2018 Primetime Emmy
& James Beard Award Winner

Staying Too Late at the Oldest House in Ireland

Staying Too Late at the Oldest House in Ireland

Beer in Kilkenny

In the 10 pm Irish summer sunshine, we followed a handwritten sandwich board for “The Hole in the Wall Ye Olde Ale House and Tea Room 1582” down a tight, medieval stone alleyway, past barrels and a couple of smokers, and ducked under a door built during a time when people were smaller. With no pomp or circumstance, we were suddenly standing in what is claimed to be the oldest surviving townhouse in Ireland, about to buy a cheap beer.

The Hole in the Wall was built as the Archer Inner House in 1582. In 1999, the building was purchased by Dr. Michael Conway, a cardiologist who is also an academic and a painter and the spitting image of the impish actor Mark Rylance. He has been restoring it for the last decade and a half.

The bar has seats for about eight, and is outfitted like the corner of a suburban garage: an industrial metal sink with strong water pressure and a wide splash zone, a black bookcase stacked with mismatched glasses, a few flats of bottled water, and a glass-front mini fridge with a jumble of random beers. A chalkboard says beer is five euro and wine is seven. It does not specify what type of beer, and the wine is only red.

Each time I ordered a beer, I got something different. A Kilkenny Red tall boy. Bulmers cider in a can. Bulmers cider in a bottle. A green bomber of generic Czech pilsner. It was Ireland, so there must have been whiskey, but everyone I saw was drinking some variety of cheap beer.

After thirty minutes or so, Dr. Conway shuffled in, making winking asides, wearing a bowler. He took a saxophone off the wall next to my head and gestured for us to follow him. And then he disappeared upstairs. We followed. Under the tall, pitched Tudor roof and on original 16th century floors, an Irish musical session was in full swing. The doctor/painter/professor/proprietor stood in the corner beating a bass drum with one hand and pounding chords on the piano with the other, a small glass of red wine perched nearby.

Washboards and bongos circulated in the crowd. They played “This Land is Your Land” with an oompah bassline and Irish accents. Three guitarists wailed through “Wild Rover,” an Irish classic full of crowd stomps and claps. A 19-year-old girl got up and jammed on the sax. Someone claimed Johnny Cash for Ireland before launching into “Ring of Fire.” As the opening chords to Men At Work’s “Down Under” started, a didgeridoo appeared out of nowhere.

We spent a few weeks in Ireland and sought out musical sessions and beer in every city. We sat rapt and respectful, listening to Irish flutes and concertinas, enjoying ourselves but very much part of the audience. At the Hole in the Wall, that distinction disappeared, and we smiled too wide, sang too loudly, and stayed too late, swept up in a raucous stationary parade.

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