Birthday bash marks Parlour’s 280th year

Birthday bash marks Parlour’s 280th year

Jim Cook and his wife, Dawn, have reversed the fortunes of the oldest bar in Newtownards since taking ownership of the once-ailing venue two years ago.

Built in 1735, The Parlour Bar has now been offering hospitality for a staggering 279 years, although by the time Jim and Dawn took the premises on in early 2012, a series of tenant-landlords had neglected the trade and the business had fallen into receivership.

Undaunted, its new owners shut the bar for six weeks and set about a renovation programme, sympathetically reinstating the cosy bar area downstairs and installing a restaurant on the first floor:

“This had been a great going venue for years, but it hadn’t been doing very well for some time before we took it on,” recalls Jim. “Business had been going downhill and then it came onto the market. Dawn and I went and had a look at the place just for the sake of nosiness to be honest but we fell in love with it straight away and ended up taking it on.”

Dawn Cook adds: “There was something special about the place that made me believe we had to have it.

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Dawn Cook with Jim at the Parlour Bar in Newtownards.

“There’s so much history to this building that it feels like we are holding on to it for someone else. I am confident that this is a bar for life and it will be in the family for many generations to come. I’m looking forward to celebrating many more special occasions here.”

The bar – located on the corner of Castle Place – is tiny. Downstairs, the maximum capacity is around 25 and the restaurant on the first floor holds around 40 when it’s full.

The historic nature of the premises meant that Jim and Dawn were curtailed to some extent in the renovations that they were able to carry out, but as well as the obvious physical improvements that were made, Jim indicated that plenty had to be done “below the surface” aswell, including a complete re-wiring and a lot of re-plumbing.

“We also had a tree that was actually growing out of the gable end of the building,” added Jim. “We had to get rid of that before we could do anything else.”

Jim and Dawn are well known in the area as proprietors of The Tudor Tavern, which they’ve had for the last 20 years. Both bars are a little different in their approach – while the Tudor doesn’t have a restaurant element to its offering, Jim says that he feels a town centre pub like the Parlour couldn’t survive these days without it.

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And he points out that business at the Parlour Bar is already well ahead of the expectations that he and Dawn had for the venue when they took it on:

“We’d given ourselves three or four years in which to build up the business, but after 12 months we already had a strong trade,” he adds. “The response from local people was unbelievable. The restaurant has also been trading well and we now have quite a strong repeat trade.”

To mark the 280th year of the business, a series of events is planned, but Jim won’t be drawn on the detail of the programme just yet.  But a birthday celebration was held there in March attended by many of the bar’s regulars.

On that occasion, Cool FM and Downtown Radio breakfast editor, Holly Hamilton, who comes from Newtownards, dressed in period costume and presented Jim and Dawn with a special commemorative plaque which has been mounted by the Parlour’s front door.

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