Looking Back: The Jungle in Kilcullen
A thing about looking back through old clippings and documents is that it allows us to revisit things that were big in their day but are now largely forgotten, writes Brian Byrne. Especially going through my Dad's scrapbook, which I am very fortunate to possess. I am myself old enough to remember many of the things documented in it.
Like this one, the establishment of The Jungle lounge in The Hideout. The clipping and story here is but one of many articles written about Dad, and unfortunately it doesn't include the date or the magazine in which it was published. But it would have been in the early 1960s. How many others amongst Diary readers can remember The Jungle?
NOW THE HIDEOUT HAS A JUNGLE ROOMJim Byrne, Junior, is one of the most go-ahead businessmen in Ireland today. As well as the Hide-Out in Kilcullen, the famous filling station for both cars and drivers, he owns a couple of supermarkets and a cinema. He is also known for plain speaking. "There is no doubt about it," he said, "petrol sales have built up my business here in recent years, with the number of drivers who stop at the Esso pumps and come in for a drink or a meal."
There are few road houses better known than the Hide-Out, and its unique collection of really interesting curios including the right arm of Sir Dan Donnelly. It has the air of a place at least a couple of hundred years old, being steeped in character. Because of this, it is something of a surprise to find that Jim Byrne built the Hide-Out bar as recently as 1950.
At the turn of the century there was a small hotel there, and it was renamed the Motor Bar in 1903 in honour of the Gordon Bennett Race — it was on the route. Jim's father bought the premises in 1925, and Jim himself took over the business 25 years later.
The way in which the Hide-Out's 'museum" grew is as interesting as the exhibits. "The night we opened the HideOut bar a local farmer brought me in six old tankards and some fox heads. He thought they would look well on the walls. We put them up and that is how the collection started everything has been presented by customers and friends."
Even the right arm of Sir Dan himself came in this way. Jim Byrne was the principal organiser of a Tostal pageant in Kilcullen ten years ago that included the re-enactment of the epic fight between Dan Donnelly and George Cooper, in the nearby Donnelly's Hollow, in the Curragh, in 1815. Sir Dan, the only pugilist to be knighted, had the longest arms in the history of the fight game. According to the ballad he could "button his knee breeches without stooping." When he died his body was stolen by medical students, and purchased by a Dublin surgeon who wanted to study the muscle structure of the right arm. The body was later buried, but the arm was taken around Ireland in a travelling sideshow, ending up in Belfast. When news of the Tostal re-enactment at Donnelly's Hollow reached the owner it was decided to send the mummified arm back to the village where Donnelly trained and triumphed.
The Hide-Out collection also includes the boss of the propeller of the first aeroplane to fly from England to Ireland, together with several old rifles, '98 pikes, blunderbusses, and pistols. The premises are now undergoing their biggest transformation ever. A second bar, called "The Jungle", has been added. It really has a jungle atmosphere, with bamboo walls, animal skins, and African curios, many of them presented by Irish officers and men who served with the United Nations in the Congo.
The Jungle Room also has a passion flower plant that must be the envy of botanists everywhere — it drinks stout!
(Author and publication unknown.)
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