TradeNames:MacCarthy's pub in Castletownbere, having survived some tough times, is very much staying in the family, writes Rose Doyle

Adrienne MacCarthy believes west Cork's Beara Peninsula is one of the world's special places. Magnetically special, in fact, attracting and locking the hearts "of a certain type of person" to its wanton beauty and way of life.

She knows what she's talking about. She's been running the legendary MacCarthy's Pub/Central Supply Stores in Castletownbere for 28 years now, ever since the magnet in her genes conspired with fate and brought her from London, in a Renault car packed with everything she owned, to become the fourth generation of MacCarthys to run things.

The way she happily tells it, she'd no choice. Castletownbere and MacCarthys, during a childhood lived in various parts of the world, was the family's summertime anchor. "Through all the moves we kept coming back here for the summer, usually around regatta time in August," she says.

"There were great times on the beach, boat trips, catching mackerel on the hook, with friends always glad to see the MacCarthys back again."

She was 20 and training to become a nurse when word came that MacCarthys was to be sold. "I couldn't let it happen," she says. "I asked my father to please keep it until I'd finished my training when I would go back and give running it a try for six months."

He did and she did, leaving London on a bright summer's day when she was 22, "with the neighbours and my mother all crying. I can't believe now I waited two years before coming back."

Impossible to imagine the place without her as, the heart and soul of MacCarthys as well as custodian of its history, she tells its story in the rambling, humorous Beara way.

"When my great grandfather, Michael MacCarthy, opened a general store here in 1860 he was approached by Guinness to sell beer and ales. My great grandmother was outraged but he said to her 'look after your side of the house and I'll look after mine' and went ahead."

MacCarthys became the hub of the town selling, as was the way in what were called spirit grocers, grain, meal and general provisions, all of it unloaded from the Princess Beara when it arrived from Bantry. A chair from the deck of the Princess Beara has pride of place on the scrubbed wood floor of today's pub.

D F (Florence) MacCarthy was a son of founder Michael MacCarthy and, as the father of Aidan MacCarthy, was Adrienne's grandfather. His wife, Julia, also came from the town. They had 10 children. "Two of them died in the great flu of the early 1900s," Adrienne says, "two became priests, one became a solicitor, one, my father, a doctor. A daughter, Ita, became a dentist - not easy at the time. Eileen and Sheila were sent to domestic science school in England. D Florence really believed in education. My father, who was born in 1913, was sent to board in Clongowes when he was only eight years old. He had great stories of his time there, of his journeys up and back by train and horse and trap."

Aidan MacCarthy would make his name and mark in later times and climes, surviving the war years as a POW of the Japanese and the atom bomb when it fell on Nagasaki, winning the George Medal and getting an OBE.

Grandfather D Florence MacCarthy was, by Adrienne's account, "a shrewd businessman. He added a third story to this house, did great business supplying the British fleet in Bantry, set up a coal store, a salt store for the fishing and had farmland as well. Julia was a great force behind him. He died in 1954 and, though I never met him, I feel I know him, feel him around the place. A lot of the older people remember him. They call him DF. My grandmother died in 1948."

Jobs were scarce when Aidan McCarthy qualified. He headed for London where, in a story well-told in his book A Doctor's War, he joined and became a senior medical officer with the Royal Artillery and became a courageously compassionate POW who kept, his daughter says, "his sense of human and home values. He left Castletownbere a 14st chubby lad and returned, after the war, with just his kit-bag, a Samurai sword and, everyone says, the same cheeky grin. He weighed seven stone."

Back in London Aidan MacCarthy met and married Co Galway woman, Kathleen Wall, "a Rita Hayworth look-alike", in Westminster Cathedral in 1948. They had two daughters, Adrienne and Nicola. Childhood for the sisters was a moveable feast of RAF postings across Europe and the UK until, at 14, Adrienne found herself in Northwood Ladies' College, north London, "a snotty old place, full of nonsense. I learned Latin and made the most of it."

Meanwhile, back in Castletownbere, DF MacCarthy had died and three of Aidan MacCarthy's siblings, Jim, Michael and Eileen, were looking after the business. The salt stores were closed down, emigration became endemic, farming went through hard times, "what I suppose you'd call a lull happened", Adrienne says of the economic times that were in it.

Schooldays over, she decided to become a nurse. "I thought nurses had a great time, driving sports cars and taking holidays. I trained in Middlesex Hospital and loved every minute of it. It was my complete vocation in life. I didn't take one day off in the three-and-a-half years."

The threatened sale of MacCarthys happened with the deaths of the third generation who'd been running things. Adrienne remembers how "the place was fairly running with water, had no central heating" when she arrived, but also remembers "oh, how lovely it was to be here".

She pays heartfelt tribute to a good friend from nearby Eyries, publican Jackie Lynch, who "helped and advised" in the early days, and to the three women who've given working lifetimes to MacCarthys. "Sheila O'Shea has been here more than 60 years, Margaret Cronin more than 30 and Mary Carlton for 23 years. I remember Sheila sitting, doing her knitting behind the counter between customers at night."

It wasn't quite "the good life" she'd envisaged but she loved it. She tried keeping hens and growing potatoes; the hens were a disaster and the novelty of the potatoes wore off. She kept a couple of goats who brought her nothing but grief. She was, and is "cut out for community life. I love it. Still do. I don't regret a thing."

She didn't, and hasn't, made any serious changes to MacCarthys. "I haven't been allowed to! People like it the way it is and if it's not broken why fix it?"

Aidan MacCarthy died in 1995. "He never came to live here but loved coming to stay. He was so happy and proud of the place. My sister Nicky came for a week 15 years ago, ran a restaurant for a long time and now helps me here. My mother came back seven years ago, when she was 83. She's got her finger completely on the pulse, grows runner beans, makes chutney, feeds the cats and dogs. She says she hasn't missed England one iota."

MacCarthys had its cult status embellished after Pete McCarthy, writer, discovered the pub, became part of the family (though no relation), and used a picture of MacCarthys on the cover of "McCarthy's Bar", the book of his search for all the McCarthy bars in Ireland. He died, sadly and of cancer, in 2004 - "but we still get people coming to see the pub he wrote about".

She thinks the world of the young people around, says "they're so happy to be here in the pub. You'd think they might like flashy places and clubs, but no, they love it here and don't want a thing to change. Customers are a complete mix of locals, foreign fishermen, day trippers, a right pot-pourri and fascinating."

Customers would add that Adrienne herself is a large part of what makes MacCarthys the welcoming, one-off place it is. And they'd be right.