A rare piece of Irish pub memorabilia which left a Donegal bar up to 70 years ago has been returned to its right owner after a chance encounter half way across Europe.
The sign, which is for the renowned Tayto crisps, is thought to have left MacGroary’s Bar in the village of Mountcharles in the 1950s.
Nobody knows how the sign, which is written in Irish, left the bar or where it went to.
However, a chance encounter in a bar in the Netherlands set about a chain of events that would see the sign being reunited with its original owners.
That encounter came when Niamh Dalton from Letterkenny traveled to Rotterdam with friends.
On a night out she ended up in Murray’s Irish Pub & Whiskey Bar in Spijkenisse on the outskirts of The Netherlands’ second largest city.
Niamh noticed the sign and got chatting to bar-owner Danny Murray.
The Shamrock Bar in Mountcharles
Danny asked Niamh if she happened to know anybody from Mountcharles as it was signed by the then proprietor Josephine MacGroary as well as Robert McConnell, Francis Meehan and John Fitzsimmons.
Danny explained that he had bought the sign at an auction but was anxious to return it to its rightful owners.
Niamh’s uncle-by-marriage Paul Jordan is from Mountcharles and she arranged to bring the sign back to Paul so he could arrange a reunion.
In recent days Paul called in to see Josephine’s son Turlough at MacGroary’s Bar which is now known as The Shamrock Bar and reunited him with the Tayto sign.
Turlough is delighted to have his mother’s sign back in his possession and has promised not to let it out of his sight.
The sign is thought to be one of the first ever made in support of the famous Irish crisp brand which were first produced by Joe ‘Spud’ Murphy in 1954 at a time when most crisps were imported from the UK.
Spotting a niche in the Irish market, Joe set up his own crisp factory inventing the first ever cheese & onion flavoured crisps.
Production of the crisps started in Dublin at O’Rahilly Parade, off Moore Street, where after being packed by hand in waxed greaseproof paper, the crisps were delivered to the retailer in an airtight tin, to help maintain their freshness.
