26-30, F
Eileanór is ainm dom ach glaonn gach duine orm Lee, atá sa Ghàidhlig Laoidh.
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ArtieKat · M
Your reference to your home Province brought back to mind a now defunct bar in London which I used back in the 1970s. As I recalled it there were four rooms named after the Provinces of Ireland but it seems I was slightly confused:
Wards Irish House
Wards was indeed a deep labyrinthine pub which served the best Guinness in England. It also served very good lunch and was frequented by all sorts, including City types looking for good grub at reasonable prices. It sold Irish brand cigarettes, such as Carrols and Major. It had two bars...The Munster and Leinster and the Connacht and Ulster Bar. You would have to go down two steep lots of steps to get to the bars and they were not very friendly if you were trying to get back up with a few pints in you because they were very steep. The writer of this note has personal experience of falling down these on St Patrick day about 40 years ago at about 4pm.....2.30pm was closing time but if you were in you were in and the pub did not close(except for the doors) most days.
Wards Irish House: Where we learned that the ubiquitous Buskers from all local Underground Stations' Alleyways were, in fact, not sole-traders but rather a loosely bound Collective who divvied their dosh up here whilst enjoying the excellent Guinness. All Irish Students heading for London seeking work for the Summer were well aware of the existence & location of this Community//Employment//Accommodation Centre nestling in the bowels of Piccadilly Circus unbeknownst to the milling throngs above hustling hither & thither avoiding Tourists lest they all go down like 10-pins. Many's the Mammie's boi, fresh-off-the-Boat on their first adventure outside their Parish, balking at first at the dark almost ominous descent into this Promised Land, to later emerge, lighter by the cost of a few Pints sure [FACT: In 1974 £1 got you 5 Pints] BUT knowing they were on their way to crash on someone's floor that night; in the morning get an introduction to some slum Landlord who ALWAYS had 'BedSits' available AND, on the next Working morning, be brought along to some Building Site where a few patrons of Wards already worked & (being the 70's) vacancies existed everywhere.
> As an habituê there WAS one troubling time to be in such a prominent centre-of-town establishment that unashamedly marketed it's Irishness. October & November 1974; Guildford & Birmingham. Bad times. Now, as the two entrances (Shaftesbury Ave. & Coventry Street) were merely darkened doorways that led you down steeply-inclined stairs to a dungeonesque basement, we theorised that sooner-or-later it'd only take two outraged citizens with one petrol-bomb each down the stairs & us imbibers would've been incinerated...!
>> There were SO many crazy characters around, not to mind the Dilly Boys AND the Scandal & Conspiracy Theories arising from the infamous PLAYLAND Amuement Arcade a few doors away. MJ
There is no mention here of Wards Irish House in Piccadilly Circus located next to or under the London Pavilion, Piccadilly. I think under. It was a quite famous underground pub, popular with journalists, actors and Irish navvies. It could certainly well have been a public toilet at one time – it closed down sometime in the 1980s. A big, dingy, labyrinthine pub in the bowels of the London Pavilion, with zinc counters, the walls were covered in public toilet tiling (light green and cream in colour) and there was ever that indefinable odour mingling with the Guinness and whiskey and tobacco fumes. You could get Dublin standard Guinness, along with gruffly amiable service. Underground, it was a sort of sanctuary, a club for the unclubbable.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APiccadilly_CircusWards was indeed a deep labyrinthine pub which served the best Guinness in England. It also served very good lunch and was frequented by all sorts, including City types looking for good grub at reasonable prices. It sold Irish brand cigarettes, such as Carrols and Major. It had two bars...The Munster and Leinster and the Connacht and Ulster Bar. You would have to go down two steep lots of steps to get to the bars and they were not very friendly if you were trying to get back up with a few pints in you because they were very steep. The writer of this note has personal experience of falling down these on St Patrick day about 40 years ago at about 4pm.....2.30pm was closing time but if you were in you were in and the pub did not close(except for the doors) most days.
Wards Irish House: Where we learned that the ubiquitous Buskers from all local Underground Stations' Alleyways were, in fact, not sole-traders but rather a loosely bound Collective who divvied their dosh up here whilst enjoying the excellent Guinness. All Irish Students heading for London seeking work for the Summer were well aware of the existence & location of this Community//Employment//Accommodation Centre nestling in the bowels of Piccadilly Circus unbeknownst to the milling throngs above hustling hither & thither avoiding Tourists lest they all go down like 10-pins. Many's the Mammie's boi, fresh-off-the-Boat on their first adventure outside their Parish, balking at first at the dark almost ominous descent into this Promised Land, to later emerge, lighter by the cost of a few Pints sure [FACT: In 1974 £1 got you 5 Pints] BUT knowing they were on their way to crash on someone's floor that night; in the morning get an introduction to some slum Landlord who ALWAYS had 'BedSits' available AND, on the next Working morning, be brought along to some Building Site where a few patrons of Wards already worked & (being the 70's) vacancies existed everywhere.
> As an habituê there WAS one troubling time to be in such a prominent centre-of-town establishment that unashamedly marketed it's Irishness. October & November 1974; Guildford & Birmingham. Bad times. Now, as the two entrances (Shaftesbury Ave. & Coventry Street) were merely darkened doorways that led you down steeply-inclined stairs to a dungeonesque basement, we theorised that sooner-or-later it'd only take two outraged citizens with one petrol-bomb each down the stairs & us imbibers would've been incinerated...!
>> There were SO many crazy characters around, not to mind the Dilly Boys AND the Scandal & Conspiracy Theories arising from the infamous PLAYLAND Amuement Arcade a few doors away. MJ
There is no mention here of Wards Irish House in Piccadilly Circus located next to or under the London Pavilion, Piccadilly. I think under. It was a quite famous underground pub, popular with journalists, actors and Irish navvies. It could certainly well have been a public toilet at one time – it closed down sometime in the 1980s. A big, dingy, labyrinthine pub in the bowels of the London Pavilion, with zinc counters, the walls were covered in public toilet tiling (light green and cream in colour) and there was ever that indefinable odour mingling with the Guinness and whiskey and tobacco fumes. You could get Dublin standard Guinness, along with gruffly amiable service. Underground, it was a sort of sanctuary, a club for the unclubbable.