WHAT a lady Eileen Catney was.
This remarkable woman, born on a small holding in Co Cavan, had an equally amazing life.
It was during the war, aged only 16, that she first came to Lisburn to work in the County Down Arms. She was also was a cook in the military hospital in Moira before working in the Liverpool Bar in Belfast's docks area.
But it was as the doyen of the Kitchen Bar in the city's original Victoria Square that she will forever be remembered.
There she played hostess to many famous celebrities, people who had worked in the Empire Theatre next door, businessmen who sat with heads together cooking up investment possibilities and, with the courts nearby, stern judges and legal eagles who hovered and shed their inhibitions, knowing this was a safe place where all were welcomed.
And way back in the eighties she welcomed me. After work in Ulster Television a motley crew of us young ones used to go down for something to eat, usually Eileen’s Irish stew, and a sing-song led by her son Pat.
She was always there and her home cooking was famous, in the kitchen from six in the morning with her five chefs, husband James nearby and Pat, now an SDLP MLA, serving the drinks and leading the singing.
They were happy times in the home of Eileen, who lived upstairs. Despite the bombs and bullets she wouldn’t be moved, one of only two families in the city centre to stay put, the other being the caretaker of the Masonic Hall in Arthur Street and his wife.
She created a place where customers were happy and secure, the last publicans left inside the Belfast ‘ring of steel’, no way in except through two gates - one opposite the City Hall, the other at the entrance to High Street - and although daytime trade in the city was reasonable, at night against the odds people were prepared to walk to one or other just to get to Eileen’s home cooking and hospitality - as one journalist put it, city drinks and country cooking. She was admired and she was loved, especially by her family.
Pat Catney, one of nine children, worked with his mum in the bar from the age of 15 until it was demolished in 2004 to make way for the chrome and glass Victoria Square shopping centre. He has cherished memories of those days.
When President Bill Clinton was in town to turn on the Christmas lights in 1995, the US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, hinted he might call in.
“Jean knew my mother well and Mum prepared for Clinton. The pub was thick with the world’s press and when there was a flash of lights and a roar of engines we began cheering. It turned out to be one of Belfast’s finest bin carts at work! But we wrote a song: The Night We Nearly Said Hello To Bill.”
That was the ethos of the Kitchen Bar, vibrant, good value and caring.
“We knew a lot of bereaved families and my mother would make up parcels of big hams, high cakes and breads and send me to the dead house, an Ulster tradition and much appreciated," Pat said.
Eileen was always kind and generous. She lost her own mother when she was only 10 - she couldn’t waken her up, felt she was cold, and so the child and her three sisters climbed into bed beside her and tried to warm her up. I’m sure that experience gave this caring woman a deep appreciation of losing someone you dearly loved.
Pat recalled how Eileen always wore a big apron with a pocket in the front. “That’s where she kept her money, £500 maybe £1,000 at a time. She’d send us down to Littlewoods for a bacon or butter, take out notes and tell us to buy ourselves something on the way back.”
And with 22 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, she never forgot a birthday and dipped into the pocket for Christmas boxes and Easter eggs.
She had friends all over the world and her pub was always filled with colourful personalities.
When chef Gary Rhodes visited a debate developed with customers, Eileen leading the charge.
According to her (and my granny by the way), scallions should be blanched in milk when making champ. And so Rhodes, who called scallions chives, learned at the expert's knee.
Pat remembers it well: “One of the men drinking in the corner got very loud and obstreperous and Mum, who was a strong but fair woman, scolded him; he pleaded not to be barred and he wasn’t because she had the knack of defusing trouble.”
With the development of the sprawling Victoria Square our much-loved haunt was closed and demolished. The only connection now is barman Gerry Vernon who made the move to the new bar and still talks fondly of those old days when Eileen’s theatre of delights was a natural no-man’s land where your background didn’t matter but your enjoyment did.
The replacement, again the Kitchen Bar, is on the fringe of the shopping centre and not too far from the original which, like Eileen Catney, will forever hold a special place in Belfast hearts.
Eileen Catney died aged 94 on February 14. Predeceased by her husband James and son Gerard, she is survived by her children Elizabeth, Laurence, Jim, Dymphna, Damian, Pat, Assumpta and Jenny.
Anne Hailes
