Crown Bar Liquor Saloon, 46 Great Victoria Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 7BA

The Crown Bar Liquor Saloon

46 Great Victoria Street, Belfast

The Crown Bar is an end-of-terrace, three-storey, stucco-fronted public house, built around 1840 and remodelled by the architects E. & J. Byrne — with the interior remodelled around 1885 and the exterior around 1898 — on a prominent corner site on the east side of Great Victoria Street, close to Belfast city centre. It is one of three similarly scaled buildings lining that side of the street, sitting opposite the Europa Hotel, with its gabled south side elevation fronting onto Amelia Street and its south elevation extending as a two-storey structure with an attic return. The bar is widely regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of a late-Victorian pub interior in Britain and Ireland, and it draws visitors from across the world. It is the only bar in Ireland or the United Kingdom owned by the National Trust.

Exterior

The roof is pitched and clad in natural slate, reconstructed around 2005, with black clay ridge tiles. Two dentilated, profiled rendered chimneystacks with octagonal clay pots rise from the roof, which has a cement coping to the south gable and sits behind a rendered parapet wall with a drip cornice. A painted fascia below the parapet reads "THE CROWN BAR", and each corner of the parapet is surmounted by urns. A cast-iron gutter is shared with the adjoining building to the north.

The walling is painted rendered stucco, decorated with truncated giant-order Corinthian scribed pilasters flanking each bay across the upper floors and rising to an architrave moulding below the fascia. Window openings are square-headed with moulded surrounds, painted masonry sills, and timber sash or casement windows. The front elevation is three windows wide: the second floor has architrave surrounds and 2-over-2 timber sash windows, while the first floor has timber casement windows, all flanked by scribed pilasters with scrolled console brackets supporting a cornice above.

The most striking feature of the exterior is the elaborate tiled pub shopfront, which wraps around two elevations. On the front elevation, tiled panels are divided into five bays by Corinthian tiled pilasters, with the central three bays recessed to form a porch. The porch is defined by a pair of pink and white marble Corinthian columns rising to a full-span gilded glass fascia reading "LIQUOR THE CROWN SALOON", with tiled panels at either end reading "SPIRIT" and "VAULTS". Above, a series of scrolls, finials, and tiled scallops complete the composition. The porch floor carries a mosaic tile inlay reading "CROWN BAR". Fixed-pane windows on three sides of the porch are etched and painted, with tiled panels below; a pair of woodgrained timber doors with linenfold panels and matching glazed upper panels with brass door furniture provides the main entrance.

The gabled south side elevation has a chimneystack at its apex and, at the upper floors, a pair of scribed giant-order Corinthian pilasters framing a single window opening with a decorative moulded surround and a 2-over-2 timber sash window. At ground floor level, the tiled shopfront continues from the front elevation and extends along approximately half the length of the return, with a continuous gilded glass fascia reading "WINES, BRANDIES, WHISKIES, BEERS, THE CROWN, LIQUOR SALOON". Bipartite square-headed window openings are glazed in the same manner as the front, with pink granite sills, decorative tiled panels below, and flanking pilasters with dentilated capitals. A square-headed door opening provides side access to the bar, with double-leaf doors and side panels matching the principal entrance, including a mosaic tiled threshold. The remainder of the return has 2-over-2 timber sash windows with architrave surrounds at upper floor level, gabled dormers to the roof, and a tripartite timber shopfront at the remaining portion of the ground floor. The north side elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at No. 44. The rear is abutted by the two-storey attic return, which is in turn abutted by a modern red-brick gabled two-storey attic development built around 1990.

History

The building first appears on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1858, though it dates from around 1840. The 1852 Belfast Street Directory records it as the Ulster Railway Hotel and Tavern, run by a Mr. Terence O'Hanlon. Its construction is associated with the opening of Ireland's second railway line, between Belfast and Lisburn, in 1839. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 recorded the hotel as leased by O'Hanlon from a Henry Joy — who owned most of the land to the south of Belfast's town centre — and valued at £50; the building was described as a three-storey Class A structure (defined in the valuation as "not cut stone") measuring 19½ by 12 yards, let at a ground rent of ten shillings per square foot.

O'Hanlon continued to occupy the hotel until 1880, when Patrick Flanigan took over and subsequently purchased the building outright in 1885. Flanigan also purchased Nos. 19 and 21 Amelia Street to the rear, converting the entire premises into a public house, which increased the rateable value of the site to £185. By 1901 the Belfast Street Directory recorded the property as the Crown Bar. The 1901 Census described it as a first-class public house consisting of ten rooms with a single storeroom as an outbuilding. Patrick Flanigan was then 45 years old, described as a Roman Catholic spirit merchant, and lived at the address with his wife and seven children; he employed barmaids, shop assistants, and domestic servants. He died in 1902, whereupon his widow Ellen came into sole possession. The building was recorded as unoccupied in the 1911 Census, though the business continued under Ellen Flanigan's management until 1927, when a Mr. Patrick McGreeny took possession.

The rateable value rose to £340 in 1906 — the year Windsor Ward was first valued separately from the rest of the city centre — but this was successfully appealed, reducing the value to £260 by 1912, at which it remained through the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. The first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 raised the value to £305, at which point it was noted that McGreeny also owned No. 2 Keyland's Place at the rear of the pub. A second revaluation in 1956 raised the value dramatically to £1,000; this was reduced to £800 under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act, and following a further successful appeal was brought down to £600, at which it remained by the end of the revaluation in 1972.

A popular story holds that the pub's distinctive interior, including its celebrated snugs, was conceived by Patrick Flanigan himself, who was said to have been a student of architecture and to have toured the Mediterranean studying Italian and Spanish designs before directing the redesign. In fact, the interior was designed by E. & J. Byrne in 1885, and the same architects installed the exterior tiled façade and two-columned porch in 1898.

The Crown Bar gained further fame when it featured in Carol Reed's 1946 film Odd Man Out, though no filming actually took place in the bar itself — an exact replica of the pub was constructed in an English film studio for that purpose.

The exterior mosaic façade and stained glazing suffered considerable damage through general wear and during periods of civil unrest. In 1980–81, architect Robert McKinstry undertook a restoration of the pub interior and restored the mosaic façade using an original pattern design discovered at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in Shropshire. Further works followed McKinstry's restoration: £250,000 was spent eradicating dry rot from the walls during the 1980s, and in 1988 architects Gifford & Cairns constructed a restaurant on the first floor at a cost of £450,000. This restaurant was named the Britannic Lounge and incorporated panelling from the Harland & Wolff shipyards originally intended for RMS Britannic, the sister ship of the Titanic, which was sunk during the First World War in 1916. The roof was subsequently reconstructed around 2005.

The bar was listed in 1977 and came into the ownership of the National Trust in 1978, with the Irish Bass Brewery responsible for its day-to-day operation. The Crown Bar continues to operate as a public house and remains one of Belfast's most significant tourist attractions.