After Nottingham was finally able to celebrate St. Patrick's Day again, we took a look at some of the iconic Irish venues that were the perfect place for a pint. Sadly, there aren't many Irish venues left in the city as many have closed.
However, there are some venues where you can be guaranteed a 'Céad Míle Fáilte' (a thousand welcomes) and a Guinness or two. The remaining venues are Raglan Road on Derby Road, O' Neill's on Market Square and Greyfriars social club in St. Ann's.
The city was once host to many more as the trend for Irish bars soared in the 1990s amidst a boom in interest around Celtic culture. O'Neill's Irish bar is the newest addition to the city opening in 2019. The building had previously been The Goose on the Square and The Bank before it became an Irish bar.
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O' Neill's is not technically new to Nottingham as it was originally located near Theatre Royal before closing in 2003. The building went on to become Reflex, an 80s-themed club before being transformed into Copper, which it remains today.
The new bar has become a popular location for Irish sports matches and St. Patrick's Day celebrations. The building dates back to 1959 and was originally a Barclays Bank.
Raglan Road on Derby road is another Irish pub with a loyal clientele. The name of the bar comes from the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh and much like other pubs on the same street, it has retained its caves as a feature of the building.
The building was previously a bar called the Hawksley. It was named after the water engineer, Thomas Hawksley, who was born and educated in Nottingham. It was converted into a pub from a music shop in 2008.
Greyfriars social club is another Irish venue situated outside of the city centre. It was built in the early 1960s by local Irish labourers as emigration from Ireland increased. St. Ann's saw a huge increase in Irish families relocating to Nottingham.
Historically, the pub was a stopping place for famous Irish showbands who were on their way to Holyhead after playing gigs in London. It is still a popular place for all local Irish celebrations as well as charity events and fundraisers.
During the height of the pandemic, the club organised between 80 to 90 hot meals a day for the elderly Irish community members and distributed the food locally. Pat Murphy, of the Nottingham Irish Studies Group, commented on the reduction in numbers during his St. Patrick's Day address. The Irish centre originally opened on Derby Road opposite St. Barnabas Cathedral in 1964 obtaining an alcohol license so it could hold dances. As the Irish community grew, it had a need for a larger premises.
The centre moved to its current location in 1973 and will soon celebrate 50 years on Wilford street. The Club is run by tenants within the centre operating as a live music venue.
Pat said: "This is the 50th anniversary of the Irish Centre being set up on Wilford Street. In the 70s and 80s, I'm sure some of you went to the Irish centre when there were queues down the street. There aren't any queues anymore but we are still going strong."
Pauline Gordon remembers the early days of the Irish centre as her parents established it when they moved from Liverpool to Nottingham. They had originally arrived in Liverpool from Galway on the west coast and Dundalk, a county near the Northern border.
Pauline said "My mother and father started this place during the 1960s. We had dances on Saturdays and my daughters would come down to learn the Irish gigs then the centre would have a band on in the evenings. If you went passed on a Saturday night then there would be queues down the street. We wouldn't finish until 9am the next morning where we went home at the same time the milkman was out."
Keogh's bar was once located near the front entrance of Victoria shopping centre on Mansfield Road. Originally built in 1894, the building was demolished in 1930 before being rebuilt.
It has had a string of former names and was originally opened as the Mansfield Arms before becoming the Regent in 1973. The same year it became an Irish bar. The popular bar was closed in 2019 and was given a £250,000 revamp becoming Six Barrels Bar.
Scott De Buitléir moved to Nottingham from Dublin. He recalls spending time in Keogh's bar when he moved to the city.
"It was a little reminder a comfort of home, like Ireland's embassy to the East Midlands. The GAA memorabilia, flags hanging from the ceiling, and various other photos or things you'd see from any other pub back in Ireland, they all made you feel like you were reconnected to the homeland for a little while."
Although Guinness is one of the most well known Irish drinks, it wasn't always the most popular one. Pubs in Nottingham used to prefer a strong pint of Murphy's Irish stout or Beamish instead.
Guinness was served in bottles originally as it was not available as draught. It had to be brought in from Ireland in casks then bottled by a local brewery before being sold to pubs.
Murphy's and Beamish are both brewed in Cork city while Guinness is famously produced in Dublin. Cork is the current twinned county for this year's St. Patrick's Day celebrations.
Steve Westby, chair of CAMRA said: "A lot of the pubs here didn't sell Guinness, they sold Murphy's instead. Guinness had a monopoly and they thought they could manipulate the price which is why it's so expensive. Murphy's came in through one of the big national brewery's to market it in the UK."
He added: "You don't really see them around anymore. The pubs that sold Murphy's or Beamish didn't sell Guinness."
Another popular location for a pint was The Mint pub. It was located under the Albany Hotel on St. James Street and became Behan's Irish bar in 1990s.
Sadly, no photos of the bar remain but the signage was visible over a side entrance until it was redeveloped into a restaurant in 2018. Patrons of the bar remember it as being 'gloomy' but that the bar was one of the only few places that would screen Irish sports.
Patricia English was a landlady who ran a series of bars across the city. She relocated from Achill Island to Liverpool in 1973 before moving to Nottingham.
She said. "On our day off, we used to come into Nottingham because we liked the city. Our first pub was the White Lion on Carlton which was run as an Irish venue owned by Whitbread Brewery. All the Irish people came into us at the time because there was a huge community. We left there in 1980 after the police caught us having a few people in the bar after hours."
Pat's favourite memory is when famous Irish musician Shane McGowan called into the Belle Vue bar and also O' Rourke's.
"We had Shane McGowan in O' Rourke's and he stayed there until 8.30am. He was a brilliant man and he came back to the Belle Vue when we owned that. He was an absolute character but a lovely man. I loved working in bars as it was great craic."
The Royal George on Ilkeston Road was also briefly an Irish bar. It became a student bar called Seven before being derelict for ten years and was torn down in 2016. It has been replaced by student flats.
The Hearty Goodfellows on Mount street was an Irish bar for a brief period of time and is now the 4550 Indian restaurant - just a few steps from where Brehan's would have been. Visitors to the pub recall there used to be a sign for 'private parties' that marked the downstairs gay bar which had to be kept secret.
It opened towards the end of the 1960s and images from the Bernard And Pauline Heathcote Photographic Collection at Bromley House show the bar was still in operation in 1998.
Central Tavern on Huntingdon Street was another location that served as an Irish bar in the seventies. The Central Market, opposite the pub, replaced a cinema in the 1920s, and before that the site housed Nottingham Prison.
The pub owned by Hilda Bradley and her sons, was named Gatsby's in 1983 and was one of Nottingham's best known gay venues. It is also thought to have been a bar been called Niche in a previous life.
Chambers on Maid Marian Way was another popular spot for the craic. The bar became Bear and Lace in 2015 serving cocktails and food before closing in 2017. It is now the Calcutta Club restaurant.
Sadly, no images of Chambers bar remain although locals may remember the brown and green exterior with yellow signage.
A Yelp reviewer commented on Chambers: "So glad this dive is closed. I remember the doorman. He once attempted to steal my chips from me as I was passing by and then proceeded to chase me, the thug."
The Mechanic Arms was a long-standing Irish bar in St. Ann's decorated with flags and memorabilia. The small bar had a pool table, TV and was also known locally as 'the pride of Erin' bar. The bar closed in 2016 and plans were submitted to the council in 2020 to build 16 apartments for the homeless community on the site.
