Bigger on the inside…

Bigger on the inside…

Bittle’s bar instantly stands out thanks to the oddly curved geometry of the building. But it’s the interior of this cosy pub and the irrepressible nature of its amiable licensee that have proved to be its most enduring lures…

John Bittles is a supremely contented man. He’s one of that rare breed who, even when pushed, can’t think of any aspect of his life or work that, given the chance, he would want to change.

For the most part, that life has been spent behind the bar of one Belfast hostelry or another. He’s a career publican, a traditional barman who well remembers a time when every job in the place was his to do.

From his earliest days spent portering and lifting glasses at the Slieve Donard hotel in Newcastle, John knew he was destined for the trade. He spent a scant six months at the hotel – which had only just been acquired by the emerging Hastings hotel group – before relocating to a full-time bar job at The Morning Star in the heart of his native Belfast.

“It was an old-time bar in those days,” he recalls. “It was nearly all drink then, food wasn’t a big thing. And in those days, a barman did everything for himself. I had to work myself up from the bottom before I even got near the till!”

John remained at The Morning Star for about 14 years before routine was interrupted by a change of ownership and he took the opportunity seek out something fresh. He and some former colleagues from The Morning Star took jobs at a bar called The Auto on Ann Street, which later became Club Mono and although the post lasted barely a year, John says it gave him time to look around and see what else was available.

He was determined to have his own place and eventually settled on his current premises on Upper Church Lane. There has been a hostelry on the spot going back perhaps as far as 1868 and many readers may remember it as The Shakespeare. When John first set foot in the building in 1990, however, time and the Troubles had taken an inevitable toll:

“The property had been sitting derelict for quite a while,” he remembers. “When I took it on, it had been closed up for a long time. The windows were all out and it had been closed up for ages. We had to totally gut the place.”

At that time, Danny Rice – known to many readers these days as the owner of the Old Inn at Crawfordsburn – owned one of Ireland’s leading hospitality fit-out firms, Prestige Pubs, and he got the job of rejuvenating the bar that John was to rename Bittles.

The cosy interior of the bar as it emerged in 1990 was essentially the same as it is today, practically nothing has changed over the years, primarily because, as John says, “it just works the way that it is”.

“I have always felt that it’s really the outside of the bar and the shape of it that attracts people,” he adds. “People sometimes compare it to that Flatiron Building in New York.”

 

 

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Like most licensees who had premises in Belfast during the 90s, John was soon to feel the ill-wind of the Troubles. And it happened only a few days after Bittles had opened its doors to the public:

“It was nearly Christmas”, recalls John, “and there was a car bomb left outside in the street. Every window in the place was blown in. But luckily enough, Danny was still around and he came in and put everything back the way that it had been.”

John appears to have a patient, forbearing approach to most things in life and he applies that philosophy to incidents such as the bombing:

“I was a lot younger then and we knew that the Troubles were on,” he remarks. “Everything was put right again fairly quickly, so we just kept on going.”

The other major setback that the fledgling business was to suffer happened two or three years later and again, the civil unrest that was plaguing the country at the time was the cause:

“It was around 1992 or 93,” recalls John. “They brought an incendiary device into the bar and left it here. Of course, it went off in the middle of the night when there was nobody here and the place was entirely gutted. That really was a big setback for us.”

John goes on:

“One of the first things that you think after something like that happens is, how do I get the place opened again? All we did was brush everything up to the top of the bar and we kept trading in the bottom bit using bottles and cans. We had no electric so we used candles and the people still came in.”

Danny was called back yet again to restore the pub to its pre-incendiary glory.

It was an era in which the Troubles were never far from anyone’s door and eventually, John received a visit from the police who told him that he could be under a threat:

“They gave me a letter and told me to go around to Braddles and get a personal protection weapon,” he recalls. “But I didn’t get one, I think I was more intimidated by some of the customers that I got in here than I could have been by anyone else,” he adds with a smile.

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Inside Bittles bar is a quaint little haven and a retreat from the busy city that surrounds it. Much of its attraction is bound up in the remarkable paintings which line the walls, many of them bearing the familiar faces of Northern Ireland’s political and sporting figures down through the decades.

Every one of the paintings has been produced by seventy-five-year-old Joe O’Kane from the nearby Markets area of the city. He still regularly brings new works in to John for display in the bar, although he never accepts any money – just a few pints for his trouble.

And John’s son, Ciaran, is also involved in the trade these days, often working in the bar with his dad, although John does say that if Ciaran ultimately chose to follow a different path, then he wouldn’t object:

“There is a lot of work in this game,” he says. “You work seven-days-a-week, you work Christmas and the holidays. If Ciaran say no, he wasn’t interested in the pub trade, then I wouldn’t be disappointed. I’ve been doing this for 40 years and you have to work when everyone else is off enjoying themselves. That can have an effect on you, it can be very restrictive.”

That said, John has no regrets about the course that his own life took:

“I don’t wish that I’d done something else or that I’d had a better education or gone to university or whatever, that doesn’t come into it,” he remarks. “I can say that I am happy, that this works for me and I have no complaints.”

And while Bittles may be a bar that’s changed little down through the years, innovation is still at the heart of its offering. Consumer demand for variety has seen the number of beer pumps at Bittles jump from six to 13 and the bar has embraced the new focus on artisan product with a burgeoning selection of quality whiskey and gin labels:

“We’re constantly looking at new things,” confirms John. “Things have to be well presented for the customers, they want variety and they want premium products nowadays…We stopped doing food years ago, we don’t have music and we don’t show a big lot of sport because I can’t afford to have Sky TV. So it comes down to the drink, play it up well and there’s always a chance that the customer will say, “Same again”.”

According to John, Bittles’ clientele has “come full circle”, from the early days when almost all of his custom came from regulars up to the present day, when large numbers of tourists and conference-goers are drawn to the oddly-shaped bar.

The future, he says, is about “keeping ahead of the game”:

“Keep watching what’s going on and what’s not going on,” he advises. “But what we’re doing here now works, I don’t have to worry about too much, I don’t have to rely on lots of people for anything, and I think that’s important, it’s what works for me.”

 

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