The Village Pubs of Cork: ‘I’m the last publican..it would be a sad day if there was no pub here’

Arriving in Ballymacoda on a foggy November afternoon, you sense how quiet the village can be. Yet it’s that very quietness that makes the place come alive in summer, drawing holiday makers seeking slow time amid the peaceful surroundings of Ballymacoda, Knockadoon, and wider East Cork.

Finn’s Tavern, the last remaining pub in Ballymacoda, is where tourists and locals gel during high season and where many a community event takes place all year round.

A one-story building, it sits towards the Knockadoon end of the village. As far as is known, it was always a public house.

Gerard Finn, the publican and licensee, explains the building’s history. He bought the pub at an auction with his father in 1984 and opened it as the Finn’s we know today two years later. He remembers the original building well.

“We opened the pub back in 1986. Before that, it was a little thatched pub that had been closed 10 or 11 years. The Cotter family, who were here all their lives, sadly passed away, and the pub was in decline, and the thatched roof had deteriorated. So, when myself and my father bought it in 1984 at an auction, we said we’d go about getting planning permission and building toilets. There was only an outdoor toilet, and we built toilets in a storeroom, and we opened here the Easter Thursday in 1986”.

At that particular time, there were three other pubs active in the village, making Finn’s Tavern the fourth.

But in the 40 years since, those three other pubs have closed one by one. The last being Daly’s, in 2010.

“The pub industry at the time, almost 40 years ago was a thriving industry of villages that would be very busy at the weekends. Saturday nights and Sunday nights would be just as busy.”

Tourist footfall helps Finn’s keep the lights on. The nearby caravan park draws holiday makers, mainly staycationers from nearby counties, and a new officially recognised cliff walk has put the Knocadoon peninsula on the map.

“In the summertime, of course you get an advantage of tours to the area, and you have the caravan park out in Knockadoon, which was open around the same time as our pub, maybe a few years after that bringing a lot of people down from the city bringing them into the hinterland here and the Peninsula.”

The caravan park, he says, “is a huge asset in the summertime. They open somewhere around Patrick’s weekend, and it closes roughly around the end of October every year. It will have families from Limerick and Kilkenny, Cork City and the surrounding area. People who like a quiet holiday.”

What draws them here?

“I suppose the serenity and solitude of the place. Knockadoon is a lovely quiet place. It’s not overpopulated.

“People come back, generation to generation: a lot of the people in the caravan park are the second and third generation of families coming down. They reach mid-teens, and it doesn’t suit them because there’s not enough activity there. But then as they get older they come back with their boyfriends and girlfriends in their 20s and now some of them are married they’re coming there with their kids again so it’s a continuation that way over the years”

Gerard has four grown children and today he is joined by his daughter Kate.

She tells me about the café, opened by her late mother Deirdre, who sadly passed away in December 2024.

“She opened a little café, and she used to have coffee. We had a coffee machine and a toasty machine, and she’d make lovely cakes. This was 2016, and she did that up until 2019”.

Gerard speaks of his late wife, Deirdre, Kate’s mother, with pride. You also sense his grief.

“She was the backbone of the day-to-day. She was the backbone here. She was the heart of it. She kept the whole thing going. The pub, the family, the lot.“

He recalls the way she worked: “She was very well known. We were married for over 30 years, and she was working in the industry before I met her. She always loved it and she loved the social side of it. She was a people person. She loved cooking food for people, entertaining, and she ran this pub right up till covid. She just thrived. It was her thing.”

Over the years, the pub has expanded. What may seem like a low-sized one-story building is deceptively large inside.

Upon entering, the main bar, where all the fun happens, is to your left. It has a large open plan, yet the original and newer sections run into each other seamlessly. The pool table area is fully integrated into the open plan, but you’d hardly notice it.The walls are wooden and there’s warm lighting, which together gives the bar an almost cabin feeling. To the right upon entering is an extra room, which is an unofficial-official quiet bar for customers who prefer a calmer night. It was in that section that Deirdre ran the coffee shop.

On the subject of new trends and changing habits, Gerard said: “The zero or zero trade is the fastest-growing trade in all aspects. And the gym. People are getting up all hours of the morning nowadays to go training and that type of thing, they’re more health-conscious.”

Gerard added: “People don’t drink the same way. They go to town for a meal, or they drink at home.”

Kate added “To go out to the pub, there nearly has to be something on, like we ran barbecues and we’ve a lot of stuff coming up, the 20th anniversary of the local GAA winning the All-Ireland...there’s a lot coming up again.”

They both speak fondly of the staff and customers and relay tales of great characters who have been customers down the years. “Legends” Kate says, following up with an anecdote that a customer would often have to come off a stool because it was “so-and-so’s stool”.

Is there pressure holding the fort as the only remaining bar in the area?

“Definitely, Ger says, “like, we’ve all seen it where even in some communities where the last pub standing comes up for sale and there’s no one to buy it and the community has a fear factor that there’ll no longer be a pub in a village or in a little townland.”

He described how some local communities had bought their local pubs to try keep them alive.

“And as I’m the last publican here in this village of Ballymacoda, in the Knockadoon Peninsula, it would be a sad day for this area if there was no pub when it comes to a funeral or a match or a meeting or the book club who meet here, and the GAA lotteries...”

Easter 2026 will see Finn’s Tavern turn 40.

“We’re celebrating our 40th anniversary next Easter, which I suppose will be a milestone in itself to be here that long, do you know? We’ll definitely celebrate it.”

So, will Gerard pass the torch to the next generation? Kate and her dad look at each other.

“It’s a lot of work,” Kate says, but with a smile.

She doesn’t say it from a place of unease. It’s hard to decipher a clear yes, but as far as I can tell, it’s certainly not a no from Kate.