The Village Pubs of Cork: ‘It would be great if my son took on the pub'

The village of Ballinspittle once had three busy pubs. Nash’s is now the site of a popular restaurant, and The Corner House is a craft shop today. Hurley’s Bar is the last of the three and is still a traditional pub.

The first records of Hurley’s Bar date back to 1864.

Four generations later, it is still Hurley’s Bar, with Lester and Lindsay Hurley behind the counter.

This month also marks the couple’s 30th year catering for locals, holiday-makers, and passers-by in the village, located 8km from Kinsale.

In 1995, Lester and Lindsay bought the bar from Lester’s uncle, at a time when Ballinspittle, like many other villages at the time, had a few pubs. Weekends were busy, and the midweek evenings had a certain flow.

Two years later, the couple began serving food, at the time the only ones to do so in the area. It was a decision that would leverage a certain future-proofing to their business.

“When we came here first, every pub would be busy,” Lester recalls.

The Corner House closed down 15 years ago, and Hurley’s kept going.

However, Lester noticed a change in trade after the covid pandemic restrictions were lifted.

“Come five o’clock in the evening, we could have 10, 15 fellas around the bar. Now you might be lucky to get one,” he said.

“They’ve either passed away or they’ve stopped coming because there’s nobody else here. So it’s really changed.

“Sunday mornings, we’d open up the door and every barstool would be full. Now you open up the door, you’ll get the tables full, but the bar will stay empty.”

Until recently, there were two nightclubs in Kinsale, which gave Hurley’s younger customers somewhere to go in the later hours of the weekends. Both of those have now been closed.

Like most villages in Cork and across the country, Ballinspittle has seen huge social change, with the drinking of alcohol declining as a result.

When the Hurleys took over the running of the bar, there were two minibuses in the village taking people into Kinsale - “now you’d be lucky to get a taxi” Lindsay said.

Lester agrees. “There’s no reason to go to Kinsale now, whereas before, once the pub shut here, they knew they could go to a nightclub in Kinsale.”

Lindsay has observed these social changes of recent years at close hand, and suggests the digital age and social media have played a part.

“When we were younger, if you didn’t meet at the pub on a Saturday night at 8 o’clock, you missed out.

“Whereas now, they can Snapchat and watch the whole night’s event from their front room.” Lindsay said.

Making Hurley’s a pub-restaurant some 29 years ago has proved to be a lifeline for the business, and Ballinspittle in general. The pub retains its place as a meeting point for various groups, for coffee mornings, and as a community hub.

Lindsay and Lester run darts and pool leagues, serve food six days a week in summer, and cook for the local Meals on Wheels three mornings a week, to supply the elderly in the area with hot meals subsidised by the HSE.

Their menu brings in city visitors on weekends, in particular during the busy caravan season in summer.

And, in staying with the times, a chalked up sign over the bar advertises gluten-free craft beers.

Lester explains the thinking behind a pub serving food too.

“I think it was the mixture of everything. Whereas, if you just had one product, i.e. drink, you were just, that’s it. And if they didn’t come for a drink, they weren’t in. Whereas they might come for a drink and a bite to eat.

“So I think the two entwined really definitely helped.”

Interestingly, Lester observes that the current trend seems to be that the customers aged in their thirties and upwards tend to try the craft beers, while the younger generation seem to play it safe and stick with regular drinks such as Guinness, Murphy’s, Beamish, Carlsberg, and the likes.

“The old guard will stick to their Guinness and their Murphy’s, et cetera. They’re not going to do the craft beers.

“I wouldn’t say the youngsters, but sort of the 30-plus, they’ll try the craft beers. They’ll try it and they’ll either say, ‘Oh, that’s lovely’. Or they’ll say, ‘No, that’s not mine’.

“Whereas the youngsters, they’ll stick to their Murphy’s.”

Even with those incentives, staying open has its challenges for village pubs.

“The VAT is a killer,” said Lester, referring to the current 13.5% VAT rate imposed on the food-led hospitality sector.

The Hurleys enjoy a good relationship with the restaurant across the street.

“If he’s full, he’ll send people to us for a pint, and he’ll come collect them when the table’s ready,” said Lindsay.

“So that bounces well. So. in that sense, we’re lucky with where we are.

“It’s a busy village. You go through a lot of villages and there’s a lot of places closed, whereas everything is open here. We’re all open. It’s good.”

The Corner House, once a key part of village social life here, closed after changing hands a few times.

“There were two girls running it. They had their own jobs, and it’s hard, five days at work, then running a bar in the evenings,” said Lester.

“Then there was a man on his own. And if you’re paying rent too?” Lester shakes his head, while Lindsay says: “We’re lucky. We own the place.”

There was once a healthy rivalry between the pubs’ darts teams. “One brother played here, one up the road. It was good craic,” Lester remembers.

“You get fed up of someone, you could go across the road. Then come back later,” Lindsay added, smiling.

With only one pub left, that kind of dynamic is gone.

However, the Hurleys are far from giving up hope. The pub has survived in Lester’s family since 1864 after all.

During covid, an aunt found a historical reference to the name of the pub and they added it proudly to the front door.

Now, Lester and Lindsay’s son has just turned 21. “Part of me thinks it would be great if he kept it going,” Lester says.

“The other part says, ‘Go get a proper job’. He sees the hours we put in. It’s not easy.”

The Hurleys once ran a bed and breakfast upstairs as well, but gave it up after a few months.

“That was the hardest time of my working life when I look back,” Lester laughs.

“I’d get to bed at two and up at six to make breakfasts for German fishermen. It was madness.”

They don’t open the pub seven days a week any more.

“Wednesday to Sunday is enough,” Lindsay says.

“In summer, we open the kitchen seven days, we have fantastic staff and our chef can tell who’s in by what he reads on the docket. But you need a break.”

Would another pub in the village help? They both say yes.

“It was better with two,” Lester says. “The bounce, the crack. Even just knowing there was somewhere else was good.”