Status : Closed
41 Main St, Portrush BT56 8BL
You know those lovely twenties and thirties Brighton-type hotels that appear in Agatha Christie films or Inspector Poirot dramas. The ones that blended palms and aspidistras with cream tiles, black and white floors, curved glass and Art Deco fittings? Well, prepare to see just such an establishment lovingly restored to its original appearance in the main street of Portrush. Mrs Katherine McWilliams, its new owner, plans to preserve the superb twenties’ shop front formerly owned by Black and Sons, whose name remains in black and white mosaic at the front door, and unite it with the fine hotel front to form an imposing main street facade to a completely refurbished interior. Don’t worry, though, conservationists, nothing will be removed or replaced if it is original and still in acceptable condition, and that includes both the splendid pitch pine parquet floor of the hotel entrance and lobby, and the pink and white egg and dart ceiling moulding or black and white tiled floor of the bar restaurant. It’s like one of those prim tea rooms Miss Marple inhabits for her gossipy investigations.
The hotel’s history begins in 1839 when it was built by Thomas Dunlop. Its original cellars wine rack is still in use, although now promoted to a position behind the counter. What changes there are, have used nothing but the oldest, most genuine materials, with some heavy borrowing from places of a much less secular nature, including wooden panelling fixtures and fittings from Armagh Cathedral and the Church of Ireland Bishop’s Palace in Clogher. You’ll also see those familiar old public elementary classroom dividers or partitions from a school in Dungannon, and the mahogany counter top requisitioned from a science lab of the same institution.
Yes, the Londonderry Hotel Bar is a fusion of hotel, shop, restaurant, pub, church, palace and school. The barman should be someone well educated, with a High Church background, interested in food and drink, good at selling, and prepared to stay overnight. As they say, it could happen to a bishop……