the violent divorce includes severed fingers, arson and a murdered donkey.
Since the pub-within-a-pub opened last summer, busloads of tourists now schedule stops at J.J. Devine’s — and Mee’s with it — where the visitor log is full of names from across the world. Amid the increased interest, Mee said, the pub was becoming too hard to manage independently.
Mee’s pub is listed as a private auction and includes the real pub, the other pub and the attached shop.