Qualla: MacCarthy's Bar https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: MacCarthy's Bar https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar MacCarthy's Bar: Introduction https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pete McCarthy wrote a rule into the title of his 2000 travel book: never pass a bar that has your name on it. He was joking, mostly. The bar he had in mind sits on the square at Castletownbere, with peeling paint, hand-painted Guinness lettering on the front, and a sign reading MacCarthy's Bar and Grocery in faded capitals over the door. Inside, the front half sells eggs, milk, tinned beans, Galtee cheese, ketchup, and now also bottles of white wine and prosecco. The back half pours pints. The book sold over a million copies. The shop still sells the spam.

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full MacCarthy's Bar: Eighteen Sixty https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Michael McCarthy started trading on the square in 1860. He had begun as a general merchant - flour, sugar, hardware, candles - and his business grew as it picked up custom from the Royal Navy base across the harbour at Berehaven. The grocery added a license and became one of the ...

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-eighteen-sixty.mp3 0:06 2 full MacCarthy's Bar: Aidan's War https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. D. F.'s son Aidan MacCarthy left Castletownbere to train as a doctor and joined the RAF medical service before the Second World War. What followed reads like several lives crowded into one: he was at Dunkirk and evacuated with the British Expeditionary Force; survived a torpedoed...

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-aidans-war.mp3 0:06 3 full MacCarthy's Bar: The Pete McCarthy Chapter https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pete McCarthy was not related. He was a London comedian and broadcaster of Irish descent who set off across the country in the 1990s following his own self-invented rule about bars with one's surname above the door. Chapter six of McCarthy's Bar (published 2000) describes the eve...

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-the-pete-mccarthy-chapter.mp3 0:06 4 full MacCarthy's Bar: Adrienne and the Counter https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the late 1970s the family had begun to thin out. Aidan died eventually in 1992 - he had also written his own war memoir, A Doctor's War. In 1979 his daughter Adrienne MacCarthy moved back to Cork to take the bar over after the death of an uncle and to keep it from closing. Her...

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-adrienne-and-the-counter.mp3 0:06 5 full MacCarthy's Bar: Closed and Opened Again https://qualla.com/maccarthy-s-bar/ Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, MacCarthy's stayed closed for the longest stretch in its history - longer than the wartime years, longer than any pause in 160 seasons. When the pub finally reopened, the front room was reconfigured for one-way passage, with sanitisers and sc...

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Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/v/maccarthy-s-bar-wp/gc0v-maccarthys-bar-closed-and-opened-again.mp3 0:06 6 full