Pub, a love story: Part Three

Queen of the Coal Quay

Katty Barry

Shebeen (Irish: síbín) - an illicit bar, operated without a licence.

Kathy (Katty) Barry was born in 1909 on Dalton’s Avenue, just off Cornmarket Street, known to locals as the Coal Quay, where for generations, shawlies had traded food, clothes, and whatever else working-class Cork City needed.

In her youth, Katty was described as striking looking, often seen in a traditional black shawl that Irish women wore at the time. She was a notiable presence in the Coal Quay market from an early age.

Her mother had run a small provisions shop on the Coal Quay. In 1947, Katty took it over and, with a keen eye for business, recognised what the market crowd wanted: cheap, hot, traditional food. She served crubeens (pig’s trotters) and drisheen (blood sausage). In time, she began to sell alcohol, and her eating house became a shebeen.

Christmas week at the Coal Quay in 1933.

There was no licence. Candles burned in empty milk bottles where electricity had never reached. The floor was bare earth, the room thick with smoke, song, stories, and laughter. At Katty’s,“peers and paupers” drank side by side, the city’s most destitute alongside merchant princes. Doctors drinking whiskey, “professional ladies” drinking wine. Everyone was treated equally. No one customer put ahead of another. All were welcome.

The shebeen was an open secret. The Gardaí (Irish police) often turned a blind eye, and sometimes drank there when off duty. When raids came, they were reluctant. Officials would buy a drink of two before closing her down, uneasy with the knowledge they were costing her a night’s trade.

In court, Katty appeared before judges she had often served, represented by barristers who were her regulars. Her bar was a great leveller, and for two decades it was a place where titles were left at the door and only conduct mattered.

In the late 1960s, Katty Barry’s was permanently closed and demolished by Cork Corporation in the name of modernisation.

Shawlies selling clothes on the Coal Quay in 1965

She lived independantly, never marrying, living on her own terms.. The Irish Times later described her as elegant and highly intelligent, with a “devilish twinkle in her eye” and a sharp, cutting wit.

Katty Barry spent her entire life in the Coal Quay. Old age brought her a gentler kind of respect. She was spoken of kindly, checked on quietly, and never passed without acknowledgement. In her final years, she lived at No. 6 Corporation Buildings, directly across from her former shebeen, and would walk the few yards to Dennehy’s Bar three times a day for a small whiskey and a glass of stout.

Katty died in 1982. Her funeral drew such a crowd to St Joseph’s Cemetery that the priest’s words had to be passed back through the mourners. Judges and barristers stood alongside traders and dockers, the shawlies and the ordinary people of the Coal Quay, gathered as they had once drunk, side by side.

No one customer put ahead of another. All were welcome.

Katty Barry is as much a part of Cork City as the Coal Quay itself. In a street shaped by hard times, with hard rules, she made her own. To this day, more than forty years on, people still gather each year at her grave, on the anniversary of her death, to remember the Queen of the Coal Quay.

The Ballad of Katty Barry" (Jimmy Crowley) Excerpt:

Bad luck to you, Corporation boys, you’re always in such haste,
To knock each famous landmark down, our old and meeting place.
Our haunt is now but memory, of merry days of yore,
Three cheers for Katty Barry, boys, may she open up once more.