Banshees of Inisherin Pub in Galway goes up for sale

Mee's bar, Co. Galway; a shrine to Martin McDonagh's smash hit black comedy The Banshees of Inisherin, is for sale.

Located in Kilkerin, Galway, Mee's Pub acquired the set of JJ Devine’s Pub, where much of the action of the Oscar-nominated film took place in 2023.

Owned by the Mee family since 2005, the pub rose to particular prominence after it became a meticulous reconstruction of the critically acclaimed film staring Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell.

Proprietor Luke Mee and several friends transported the entire set, piece by piece, from Achill Island in Co Mayo where the movie was filmed, to their family-run business in east Galway.

Speaking as to how Mee's Bar acquired the set in early 2023, owner Luke Mee said he has his brother-in-law Tom to thank.

"The film was wrapped about a year and a half before all the Oscar nominations came.

"I knew the set as I was down there visiting… I knew about the pub being built – it was only a temporary structure – and I remember thinking after, 'I wonder what became of that pub?" Mee said.

"Coincidently, my wife is from Achill Island, and her sister was up visiting the house."

Luke Mee asked his sister in law if she knew what had happened to the set. She said that her husband Tom, who had worked on security for the film, asked the crew if he could take the set after learning it was to end up going to landfill.

Photo: Mike Shaughnessy

"He got a few friends of his, stripped it all down and brought it to his yard," Mee recalls.

Mee later asked him if he could buy it from him, but his brother-in-law responded that he could take it for free.

"That’s how it became mine. Myself and my friend Michael Kelly got a big truck and four of us went down on two trips up and back from Achill Island - two two-hour drives each way- we gathered it all up, it was all in bits.

"It was cold and wet and one of the fellas who came down with me, Denny Connolly, he told me afterwards since that, ‘I think that Luke has just gone mad!’ It was a mad idea."

"We used a lot of screengrabs from the movie to put it all back together correctly. Everything was all there," he says.

Before committing to reconstructing the iconic set, Mr Mee checked that nobody local on Achill wanted the set, but no interest had been shown in the year-and-a-half of it sitting in Tom’s yard and "it wouldn’t have survived another winter."

The set includes a dark wood bar, glass panes in the windows, an exterior wall and thatched roof. It is an exact replica of its on-screen counterpart.

To create the most authentic and immersive Banshees environment, Mee's Bar have also commissioned vintage sign and their own occasional local donkey, not unlike Jenny the Donkey- a beloved feature in the film.

The reconstructed set has proven to be a hit with tourists with Mee saying "We eventually put in a visitor book and it’s nothing but people from different parts of America, all of England, Scotland, Australia."

"One bus tour said it was one of the things that they all wanted to visit. An amazing amount of tourism. We get musical bus tours and sessions too."

Mee is key to see the pub developed  further as a tourist attraction and emphasise it's connection with award winning film.

For those interested in owning a piece of cinematic history, the daft.ie listing of Mee's Bar is available here.