Going for a song? Singing landlady calls time on West Cork’s Bayview Inn

Kilcrohane's Bayview will chime with right-fit buyers: make me an offer, say agent Dominic Daly. Vendor Mary Daly has recorded a number of albums for charity

Note perfect: Mary Daly singer and publican in full song at the Bayview Inn, Kilcrohane, Sheeps Head, Co Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

THERE are busy, all-singing all-dancing shoes to step into in West Cork’s Bayview Inn, run by the ‘Singing Landlady’, the irrepressible Glaswegian Mary Daly and now, so to speak, going for a song.

Bayview Inn, Kilcrohane on the Wild Atlantic Way

The tills have been alive with sound of music at this Kilcrohane, Sheep’s Head peninsula village bar, B&B, restaurant and occasional live music venue where its proprietor Mary Daly is at various times the entertainer, the bar-keep, a bed maker and, on one occasion, bouncer.

“You don’t mess with a Glasgow girl,” quips Mary, who’s been singing from age three when she won a competition in England’s entertainment strip at Blackpool’s piers.

Glasgow girl: Mary Daly at the Bayview Inn

She has also sung with Daniel O’Donnell in the UK when she was taken from the audience; recorded nine albums to date, including The Story of My Life (which could fill a book); she sings with the local church choir and with Bantry Choir; and she is working on a double album for later this year.

At 75 years of age, Mary concedes it might be time to take things a bit easier now, and she’s placed the Bayview Inn and associated business in the scenic West Cork and Wild Atlantic Way village on the market with agent Dominic Daly.

Room at the Inn: bar, 35-seat restaurant, and eight en suite guest bedrooms at the Bayview

Bayview was floated with a €595,000 AMV but “is very much open to offers,” says Mr Daly.... and ‘Open to Offers’ might well become a song title for hard-grafting Glasgow girl and flower of Scotland, Mary.

An only child from the ship-building parts of Glasgow (her dad, Hugh Cook, was a hole borer in the Harland and Wolff yards there, and her mum, Katherine, was good singer too) Mary met her husband Patrick Daly in the famed Galtymore dancehall in Cricklewood, London.

The couple have three children, now all adults, and they moved to Patrick’s native Kilcrohane in 2002 when they bought Bayview, one of the two ‘locals’, and added to its guest bedroom tally with other upgrades.

Patrick’s been a fisherman too since — his boat is called The Mary D — and his catch has surfaced on the Bayview’s menus, sometimes in Mary’s secret recipe batter, and although “he can’t sing” Mary says that musicality has continued to another generation.

The couple’s grandson Joshua Daly, living in the UK, has just won a singing competition on a holiday in Portugal, aged eight years, almost a slow developer, though compared to his grandmother.

“I was determined to sing,” recalls Mary of her debut as a three-year-old with a Shirley Bassey classic on the Blackpool seafront.

“I left my mother in her seat and was taken up to the man on the stage, sat on his lap and sang ‘Kiss Me Honey, Honey Kiss Me’, waving my arms with all the movements.”

Albums galore

Now with eight grandchildren, she and Patrick are looking forward to retiring; Mary will continue to sing, and may even reprise her ‘Singing Landlady’ role for the next owners, if allowed.

Just try keeping her away, one might suspect?

Dining room

Auctioneer Dominic Daly says Bayview is a great opportunity for someone to take over a much-loved business, with several income streams: a 35-seat restaurant, eight en suite guest bedrooms (doubles and triples), and a bar, with microphone.

And, if the buyers play their cards right “I’ll give them the fish batter recipe too,” choruses vendor Mary Daly.

• DETAILS: Dominic Daly 021 4277399