The Village Pubs of Cork: 300 years a pub, last orders for Ramble Inn 

Dotted across Cork county’s villages are pubs which have served generations of local people.

In this series, we visit some of them and talk to the people who run them about the difficulties facing the licensed trade in recent years.

Many of the pubs we will visit are the last one standing in their village - and we launch this series by visiting a pub that has just called last orders for the last time.

The Ramble Inn, in the village of Halfway, upper Ballinhassig, closed its door on Sunday night, June 8, when the last pint was served.

As the shutters came down, it marked the end of a 44-year era under Alan and Mary Barry’s stewardship, and more than three centuries as a pub,

Nestled behind the Halfway roundabout and just off the N71, along the road that s Cork city to Bandon, the Ramble Inn loomed large in the village.

For about 20 years, since Colman’s bar there closed its doors, it has been the only pub in Halfway.

It was much more than a place to have a pint - it was a place where, for generations, stories were shared and confessions were made.

“I always said we had the biggest confession box in the country,” Alan said. “They’d come in and they’d tell you things they wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

Alan bought the bar in 1981. “There was just the bar and a bit of yard,” he recalls. 

“I was in the plant and transport business at the time, working in the docks and for the council, and I made a go of the pub alongside that.”

Over time, he transformed the space, converting the old yard into a car park. The extra space allowed the Ramble Inn to become something more than a pub.

It offered space where Alan could host the legendary vintage car and tractor runs that have become synonymous with Halfway, as well as hosting funeral gatherings, and family and community events.

The pub has a rich history. Alan bought the bar from Joe Hanley, and the earliest records trace the building and its pub licence to 1709. The name attached to the deeds was Sir John A Barter. “And it’s a bar since, from what we can gather,” Alan explained.

A framed drawing on the wall depicting three men drinking at the bar dates back to 1850, when the Ramble Inn was owned by the De Courcy family, who had been Anglo-Norman landlords of Kinsale.

Alan explained that the men in the picture were English labourers, or ‘navvies’, who worked on the building of the railway line to West Cork; what is today recognised as the old railway, of which the well-known Viaduct bridge is part.

“That drawing proves it was a working pub back then. The bridge they were working on is still there,” said Alan.

I ask if that photo was taken right here where Alan and I are chatting?

“It would have been different back then, a single-storey, I think, but this is the old bar.”

So, this was here in 1709? “T’was” replied Alan.

“The bar was done up by a servant man, that was the public bar here and the lounge below” Alan said, nodding in the direction of the lounge, to the rear of the original bar. That was in the 1930s,” he explained.

The lounge, which was the centre point for family events, community gatherings, significant birthdays and other events, was done up by Alan and his wife, Mary, has a more modern facade, and is a good deal larger than the original bar.

“There’s nothing touched here, since I came,” said Alan, referring to the original bar, “or long before me.”

What name was etched over its door prior to its 1930s revamp remains a mystery. Though, what is known is that it was the servant who christened it The Ramble Inn.

The three-century old bar where I chat with Alan is a historical footprint. With vigour, he relays tales behind decades old photos that line the walls, first-hand s from those early steam engine runs, and how the bar’s location at the gateway to West Cork was as a juncture during the War of Independence.

Its closing marks a pivotal moment of an Irish culture in hiatus.

Across the country, pubs as historically rich, as full of character, and with colourful publicans at the helm, are closing. Drink driving laws, cheaper alcohol prices offered in shops and off-licences, and people drinking more at the weekends that midweek, are some of the reasons for pubs’ demise.

“The breathalyser, okay, fair enough, we adapted,” said Alan. “We got used to it.

“But since covid, what has been a direct effect on the trade is the big supermarkets.

“Not so much the off licence in a village or a town. But the home drinking is gone very, very big, especially since the pandemic, and I blame for that the supermarkets and cheap drink.”

Alan’s criticism is pointed, but heartfelt. He believes a pub can play a role in monitoring excessive alcohol consumption. If someone is drinking too much, it’s visible for the people around them to see.

In a pub, there’s usually someone keeping a watchful eye - a neighbour, the barman, a family member - and there is a kind of care in that. “Whereas now, it’s all under the table, and no-one might know,” Alan said.

For him and his wife Mary, it’s not necessarily these factors that are to blame for the closure of the Ramble Inn.

“We’re after reaching the stage in life that it’s time to stop,” said Alan, “after 44 years. And as such, there’s none of the family interested. So, it’s up for sale.

“A year ago, we said if it wasn’t sold in 12 months that we were going to close after the (June) Bank Holiday weekend.”

Alan and Mary will forever have fond memories of the hundreds of great characters the pub drew, either locally, or those who travelled from far and wide to attend vintage rallies.

“We will feel saddened and disappointed in one way because those great characters came to this house,” said Alan. “The cream of the crop. So, them memories we would have.

“It had a style of its own, The Ramble Inn. A closed door is no good to anyone.

“It’s sad to see what’s happening with the pubs throughout rural Ireland. It’s the way of life gone, you know?

“At the time of the sketch I showed you, all these places made a living. That’s during the famine. And they kept the doors open. Now we’re closing them.”