Knocknacarry
Pat’s Bar is open for business right now as this report is being written in May 1990 but by the time the report gets into print it will have become more of an obituary, an epitaph for a great little pub that lies about a mile from Cushendun in the village of Knockacarry in one of the famed nine glens of Antrim, Glendun.
After being in the Hamilton family for well over 30 years, the pub is being closed and turned into a nursing home. For almost all of that time, it was run by Pat himself, a Glensman born and bred who ran the business with a firm but friendly hand. When Pat died in November of ’88 son Pat and his wife Harriet took over the pub and it is with very mixed emotions indeed that they have made the decision to close the door to the public. Pat Jnr. has an easy eloquence and turn for narrative and relates many of the stories he recalls from his father’s days, including the one about the Post Office that used to be right next door. Each year the P.O. workmen would come round and paint red the pillar box and as soon as they had gone, out would come the resident post mistress with her pot of green paint and restore the letterbox to its former colour. He also remembers when the new lounge was the shed and stables and had a bull tied in it. The pub is mentioned wrongly as it so happens, in the song “Carnlough Bay” where it is referred to as “Pat Hamill’s” instead of “Pat Hamilton’s”. Also this is only one of two Northern Ireland bars that is recommended to students in the Harvard University publication ‘Let’s Go’. It was an inn last century and before 1902 had a hotel licence. Its most famous feature, perhaps, is the Visitor’s Book containing the names of some very distinguished visitors, such as the celebrated author, Graham Greene, and Gerry Fitt whose address appears as 85 Antrim Road, Belfast, a house now demolished. James Callaghan, the former British Prime Minister called here in 1969 and later sent a letter of thanks from Downing Street for the tea, sandwiches, fresh cream buns and hospitality he had been given. There’s a photo of Pat Senior and Callaghan shaking hands outside the bar. Other noteworthy signatures are those of Maurice Wilkes the painter and the late Betty Sinclair, Ulster’s most famous communist.
The closing of Pat’s Bar will be for many like the loss of a good old friend, but the friends who have passed on still live on in memory and stir feelings of affection and warmth. What better way could there be to remember the pub in Knockacarry?