You Have Given Us the Heritage
It’s Ireland’s most fulfilling crossroads. All worldly and spiritual needs are catered for where Kells Road and Main Street crisscross with Ardee Street and Church Street. No box goes unticked. Afternoon wine? Donegan’s Pub to the north of the crossroads. Evening wine? No.3 Wine Bar to the south. Dinner with wine? No.3 Restaurant, still south. Nightcap wine and four poster bed? Collon House to the northeast. Sunday morning service? Collon Church of Ireland to the southwest.
Donegan’s arrived on the Collon scene in 1870 as a pub and grocery shop. Not an unusual combination a century and a half ago – often there was an undertaker’s added into the mix to make such establishments one stop shops so to speak (“a stiff drink” takes on a whole new double entendre in rural Ireland). The fire is lit, the racing is on the telly, and the craic is almighty. A 20 paned tripartite window frames glorious bursts of sunshine one minute and torrential downpours of rain the next.
Mother and son team Martina and Wayne Fitzpatrick established No.3 Wine Bar and restaurant a mere seven years ago and have been racking up national, province and county level plaudits ever since: 11 awards and seven recommendations to date. You can eat and drink outdoors, indoors ground floor or mezzanine. The menu is illustrated in Gatsbyesque style. Jay Gatsby, sorry the dapper Wayne Fitzpatrick, explains, “We grow our own organic fruit and vegetables on site in our kitchen garden. Silverskin onions, beetroot, gooseberries and blueberries are just some of our home produce.” The Jazz Age is alive and kicking in No.3 although thankfully there’s no prohibition. Just plenty of fanciable flappers.
Ah, Collon House: that’s somewhere to write home about.
And so to church. Or maybe not, as Collon Church of Ireland is currently closed for restoration. The Foster family, local landed gentry who lived on the other side of the crossroads in Collon House, built the first Anglican church in 1764 before the current building replaced it half a century later. The impressive Tudor Gothic church was designed by the incumbent priest Daniel Augustus Beaufort. Not bad going for an amateur architect. He also published a Memoir of Ireland, a sort of academic 19th century Lonely Planet guide. And he was a founder of the Royal Irish Academy. Quite the multihyphenate life. The Reverend Beaufort’s father was a French Huguenot refugee who became Pastor of the Huguenot Church in Spitalfields, London. That building, known as Hanbury Hall, is now the Church Hall of Christ Church Spitalfields. A circularity of Anglicanism is at play. Daniel Augustus Beaufort sure knew a thing or two about creating a catchy silhouette.
“‘Wine makes me feel all tingly, doesn’t it you?’ chattered Miss Masters gaily,” writes Frances Scott Fitzgerald in O Russet Witch, his 1922 Tale of the Jazz Age. “‘I love you too, Merlin,’ she answered simply. ‘Shall we have another bottle of wine?’ ‘Yes,’ he cried, his heart beating at a great rate. ‘Do you mean –’ ‘To drink to our engagement,’ she interrupted bravely. ‘May it be a short one!’ ‘No!’ he almost shouted, bringing his fist fiercely down upon the table. ‘May it last forever!’ ‘What?’ ‘I mean – oh I see what you mean. You’re right. May it be a short one.’”
