2 Riverview Cres, Cushendun, Ballymena BT44 0PG
[Photo: Mary McBride’s, Cushendun — reputed to be the smallest bar in the county.]
Question: How do you get tight in a bar without even touching a drop of liquor? Answer: Visit Mary McBride’s in Cushendun, and if there are even a few customers in the bar, you’ll be tight and no mistake, because this pint-sized wonder is surely the smallest bar in the county. Measuring a modest 5’x 9½’ it proudly guards its dimensions and is in no danger at all from the disease of enlargement.
As part of a St.Patrick’s day competition the total number of customers who could be crammed into the tiny bar was found to be an astonishing 42!
“We’ll be home by the evening surely, Sailing south on the flowing tide Wre’ll be met there by Henry Andy for a pint or two down in McBrides.”
Sound advice it must have been then but I can assure you the pints are still being pulled in this quaint old bar, although that great character Henry Andy and his drinking pals are long since departed to a “place I’ve heard tell, where fishermen go if they don’t go to hell.”
The pub was first licensed in 1849. Probably their early customers were farm workers, gamekeepers, blacksmiths and labourers who worked for the late Baron Cushendun. The Baron, who died in 1934 donated the Cornish style village to the Ulster land fund, who passed it on to the National Trust. The only other one in Northern Ireland is of course the famous ‘Crown’ in Belfast. I’ve been told that the Trust has plans to refurbish McBrides with quoins and architraves in the very near future.
Today, the landlord is a local man Sean Scullion but the present lease holder is Randall McDonald, grand nephew of the original and almost legendery Mary McBride. This grand old lady of the licensed trade (who passed on in 1983) was the daughter of the original licencee also called Mary. Mary took over the business in the early fifties and her photo behind the bar can be seen on the Northern Ireland Tourist Board ‘Pubs of Ulster’ poster. She never drank herself and would not serve women in the bar, but if a female friend wanted a drink, she was invited into the kitchen by a side door, and was served in an easy chair. It’s said that if a customer swore in her presence he was banned for life, and the story is told of one character who suffered such a fate for that particular crime. He emigrated to America, made his fortune, and returned years later, a wealthy man to Cushendun. He walked into the pub and asked Mary did she remember him. ‘I do’ she replied, ‘and you’re still barred!’ The visitor’s book is open to all for signatures and comments, but among the best known visitors to Mary’s are, Gene Tunney, the former undisputed World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion who called into Mary’s for a bit of refreshment after launching a ship in Belfast in 1952. That day he was accompanied by well known local author and early film maker Richard Hayward (who was making ‘The Devil’s Rock’ at that particular time) and Joe Tomelty noted Northern playwright. Other signatures in the book are Coronation Street’s Annie Walker, John Feeney – British Boxing Champion in 1956 and Mrs. Jim Prior who called here in 1984. Yes, you would certainly expect to rub elbows with all kinds in Mary’s, especially if it happens to be St. Patrick’s Day!