Gigs and games give Longboats €1.5m sale a welcome lift

Working since he was aged 14, and bartending in the likes of The Oyster, Anglers Rest, and more, as well as owning the Tower Street city bar Ma Dulleas for a decade, he’s now selling up the O’Driscoll family’s bar Longboats, or The Temple Inn.

It’s in the very heart of Ballintemple village, on the salubrious Blackrock Road and by a nexus of several old southside ’burbs including Beaumont, and has been owned and run by Billy with his wife May and children Con, Robert, and Joanne since 1999.

The legendary suburban premises goes on sale this week with a €1.5m guide via agent Anthony O’Regan of Keane Mahony Smith, who says it’s in great shape, in a prime suburban position, has a top reputation for pints and plates, and is ready for a new chapter.

It’s been 25 years in O’Driscoll ownership: before that, it was over 80 years in the Murphy family’s hands, and it was the quick-slow, gangly-armed road bowling style of one of the Murphy family that earned the place its nickname, after the odd running style of celebrity, indigenous Onondaga North American/Canandian distance runner Tom Longboat … it has nothing to do with proximity to Cork’s leafy Marina on the Lee, despite expectations.

The Temple Inn/Longboats is the essence of a rooted suburban bar, largely rebuilt with steel frame in 2001 when much of its original ‘slob’ brick construction was uncovered, taken off boats at nearby Ardfoyle where it had been used as ballast.

It’s a prime corner setting in Ballintemple village, home to millionaires’ mansions, workmen’s cottages, Victorian and Georgian era beauties, and suburban semi-ds: masses of chimney pots, then, with hundreds and, ultimately, thousands of apartments forecast to flow in the south docks/Marina hinterland in the next quarter century too.

Longboats is also close to the SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh stadium, which brings regular boons when big games and concerts roll into town. Reports of the stadium — which was redeveloped at a cost of more than €110m — also hosting more soccer and rugby games into the future is already more than local sporting gossip …. it’s bar talk in the city, Ballintemple, Blackrock Road, and the village, with a necklace of bars such as The Venue, Leaping Salmon, Maple Leaf, Pier Head, and Longboats all having their hopes high too.

Billy O’Driscoll knows there’s change in the offing, from the Marina/SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh extra events and apartment schemes and more “but that’s for the next owners, it won’t be me, I’m working since I was 14 and I was 63 this week,” says the well-seasoned barman with possibly millions of rail miles under his belt from a ‘training’ apprenticeship in CIE’s on-board catering services from 1976 to 1984.

And, showing the wit traditionally associated with the trade that loosens lips, he adds that while the GAA’s stadium was being redeveloped “we fed the footballers and hurlers upstairs in the bar. When it opened, they went back there. Of course, they haven’t won anything since.”

Details: Keane Mahony Smith, 021-4270311