Status : Closed?
52 Queensway
Derryaghy
BELFAST
BT17 9HG
[Photo: The Stagecoach Inn, Dunmurry.]
My first vision of this old Inn was back in my early youth in the forties when it stood by itself in open countryside. Even the address has changed; it was then known as Derryaghy. The small building to the front is over 270 years old, formerly a thatched cottage with a horse trough out front to accommodate weary travellers. In the early days it was a coaching Inn, being the first stop outside Belfast for southern travellers. It was still thatched up to 30 years ago until one night when a late night reveller was locked in by mistake for the night. When he awoke from his drunken slumbers he searched for a way out, and the only window he could prise open was the fanlight in what is now called the Gents toilet. It wasn’t big enough to get out of, so he lit a paper torch and stuck it out of the window to draw attention. He drew attention alright, for his torch lit the tinder dry thatch and in no time the whole roof was ablaze. He was lucky that the fire brigade was quickly on the scene and saved his life. I always thought it was a great pity the thatch was never replaced for when the old Inn lost its golden head of thatch it also lost a lot of its character.
As you enter to your right is The Irish Bar, the original Bar with its old stone fireplace. To the left is The Tudor Bar. Seemingly this was one of the first to be made completely of Fibreglass. It’s a nice olde worlde Bar with its uneven walls covered by nicotene ‘paint’. A door from the Tudor will lead you into The Scotch Room, an attractive bar cum restaurant where they serve a nice Carvery Lunch. The star attraction here is the Grand Fireplace with the words of Robbie Burns inscribed on it ‘Hearth, real and warm and kin.’
The prints around the walls in the Scotch Room are all of early transport in the North, while the shelves have an interesting collection of momentoes, with the beer and whiskey measures, brass kettles, a butter twirler, a hot beer rod, 2 antique coach horns and an ebony wood container. The Buttery Restaurant is large and very pretty with nice bright colours whilst above is the Nite Club, Zachary Stringer.
Before leaving I had a quick look at the small but interesting visitors’ book, started by Colonel Green and continued by the succeeding owner the late Linfield stalwart Jackie Donnelly. The names include Johnny Caldwell, local born Bantamweight Champion of the world, Billy Two Rivers (International Wrestler) Jock Steen, Wilfred (have a go) and Mabel Pickles, Minnie Caldwell of Coronation Street fame, Fred Daly the only Irishman ever to win The British Open at Hoylake in 1947, Lord Brookeborough, Mary Peters, Jim McCourt, Guy Mitchell, Trevor Brooking and religious leaders like Ian Paisley the late Archbishop Thomas O’Fiaich, Bishop James Mehaffey of Derry and from the Group Theatre Ernest Blythe, Deirdre Purcell and Buncrana born, the late Ray McNally.