When Berny Rafferty agreed to host a small Saturday afternoon gig at Rafferty’s Bar on Thomas Street, Armagh, he expected between 30 and 40 people. Instead, more than 200 punk rockers arrived, the bar reached capacity and several elderly women ended up pogoing alongside them.
That is just one of the stories gathered during Berny’s 40 years as proprietor of Rafferty’s, also known as The Cuchulain Bar. Before returning to Armagh, he learned the trade in busy pubs in Dublin and London. He later took over the corner premises with Cathy, then his girlfriend and now his wife.
The gig that filled Thomas Street
Berny was 24 when the young band approached him about using the lounge for a gig. The performers arrived dressed as punk rockers, and the crowd grew steadily as the afternoon went on. Once the bar was full, more people sat on the pavement outside.
Across the road, around 50 Saturday shoppers watched the scene, confronted with face piercings, dyed spiked hair and tartan trousers. Berny remembers wondering what he had taken on, before deciding he would simply have to manage the situation.
The biggest surprise came when five or six elderly women entered and said they had come to see their nephews. Half an hour later, Berny found them dancing with the punks in the lounge. He said the night passed without even a glass being broken, and he later discovered that some of the punk crowd were trainee barristers, medical students and people in other respected professions.
For Berny, the experience carried a lasting lesson: appearances do not tell the whole story.
A protest over Sunday opening
Another unusual episode followed the introduction of Sunday opening. Berny had already seen the effects of longer opening hours in England and was unsure how the change would work. On the first Sunday, while he and Cathy were cleaning, he heard chanting outside.
About a dozen people were standing outside with placards. They were born-again Christians protesting about Sunday opening hours. Berny went out to speak to them, but they ran down Dobbin Street. One protester dropped a placard, which Berny picked up and kept for years in case its owner returned.
The stories sit alongside quieter memories of the people who have made Rafferty’s their local. Berny says regular customers become an important part of a publican’s life, and he still thinks about a long-standing customer who is currently unwell. His morning customers call him “The Doctor”, while afternoon regulars know him as “Honest Berny”.
A changing pub trade in Armagh
Berny says running a pub involves far more than standing behind the counter. The work begins before opening and continues after closing, and he describes hospitality as one of the hardest jobs to do. He recalls advice from a woman publican on The Shambles, who told him that a publican can quickly move from being the best thing since sliced bread to the biggest dirty rat in town.
He believes the pressures facing pubs began before Covid and the smoking ban, tracing the decline to the 2007/08 crash. Berny says there were once five working bars on Thomas Street, while Armagh city had 43 public houses when he was growing up. A friend who was ten years older remembered 70. He now says Rafferty’s is the only bar left on Thomas Street and that Armagh has about ten working bars.
Berny also believes high house prices and the growth of at-home drinking have affected the pub trade. In his view, pubs are social places where people meet different types of people, form relationships and sometimes even find work.
He recalls an 1840 New Directory brought into the bar by a customer. The document listed a Bernard Rafferty and a Patrick Rafferty among the publicans and tavern keepers in Thomas Street. The names matched Berny’s own family, although he has not yet found time to research the connection fully.
Rafferty’s has another distinctive feature: what Berny calls “the smallest beer garden in Ireland”. It was created by knocking through into the former women’s toilets to make an outdoor smoking area. He says council planning officials approved it with only 3mm of clearance.
After four decades, Berny’s account of Rafferty’s is both a record of one Armagh business and a portrait of how the city’s pub life has changed. The stories range from punk bands and protest placards to family names in an old directory, all held together by the customers who continue to give the Thomas Street bar its character.
