The Village Pubs of Cork: ‘We’re trying to keep price of pint down, folk are stretched enough’

In the middle of the East Cork village of Lisgoold stands J. Woods, a family-run pub that has been part of the community for well over a century.

“I reckon the building itself goes back to the 1890s,” says its current proprietor, Michael Woods.

“My great-grandfather travelled up from Kerry on a donkey and cart and settled here. He built this place in 1896, I think.”

The two-storey building sits on the left side of the Lisgoold village street when approaching from Midleton. It has an off-white facade and a sandstone-clad porch.

The ground floor is where it all happens; the bar, the lounge, beer garden, and a snug - and a decent pool table.

In the 1930s, Michael’s grandfather, Tom, took over.

“At that time it was more than a pub - there was a shop, a post office, even piggery and curing stores across the road. He tried everything. The only failure, he used to say, was the year he tried to grow tobacco. That never took off,” Michael says, smiling.

However, Tom expanded the premises and provided threshing machines to farmers.

“He had threshing machines too,” Michael explains. “At one time he had three units going on the road, covering Cork and west Waterford. Between the threshing and the shop across the road, he employed half the parish.

“If you look around the walls here, you’ll see the history,” Michael says. 

“Photos of threshing across the road, old farming shots, GAA teams....

“Twice a year back in the day, when sheep dipping was on across the road, you’d have flocks of sheep and all the farmers ending up here afterwards. That’s how central this place always was.”

The pub licence was taken over by Michael’s father, John Woods, in the mid-1960s, and it is from here that the name over the door originated - today, the name ‘J. Woods’ still hangs proudly there.

John ran the pub until 1983, at which point his older brother Donal took it on and ran it alongside their mother, until her passing in 2002.

Sadly, Donal passed away in March last year and Michael stepped in to carry on the Woods name at J Woods bar.

“Donal was a bachelor, very set in his ways, and everything he earned went back into the business,” says Michael. “He was known all over, a great character.”

Michael spent nigh on 30 years living away and working in construction. By the time he felt the call for Lisgoold he had risen to the role of construction manager, yet all the while, he had never forgotten how to pull a pint.

Coming home to take over was, as he says, “about keeping it in the family and making sure it passed to the next generation”.

The lounge where we chatted was once the original bar when the shop was in the same building, and what is today’s main bar was once the shop. Out the back, a beer garden was built less than ten years ago.

The customer base today is a mixture of older locals and GAA players.

“On an average midweek evening like this, there might be six customers, aged anywhere from 45 to 80,” Michael says. “But when the local hurling team are out, the place fills. We do barbecues for them after matches, put on the beer garden, and it becomes a real celebration. That’s the feelgood factor; it lifts the whole parish.”

Lisgoold is a village that’s known for its volunteer-led community spirit.

“The GAA here is huge, not just the hurlers but the ladies’ footballers too, and that drives camaraderie,” Michael says.

“There’s also the Tidy Towns, pure volunteer, second to none. They’ll tell you what they want done, and then they’ll actually go and do it. They’re amazing.”

The staff, too, are largely family.

“I’ve a girl in the shop,” Michael explains, speaking of the local shop he owns next door to the pub. “She’s second to none!

Like all rural pubs, Woods’ faces challenges. Most are the familiar issues we associate with the modern pub, however a new challenge has entered the fray.

“The biggest problem at the moment is regulation,” Michael says. “This is a very rural community, no public transport, hard even to get a taxi. From January next year, they want €1,000 a year for a tobacco licence, €800 for vapes. For a small place like this, with no profit on tobacco, it’s ridiculous. And they want the cigarette machines inside the counter. Where’s a country pub meant to fit that? It’s pure red tape.”

Rising drink prices are another worry.

“In Dublin, you’ll hear about hotels charging crazy money for big events. Down here, we do the opposite, we’re trying to keep the price of the pint down as much as we can,” Michael says. “People are stretched enough already.

Another shift has been in social habits over the decades.

“Younger couples, when they move into new houses, they’ll come out for six or 12 months, a kind of a honeymoon period, but then the mortgage starts biting, and they cut back. That’s life.

“But I think once people settle into their mortgages, they’ll come back again.”

Michael is realistic about the ebbs and flows of the trade, and he is determined to keep Woods’s going.

“We had a conversation before Don died,” he says. “As long as this goes to the next generation, we’ll be happy. And it will.”