For all the people that roll into the Hostess City during the annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities, it would be more than fair to say a tiny percentage understand why St. Patrick’s Day is such a big deal around here. I’d be willing to take an educated guess that the number is below three percent and I’m being generous.
There’s been plenty written about the subject, of course. You don’t have to bury yourself in an archive room surrounded by books to find essentially all you need to know about the origins of the Irish population in Savannah.
The numbers had been growing since the early 1800s. Savannah’s Hibernian Society was established in 1812 and the first public St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Savannah was in 1824. Yes, that makes this year’s parade the 200th edition of Savannah’s largest yearly event.
The Great Famine of 1845 in Ireland led to a significant uptick in the number of Irish trying to get away. Potato crops, upon which roughly a third of the Irish population depended on for food, were destroyed by disease. Residents were looking for any way out. Among those residents were the Kennedys, yes, those Kennedys. JFK’s great grandfather was born in a cottage in Dunganstown, County Wexford. It’s still there. The Kennedys escaped to Boston via Liverpool and the rest—as they say—is history.
A convenient destination at the time, and one where you could find nonstop travel, was Savannah, Georgia. Between 1845 and 1855, 56 percent of the Irish population in Savannah had arrived here from Wexford.
Savannah’s year-round celebration of that community and the connection between the two cities opens this spring in City Market. It will be called Wexford Pub and the family putting it together want it to be everything you’d expect to see from a pub celebrating the connection between Savannah and County Wexford, Ireland.
“We hired the Irish Pub Company out of Dublin,” says Tim Strickland, who along with his sister Jennifer and their business partner Chris Swanson are in charge of this project.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of everything we put inside the pub will be from Ireland. The bars, the lighting, all of it. The containers are on U.S. soil. We plan to begin the install on March 4th.”
You can hear this excitement in Mr. Strickland’s voice just talking about this project. When you consider this is the same Strickland family behind the River Street Sweets empire and Churchill’s Pub on Bay Street it means something when he says, “this is the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”
How big?
It’s about 13,300 square feet. If you include the front deck and patio area in City Market that will feature live music during the day, that number jumps to about 15,000 square feet.
“We will be somewhere between 475 and 500 seats including indoor and outdoor seating,” he says.
That’s quite massive and definitely in the running for the largest pub in the state if not the South. All of it will be an homage to Ireland and the relationship between Savannah and County Wexford.
“They are calling it a ‘super pub,’ of which they say there are only two, maybe three in America,” Strickland says.
The attention to detail will be there too. Mr. Strickland says the first-floor section will be a detailed explanation and homage to this history between the two cities, similar to what we mentioned earlier here. The second floor will feature live music at night and will be adorned with tributes to the many Irish artists, poets and musicians who came to this country as well.
When you think about it, it’s surprising something like this hasn’t been done already.
“It just made sense. We picked the name on a Sunday morning shooting some text messages around and a little bit of research.”
Since then, Strickland says Swanson did most of the heavy lifting on the research to make sure everything was authentic.
We all know City Market is a major hub of activity in downtown Savannah. The plan is to provide live music outdoors for most of the afternoon every day before it moves inside at night. There will be a family friendly cafe type feel by day, but that will switch to a proper pub by night, especially with live music upstairs.
Of course, this celebration will go on year-round here in Savannah, but you should know the connection between Savannah and Wexford doesn’t end there. The port where so many emigrated from is now a major tourist attraction in Ireland. It includes a replica ship where visitors can see what travel was like between these two countries at the time. There’s also a section of the museum dedicated to Savannah and “the New World.” The Stricklands visited last Summer. Their family hails from County Kerry on Ireland’s West Coast.
In fact, in 2013 a ‘research axis’ was created to learn more about the connection between Savannah and County Wexford. It’s a partnership between several groups including the John F. Kennedy Trust, Wexford County Council, Savannah Economic Development Authority, Georgia Southern University and the Georgia Historical Society.
The connections would appear to be endless. Mr. Strickland credits everyone involved in that ‘axis’ with helping them pull this together as authentically as possible.
Deep dives into Savannah’s significant history aside, it’s very good to see an attempt to bring our vibrant food and drink culture together with all of that history in one spot. Wexford Pub sounds like it could end up being a hub for Irish visitors from across the country. It will certainly be large enough to be its own tourist attraction.
So when will we see it?
As we mentioned the pieces will begin to be put together on March 4. The hope is that this portion will be done in two months. No one will ever commit to a date for an ‘opening’ but all parties involved are hopeful that Savannah will be introduced to its newest pub by the end of May.
We will most certainly keep you posted.
