Famed off-licence with the spirit of proprietors past

TradeNames: Boasting a mention in Ulysses, a liquor store on Camden Street is part of Dublin in the rare aul' times, writes Rose Doyle

Jack Carvill's off-licence at 42 Lower Camden Street has been much treasured and admired for many a year.

There's the building itself: narrow, gabled, redbrick, elaborately Edwardian. It has a first floor bay window, an original timber shopfront with carved brackets and a date stone. Even by the decorative standards of 1906 when it was built, it was special.

Inside there's more of the same, the Edwardian mood maintained in a long, narrow shop that is all shining mahogany and mirrors with a curved wood counter, iron beam from which used hang sides of bacon, timber floor and glass fronted counting house/office at the end giving a spy-eye view of the lot. This last was where, in different times, customers settled their bills in, relative, privacy.

You could say, and you'd be right, that Carvill's has had something of a charmed existence. It's always been cherished, by owners and customers alike, has always had a full and functioning life as, more or less, what it is today.

Not that Joseph Delahunt, renowned 19th century Camden Street family grocer, direct wine and brandy importer, thought of his business as simply an off-licence. The term then was "spirit grocer" and, when he set up a branch in 42 Camden Street, it was listed in The Industries of Dublin as "a most important house" said to be "situated on one of the finest business thoroughfares" and in a "thriving locality".

The locality has always been a thriving one. Camden and Wexford streets were for centuries part of the ancient route out of the city.

Known as the Highway to Ranelagh, it ran from Dublin Castle to Glendalough. The stretch originally called Kevin's Port became Camden Street in 1778.

Delahunts of Camden Street sold "teas, sugars, spices, fruits" as well as "John Jameson & Sons celebrated old malt in fully matured and splendid condition", along with "directly imported" wines, brandies and champagne. Delahunts, the institution, was celebrated in Ulysses when Joyce's Molly Bloom primed herself for an outing "with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband".

That was then and long before the Cavey family took over and put their name over the door. Caveys were spirit grocers, too, but had other interests and in time sold to Jack Carvill who, shifting the legendary emphasis slightly, concentrated solely on selling liquor.

He lived overhead with his family and, in the 1980s, lovingly restored the shop's Edwardian glories.

And this is now and Jim Bourke is the man running things at 39 Lower Camden Street. He's a Limerickman, in Dublin since 1969 when he arrived to work as a postman, and has a long-standing passion for Camden Street.

He won't be changing a thing about Carvills, he says, not the quality and variety of the liquor on sale, nothing about the building (on which there is a preservation order) nor the shop itself which he greatly cherishes.

"I restored the floor," he says happily. "It was covered in a rotten old carpet and, when I took it up, I discovered the original floorboards. Once they were varnished and stained they improved the view of the shop 100 per cent."

The original Delahunt sign hangs large on a wall. "When Jack Carvill took down the Cavey sign he found it underneath," Jim Bourke says. It's been on the wall since then.

Jim Bourke leases Jack Carvill's from the owners, a partnership of two publicans who bought it in 2000. He managed the business for them in the beginning but, for the past two years, has been running it as his own. "It's my baby now," he says, "and I've no intention of changing anything, just intend making a living out of it."

He's been around and working in Camden Street since 1978, considers himself very much part of the place. He knew Jack Carvill: "A very individual man! He died in 1992. He loved this shop and was here until the end. He'd stories to tell about the famous and infamous customers who came in here over the years: Shirley Bassey used come in with Sammy Davis Junior after shows to drink champagne. He was very well known for his wines and ports and people came in for advice as well as to buy."

Jim Bourke knew Jack Carvill's sons, Mario and Nigel too, who ran the business together for some years after their father died.

We are standing in the counting house, the shop stretching narrow and packed, a shinning cornucopia of bottled goodies and the very odd extra like boiled sweets, when Jim opens a few 20th century account ledgers.

On Christmas Eve, 1936, the day's business began with pounds 6. 3s. 7d. in the till. By close of business this had swelled to pounds 225. 8s.5d. On December 24th, 1937, the opening figure was pounds 4.16s.5d. and the closing amount pounds 252. 16s 2d. But those are Christmas figures and sales weren't quite so lucrative later in the year. On Saturday April 16th, 1937 takings totalled pounds 64. 13s. 4d while a month later, on a Monday in May, the total was a modest pounds 10. 0s. 2d. There's proof that habits don't change all that much in the takings on a Saturday just a week later when the takings rose to a total of pounds 88. 6s. 9d.

The place is full of memorabilia; mugs and tankards and wall hangings of all kinds. Jim Bourke holds up what he says is "my own mug!" a personal tankard in silver with Delahunt emblazoned.

He loves the way the shop "feels like a proper liquor store. It's au naturel, too, the way it always was. I love it when young people come into the place, young lads you'd think wouldn't be interested, look around and say it's the best off-licence in the country - and they don't just mean for the booze, they mean the physical character of the place.

"The kinds of people who walk through that door are unbelievable. Bank managers to barristers to Camden Street winos. There's a great and wide range of people living around here, a lot of ethnic communities who are home, not pub, drinkers so they buy here."

Today's big sellers are the new world wines. "People are experimenting more, buying wines from Australia, Chile, places like that. As they become more confident about their wine knowledge they move to French wines again.

"There are far more people drinking wine than used be the case; wine consumption has definitely gone up."

Jim Bourke says he's in Carvills for the long haul. "I won't be leaving here," he says, adamant. Another case of Carvill appreciation giving the off-licence a new lease of life.