Publican Kieran Horgan, owner of The Bishopstown Bar, has been confirmed as the new owner of the South County pub and restaurant in Douglas.<\/p>\n
Mr Horgan, who also owns the Arches bar in Mallow, as well as several Dublin pubs, bought the well-known Douglas watering hole in a deal valued at \u20ac1.8m-2m.<\/p>\n
The landmark premises, which has been owned and run by the O\u2019Connor family since the 1970s, was acquired by the well-known publican in the last week or so.<\/p>\n
The South County, run by husband-and-wife team Tom and Maebh O\u2019Connor and employing about 30 staff, has long been popular with both locals and tourists.<\/p>\n
While widely regarded as a traditional Irish pub, it also developed a strong reputation for food, live music, and hospitality, regularly hosting live music sessions, gigs, and tour groups.<\/p>\n
Operating for more than\u00a0 200 years<\/p>\n
According to the pub\u2019s website, it has operated as a licensed premises for more than 200 years, with records showing refreshments were served there as far back as 1802, when Douglas was still a small village outside Cork city.<\/p>\n
The modern era of the business began in the mid-1970s, when John and Mary O\u2019Connor bought the pub from Beamish & Crawford.<\/p>\n
At the time, the brewery owned a number of \u201ctied houses\u201d \u2014 pubs linked to the South Main Street brewers.<\/p>\n
Their sons, Tom and Colm O\u2019Connor, later took over in 1997 and 1998 after working in hospitality in the United States.<\/p>\n
In the late 1990s, they refurbished the pub, expanded the food offering, and introduced regular live Irish music sessions.<\/p>\n
A further major renovation in 2009 added the Guinness beer garden, upgraded kitchens, and eco-friendly features such as solar-powered hot water and rainwater harvesting.<\/p>\n
Over the years, The South County built a reputation as a traditional Irish pub, featuring dark timber interiors, snug areas, open fires, whiskey selections, and live music several nights a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Publican Kieran Horgan, owner of The Bishopstown Bar, has been confirmed as the new owner of the South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4257,79,85124,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-450722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cork-business","tag-cork-news","tag-douglas","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}