08.The Village Inn

Do you remember Dr. Who’s Tardis, the phonebox that miraculously was vast in its interior?

Well, imagine beside a lovely little thatch cottage, a small country pub – The Village Inn – which amazingly opens up Tardis-fashion inside, to disclose a bar, a lounge bar, a large conservatory, a dance floor ringed by plush seating and clusters of tables, and a pool-room with its own bar, two full-size tables and expansive seated spectator area, and you 11 begin to have some idea of the surprise felt by the first-time visitor when he walks through the modest front door of The Village Inn, Killyclogher.

It’s not just that you don’t expect to find all this at a village crossroads camouflaged, as it were, in the guise of a humble rural pub, it’s the fact that everything has been done to perfection.
Then, just when you have partly recovered from your surprise, you may be invited to look around the garden.

Thatched cottage and water wheel in the grounds of Killyclogher Inn.

It’s then that you start to recognise that what you have stumbled upon is not so much a simple village pub as a complete entertainment and amusement complex, conceived and created by the McGinn family, who have set all this up.

Among the wonders are a black and white cow and calf made life-size of cement, a fleet – if that’s the word -of Irish jaunting cars, a beautiful gipsy caravan painted exquisitely down to the last detail, a thatched wishing-well, and a fully-operational water wheel.

You can go inside the traditional half-door thatched Irish cottage to examine its original antique furniture, and by contrast have a drink in the brand new conservatory, which can seat a hundred people.
You need to look at the large painting of a small thatched country pub in the front bar to assure yourself that you were, after all, not so far out in your 12 first impession of the place’s unassuming frontage.

Take the Cookstown road out of Omagh, turn left to Killyclogher, and see for yourself West Tyrone’s entertainment Tardis.