Cormac MacConnell: End of the Big House, birth of a famous beer

I passed through the gentle town of Strokestown in North Roscommon earlier this week, on my way to a great wedding in Galway.

It was my first sight of Strokestown for many years, though I knew the town well decades ago, and always liked it and its citizens.

I had not time to stop, but the sight of the entrance to Strokestown House at the heart of the town triggered the recollection of one very special evening back in the Seventies, and the concurrent and connected recall of a great yarn which, in all honesty, I cannot prove to be the pure truth.