Status : Closed
Antrim
This modern Nitespot is situated at what used to be the town’s well known Railway Bar. A dappled white-clad exterior is in sharp contrast to the ritzy interior where the colour blue clearly stands out, highlighted with lines of Chrome rails. Without a doubt the main attraction here is the high domed ceiling by which the designer (Kennedy Ceilings) has endeavoured to capture the ambience of a covered railway station. Naturally the railway station theme is evident all round the building with related objects and old Railway pictures, and it’s further enhanced with clever use of chrome fixings, mirrors and complementary lighting. You can certainly get on the right entertainment track down at Sleepers and the night I was there, everybody was seeming to have a ‘RAIL’ good time.
When I was in Antrim, I went in search of Baird’s bar in Church Street, which boasted in its day one of the finest mahogany counters in Ireland. Unfortunately it closed down a few years ago. Where the bar was is now a funeral parlour. Pre 1921 it was permissable to run a serious business along with your pub. The majority of these were Spirit Grocers but in the odd case you would have found an undertaker. That reminds me of a story my father told me about a man who was in one of these pubs/undertakers which was raided by the old R.I.C. He rushed out the back of the funeral parlour section and hid in a coffin. He afterwards explained that it was the first time he had ever been literally ‘dead drunk’.