Bernie’s latest venture – Blue Hackle in Delvin to re-open as Brinsley’s Bar

The Blue Hackle Pub in Delvin is to re-open under new ownership, new management and a new name – Brinsley’s Bar after Brinsley MacNamara, whose novel, The Valley of the Squinting Windows, raised hackles itself when it was published in 1918.

Bernie Comaskey and his wife Pamela have purchased the pub, formerly owned by Dolores Gaffney, and are in the process of appointing a manager and hope to open in the autumn.

Bernie is an entrepreneur and businessman and a Westmeath Examiner contributor/columnist for more than 30 years.

He explained why he has made this move at a time when pubs are struggling to survive amidst Covid restrictions. He feels that the premises has huge potential and he that rural communities like Delvin need to hold on to their businesses.

“It is depressing to see the heart pulled out of towns and villages around the country and I was afraid that if we didn’t buy it, it would not open again as a pub,” said Bernie.

Bernie and Pamela are both natives of Drumcree, Pamela having grown up in Bartley’s, the family’s pub business. She is now retired from teaching and is actively involved in this project, bringing to it her flair for interior design and planning.

They have “two great men” working with them on the Delvin project – Jerry McGrath and Michael Leonard. Jerry is a builder and “a genius”.

“Any job I ask him to do, he does it better than I asked and I wouldn’t have bought the pub if I hadn’t have him,” Bernie said.

Michael is now retired, having run “his very successful shop and post office” for many years. He’s Bernie’s co-ordinator and consultant on all matters and “he is invaluable to me”.

The pub has a bar, a large function room and a beer garden. There are two shop units with the pub, one of which is leased to Fox’s Bookies, and the other is going to be Trudy’s Coffee Shop, named after the Comaskeys’ eldest granddaughter who is 13.

They hope to open the Coffee Shop in August and the pub the month after. The function room is going to constitute a major part of the development, but Bernie stresses that he has great affection and admiration for St Patrick’s Hall and its committee and he is determined not to do anything that will compete with them.

This pub was originally owned by the Cuneen family, then by Willie Dugdale and then by the Gaffney family. Bernie pays generous tribute to Dolores Gaffney and her family for the fine tradition they have established, saying that it is a lot easier to carry on such a tradition than to start from scratch.

He says that Delvin has many fine pubs and he looks forward to working with them.

Bernie Comaskey is a man who “can do anything bar nothing”. He hates to be idle and has led a hectic life, starting in Merlehen’s Pub in Delvin, where he served his time. From there he went to Canada for a few years and came back to run a shop and post office in Longwood. He then bought the Mullingar Squash Centre and ran it for 12 years, putting in gyms and a sports clinic and running classes in several disciplines including dancing.

One of his prize possessions is a letter from the then editor of the Westmeath Examiner, the late Nicholas Nally, congratulating him on all he had done for Mullingar. He is also proud of the Tourism Award he received from the then minister for tourism, Mary O’Rourke, when she came to town.

In 1999, Bernie opened an Irish bar, Paddy’s Point, in La Zenia, near Alicante, Spain. It was the first pub on the Costa Blanca to show live GAA matches on television and featured on a TV documentary and in the national press. Bus-loads of GAA fans would flock from all over the Costa Blanca to watch games at Paddy’s Point.

Bernie and Pamela’s son, Ian, still lives in Spain, where he is a successful property developer, and he has invested in properties in Pearse Street and Mount Street, Mullingar.

Bernie says that he hauled Ian back from the US when he was a student to work in Spain because he feared that if he stayed in the US any longer, he’d never leave. Ian has three sons, Finn, Ruairi and Cillian.

Their daughter, Olga, went to her uncle in Westport to work for the summer one year and never left. She has one son, Jack, and two daughters, Trudy and Ciara. Bernie and Pamela decided to call their new pub Brinsley’s Bar in celebration of The Valley of the Squinting Windows and “to remove a bit more of any lingering residue from the book”. An author himself, Bernie empathises with MacNamara.

“It’s a literary work and could have been written about any Irish village of the time. I remember Gay Byrne interviewing Nuala O’Faolain on the Late Late Show when I was halfway through writing ‘If Ever a Man Suffered’.

Nuala remarked that anybody writing their story honestly and from the heart, will have people not speaking to them afterwards. I found this to be true. When I published my novel, ‘The Team’, a work of fiction, a man phoned me from a GAA club in Offaly and asked me who fed me the information about his club!,” Bernie remarks.

In 2010, the first Garradrimna Book Fair was held and this feast of books and audio books draws large crowds to the original Garradrimna – Delvin.

Looking for a manager

The next big step for the Comaskeys is the appointment of a manager. They are looking for someone who can take full responsibility for the day to day running of the business, someone with a knowledge of catering (soup, sandwiches and panini) and an added perk is that the job comes with accommodation if needed.

Bernie believes in profit sharing and in giving all staff a say in how the business is run. “If you can tell me a better way of doing it, we will do it your way, and if there are two right ways of doing it, we will do it my way,” he jokes.

This may be Bernie Comaskey’s latest venture, but it is unlikely to be his last as his spirit of adventure and dynamism persists.

Contact the Westmeath Examiner on 04493 46700 (747, newsroom) if you would like to find out more about the job.