Reidy's Vault Bar in Cork comes to market as part of €1.4m pub package

There is a €1.4m guide for Reidy’s Vault Bar, and two adjoining investment properties on Lancaster Quay, just beyond Washington Street, with vacant possession.

The bar is packed with artefacts and vintage pub elements and includes a courtyard, has been maintained despite having shutters pulled down during covid and is ready to trade once more.

It’s being sold by the Reidy family, who are most famously associated with the legendary Le Chateau Bar on Patrick Street, which was established in 1793 and has been in Reidy family ownership since the 1930s, who expanded it by integrating another old bar, Kealy’s, into its labyrinthine interior, and Le Chateau is now run by third generation Mike Reidy.

Long-experienced publican Maura Reidy, now retired, was the driving force in setting up the Vault Bar in the early 1980s, in a former bonded warehouse, along with her brothers, Dan and Michael Reidy.

The family’s links to the Cork’s licensed trade date back to the 1930s, beginning with Michael snr and Mai Reidy.

The second generation of the clan bought the Vault Bar property in the early 1980s, winning the Black & White Pub of the Year accolade a few years later in 1989.

The Vault Bar occupies a former wine vault on Lancaster Quay that was used as a bonded warehouse by wine merchants Reardens, and later as an antique business by specialist traders Cagneys.

The signage for the ‘new’ Reidy venture, when it first opened in the 1980s, made its way from another of the family’s former pubs, the ‘old’ Reidy’s on Sheare’s Street — once the family home of Cork lawyer, writer and politician, Eoin ‘The Pope’ O’Mahony (1905-70).

Other ‘imports’ to the Vault Bar included interiors and artefacts of the old Swan & Cygnet Bar, by St Patrick’s Bridge, display cabinets from Mangan’s Jeweller’s, on Patrick Street, and the long, mahogany counter and mirrored backdrop came from the Peel Hotel in Leeds’ Boar Lane, sourced by architect Jim Twomey, of the Power Corporation.

Also harking back to the heyday of 20th century Cork entertainment and hospitality, the courtyard’s ornate wrought iron canopy came from the old St Francis Hall, also on Sheare’s Street.

The Vault Bar attracted a clientele from the city centre, including tourists and guests from the adjacent Jurys Hotel and subsequently from its replacement, the River Lee Hotel, as well as staff from UCC, the Tyndall Institute, nearby hospitals, including the Mercy, and the now closed Erinville Maternity Hospital and Eye, Ear, and Throat, along with spillover from ‘the Wash,’ the student entertainment strip in Cork.

The quay and street is home to completed apartment blocks at Lancaster Gate, several high-end purpose built student accommodation developments such as Broga House and Amnis House, with the Event Centre site also close-by to the south on South Main Street.

Selling agents for Nos 13-15 Lancaster Quay now are Amanda Isherwood and is Rob Coughlan of Cohalan Downing, who guide the trio at €1.4m, to include: No 15, the 223sq m (2,400sq ft) Wine Vault, mostly on one floor with a small mezzanine and rear lane access; the six-bed residential investment at No 13; and the three-bed No 14 with ground floor commercial space, all available with vacant possession.

They also adjoin the renowned Paradiso restaurant and are 700m from UCC’s main campus, home to 23,000 students.

The property may have potential for other uses besides hospitality, subject to planning (No 15 is a protected structure), and Mr Coughlan says “the licenced premises and two adjoining mixed-use buildings provide obvious scope for all facets of property speculation to include owner occupiers, publicans, hospitality gurus, investors and developers or, perhaps, a hybrid of all.

Details: Cohalan Downing 02-4277717