1 Harbour Rd, Portrush BT56 8DB
[Photo: The Harbour Inn, Portrush.]
By far the best known pub in the popular seaside resort of Portrush is the Harbour Bar, an establishment that opened in 1836 and now operates 364 days a year to meet the constant demand for its services (Christmas day is the one missing). A large 1836 map of early Portrush, on permanent loan from the Antrim Estates, is on display upstairs and it will prove to you the original existence of the building. The previous publicans were the Molloy brothers from Armoy, and they were apparently real characters in their own right.
Today’s Harbour Bar is very much the same as when the Molloys ran it, delightfully poky and fragmented in structure with different little rooms off a through corridor, leading to a music room at the very back. Russell Harty visited the bar and without hesitation declared that it served ‘the creamiest guinness in all Ireland.’ If he also had a meal next door in the Harbour Inn he must surely have been equally enthusiastic. The nautical theme so well sustained here is the work of leading designer Ken Gray, who has created the effect of an old sailing ship mid-deck, complete with arched ceiling ribs, chain plates, blocks and pulleys for the sails, deck housing, teak floor deck planking and two huge masts which threaten to go right up through the roof. These massive three trunks were cut and braced locally. Even the woodwork, in particular the pudding fenders, recalls the mid-deck of an old square rigger, and there are the hammocks for the crew and on the wall a cat ‘o’ nine tails for offenders. Anyone who fails to appreciate the excellent fare set up in the Harbour Inn deserves to be tied to one of these masts and flogged until he begs for another helping.
“Ye Gentlemen and Archers good Come and drink with Robin Hood If Robin Hood be dead and gone, Come in and drink with Little John.”