241 Whitepark Rd, Dunseverick, Bushmills BT57 8SP
[Photo: Framed vintage Gallaher’s cigarette advertisement, McBride’s Bar, Lisnagunogue.]
Elsewhere in this book you can read about the smallest bar in the north, McBride’s of Cushendun. By concidence there’s another pub of tiny proportions which is also known as McBride’s, but this time the location is not so readily pronounced. In face, there was almost as much dispute among the pub’s customers about the pronunciation of Lisnagunogue as there was about spelling. The matter of the spelling was resolved finally when a shrewd observer at the bar advised us take it down from the name plate at the edge of the village. Lisnagunogue, by the way, is about midway between Ballycastle and Bushmills. It means Fort of the Churns and not ‘I’m damned if I know’ which was how one patron responded to a question about the meaning of the name. There’s no doubt about the actual size of the bar, however, because all are agreed that it measures 11 feet by 11 feet. One Scottish visitor found occasion to comment that he had never seen so small a bar that held as many people, and this, as a local remarked, when there were only thirty in it!
The pub today looks like an addition to the larger two storey house beside it, which is a complete misunderstanding, because in fact it is the last remaining house of a row of single storey thatched cottages which all disappeared over the years, leaving the pub in solitary splendour. The larger houses in the street were built on to it, not the other way round. It was in the hands of the McBride family for four generations and Hugh McBride was famous for never having missed a day behind the bar in thirty years except for the day his mother was buried. In the side room lounge you’ll find on the wall an impressive black and white picture of a prize winning Shorthorn bull, reared from a calf in the backyard by John McBride, uncle of the aforementioned Hugh. This stalwart beast weighed over a ton and its array of prize winning rosettes are pinned up round the picture.
The present publican used to run a boat to and from Rathlin Island. He’s justly proud of his bar with its valuable advertising mirrors on the wall. One is a rare picture of the racehorse Tyrconnel passing the post to illustrate that Tyrconnel Whiskey wins, and another advertises Watt’s Whiskey of Londonderry.
McBride’s is another of the little pubs that you could easily miss, even if you can pronounce the name of the village when you’re asking the way to it.