Grand Central Hall is opening an Irish Village

A new Irish Village is due to open in Liverpool this week as the city comes out of full national lockdown on December 2nd.

Situated on Renshaw Street inside the Grand Central Hall will be a total of 4 separate venues serving traditional Irish food and drink.

The Grand Central Hall Liverpool, is a former Methodist church that is now the site of the Grade II listed art nouveau designed Liverpool Grand Central Hotel.

The hotel has 42 rooms and the site is also home to a 1300 seater live music venue.

Liverpool’s connections with Ireland are legendary and the scouse accent owes much to the arrival of Irish migrants to the city in the 19th Century. The 4 venues that will make up the Grand Central Irish Village are the Liffey, Nelly Foleys, Roe’s Bar and lastly Smokie Mo’s.

After an up and down year of months and months of closures due to the covid-19 lockdown in Spring and the current national lockdown it gave the owners time to work on the main bar area that was once known as the “Barcelona.”

Hayley Smitton, Events Manager said:

“The whole of the Grand Central is essentially broken up into 3 areas. The dome theatre space, the hotel and the huge space that was known for years as the Barcelona. That space is huge and across several levels and is too big for one site.

“We have a huge Irish clientele who stay in our hotel every week as well as the owner’s history with Irish bars ( the owner Maureen Bramwell is the daughter of Nelly Folley and is in fact the Mo in Smokey Mo’s ) so we have created 4 sites in one. Something for everyone you might say.”

The Irish Village have all the government covid-19 guidelines in place with last orders to be called at 10pm and customers to be out of the site by 11pm.

Hayley added:

“This has been a terrible year for everyone and we have all been affected in one way or another by the pandemic. We just want to try and end the year with some normality and hope 2021 brings a vaccine for everyone and a return to business as usual in a hospitality industry that has been hit harder than most sectors.”

Find out more here.