New era beckons for the Crosskeys

The Crosskeys Inn near Toomebridge is the oldest thatched pub in Ireland, but a protracted battle to secure financial backing has seen ambitious plans for development at the venue stalled for many years…

Vincent Hurl (44), is proprietor of the Crosskeys Inn near Toomebridge in County Antrim, widely acclaimed as the oldest thatched pub in Northern Ireland and a mainstay of the province’s international tourist campaigns for many years.

The little pub itself, which can accommodate around 50 customers at capacity, can trace its origins right back to the mid-1600s, and has belonged to Vincent – who comes from nearby Bellaghy – since 2001.

Unsurprisingly, this traditional old hostelry has often been featured on Northern Ireland’s tourist advertising in foreign markets over those years and around 40 per cent of the customers who visit the Crosskeys are tourists.

Yet, since 2006, Vincent has been struggling to see a £1.2m programme of improvements carried out on the listed building – it took him six years to secure planning permission for the refurbishments, which primarily involve restaurant facilities and accommodation – and he is still battling to secure finance for the scheme.

Speaking to LCN this month, Vincent indicated that he now hopes to be able finally to start work on the project within about six months, although, he says, it’s likely that he will have to compromise on his original proposals in order to secure the necessary funds:

“Financing has been the real problem all along,” he explained. “I’ve now moved to a new lender and they are looking at financing the project, but they are requesting that we scale the project down…If I did that, I could secure the funding tomorrow.”

Reducing the extent of the development is Vincent’s least favourite option and he’s been resisting the demand for some time:

“It’s a big decision and it’s not a road I want to go,” he confessed. “To date, I’ve spent a considerable sum and years of work to develop the plans that we have. I don’t want to just turn around and put that in the bin. Also, the nature of this development, the shape of the premises, means that it can’t be taken forward in stages like that, for this to work, it has to happen all at once.”

The 1500 sq. ft. stone-built cottage is described by Vincent as ‘old heritage’. Researchers from Queen’s University, Belfast have visited the venue and analysed roofing material which allowed them to date the structure to around 1654.

The premises is laid out in four distinct rooms with two separate bars and despite a fire in 2001 which damaged some of the roofing timbers, most of the building is original.

“The challenge is that it is listed and we have to maintain it to certain standards,” said Vincent. “We have to work with traditional materials such as lime mortar for repairs, we have to properly thatch the roof and the building is whitewashed. We can’t just decide to change a window, everything has to be approved first and everything has to be done in the traditional style. We can’t do anything without asking permission.”

Business at the old pub is brisk and it doesn’t rely only on tourists for its survival –far from it:

“We’re very lucky, we have a good local clientele,” said Vincent. “We run a lot of fundraising events such as BBQs and eel suppers and we do it all outside because we don’t have room inside or cooking facilities.

“This September, we’re teaming up with the eel fisheries in Toome for the European Heritage Open Day and this will run from a Friday to a Sunday. We’ll be doing eel suppers, traditional music and storytelling with Liz Weir. Traditional music is something we do a lot of, generally, we would have impromptu sessions every Saturday night. We only book music if there is a special event or a function.”

The Crosskeys isn’t Vincent’s first foray onto the pub scene. After a long stint in the United States, where he worked in construction and served in local bars, he returned and bought the former Talk of the Town bar (now known as the Corner House Bar) in Draperstown in 1998.

“That went really well for me and I was there until 2006,” he recalls. “When I sold the bar, it was one of the busiest in the town.”

Demonstrating a flair for innovation even then, Vincent realised that the kitchens at the bar were under-used – food was only available on a Friday to serve the influx of market traders that would descend on Draperstown once a week – so he added a pizza oven in 2004 and offered them for sale in the bar and via delivery.

Vincent sold the Talk of the Town on in 2006 and switched his focus solely to the Crosskeys with a view to launching his renovation programme there – although he didn’t realise at the time just how long it would take to get the necessary planning permission.

“The bar was being used to promote tourism in Northern Ireland long before I took it over,” he remarked. “The premises was used as far back as the 70s to promote Northern Ireland to tourists. It featured in an NITB Pubs of Ulster promotion and in recent years, it’s been used extensively by Tourism Ireland in campaigns all over the world. I realised back then though, that other than providing people with a comfortable seat and a drink, we had very little else to offer them.”

The first six years of the project were consumed with securing planning permission for the renovations. It was a long, drawn-out process, according to Vincent:

Ironically, the battle for funding to pay for the renovations has drawn the process out further and the planning permission which Vincent won in 2010 is set to expire at the end of May this year- so that’s going to mean further outlay to secure fresh approvals.

Vincent, however, remains hopeful that work to take the Crosskeys to the next stage in its development will begin this year:

“I’m hoping to get a move on it this year in some way or another,” he told LCN. “I’ll probably have to look at changes of some sort and the development will go in stages, we’ll just have to look at how that’s going to work.

“We have the support of government for this, local authorities and tourist agencies such as local councils, Invest NI, Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland, the whole lot, but it’s the finance that has held it up so far.

“We’re still very hopeful that we can move forward on this,” he added. “The base case scenario is that we could begin work in six months and we would probably be six to nine months on site.”

Vincent’s priority now is to get the planning permission renewed and a funding package in place:

“If you were to come back here in a couple of years, I’d like to think that you would find all the planned work completed, a traditional pub with a restaurant offering good local food and accommodation on offer.”