Slan to Mooney's, Ring's landmark traditional pub

PubSales: The sale of Mooney's Pub in Ring, Co Waterford will herald the end of an era. The sixth-generation family business is well-known throughout the country as a mecca for sean-nós singing, traditional Irish music and magical late-night sessions. Writers, poets, film-makers and artists have used Mooney's as a meeting place for decades.

It is prominently situated on an elevated site at a wide junction in the heart of the small Gaeltacht in west Waterford. Patrons have long enjoyed the fine views it offers both by night and by day across Dungarvan Bay to the Comeragh Mountains and east towards Helvick Head.

The Clancy Brothers started coming in the early 1960s, bringing the Dubliners with them too. The Furey brothers came later. The music continued all through the 1970s and 1980s. Today the pub is a home to Danú, the traditional Irish music group. The band's uilleann pipe and bodhrán player is Donnchadha Gough, eldest son of the pub's proprietor and owner, Anne Mooney.

Ring has its own share of singers such as Anne Mulqueen and the late Nioclás Tóibín and the walls in Mooney's are covered with photos and posters of these performers and the events they took part in over the years.

There was always music in the pub, says Anne Mooney, whose family members are all singers and musicians themselves. Mooney plans to retire from the business with her husband, Tom Gough, after the sale of the premises. She can recall her great aunt, Siobhán Mhic Ódha, who ran the pub in the 1940s and 1950s up to 1961, singing The Bansha Peeler and playing the concertina.

"I always worked here when it was busy. I worked here every summer when I was young," she says. When the road was widened in 1971, the pub was rebuilt. "Whatever nostalgia was in the old one, we brought it with us to the new one," she recalls.

The pub and family home stand on two acres. It is for sale by private treaty or by public auction at a later date with a guide price in excess of €1.5 million through agent Spratt Property Partners. It is being sold with a full seven-day publican's licence and a valuable dance licence. The baris 391 sq m (4,219 sq ft).

There is a spirit store, food preparation area, storage shed and a keg room with a workshop and office at the back. The family home has a separate entrance and private garden at the rear.

It has four bedrooms, the main one en suite, a large sittingroom, spacious kitchen, lobby, family bathroom and a utility room.

The family home and pub are linked by a connecting hall that provides an almost sound-proof buffer between the public areas and the private family rooms of the home. The agent believes the property has further development potential. "The strong interest to date is a reflection of it being a landmark," he says. "It's really an institution."