Cork’s Cotton Ball pub and brewery listed for €950k after 151 years
Lynch family's difficult decision to sell the extensive Cotton Ball bar and microbrewery marks the end of an era in Mayfield
The Cotton Ball bar in Mayfield has been in the Lynch family since they established it in 1874. They expanded to include a micro-brewery in 2013. The bar and entertainment hub has seating for 500 customers.
A Cork City pub that is a local ‘legend’ and successful micro-brewery is to leave its original family ownership hands after a 151-year span across four generations and constant innovation.
Fresh to market for the first time since being established, in 1874, is the Cotton Ball pub and entertainment venue.
It is located in densely populated suburban Mayfield, along with a micro-brewery established by long-term owners, the Lynch family, in 2013.
The Cotton Ball micro-brewery supplies beer to a number of outlets, including the Cotton Ball itself.
The offer spans 12,000 sq ft, across a mix of end-terrace, part-single and part-two-storey buildings, with seating for up to 500 patrons in various niches and nooks and an open area with city and harbour views.
It includes the Cotton Ball micro-brewery and 12-barrel brew house at lower ground/basement level. The brewery supplies a range of outlets, including the Cotton Ball bar and Thompson House on MacCurtain St.
The bar’s success enabled the Lynch family to diversify in to property interests, and they bought the former Thompson bakery on MacCurtain St in 1985, developing it in several phases for a mix of occupiers, as well as adding the Penrose Wharf Business Centre (previously grain merchants Coakleys) in 1990.
The Cotton Ball has seating in a number of cosy nooks.
Under the hands of a third-generation family member, the entrepreneurial Jack Lynch, both ventures thrived as incubator bases and service centres, in increasingly key city ‘Victorian Quarter’ locations near both the Cork City rail station and the bus station.
Between the two city centre historic properties, more than 100 tenants and businesses employ 1,000+ people across a diverse mix, including call centres, retail, art ventures and hospitality.
The Lynch family story started in 1874, when Ballyvourney-born founder Humphrey Lynch returned from the US, to where he had emigrated aged 15; he had fought for the north in the 1865 US Civil War and spent subsequent years as a foreman in the picker room of a cotton mill.
Humphrey Lynch returned to Cork with a nest egg, and bought and extended property interests on the Kerry Road in Cork’s Mayfield, which burgeoned in to a major suburb in the 20th century, including the pub now known as the Cotton Ball, the name recalling his cotton-picking oversight days.
There has been a Humphrey Lynch involved there in every generation since, notes John Lynch, one of the seven offspring of the late Jack Lynch, who died at the end of 2022.
“The Cotton Ball is an engine, and an engine needs someone driving it,” says John Lynch of the difficult family decision to now sell the extensive bar and entertainment venue and associated microbrewery.
In an innovative case of going back to the source, the family had branched in to a very successful brewery, under the Cotton Ball premises, after Jack and a son trained in the UK and went on to employ master brewers in this adjunct business. Output includes Lynch’s Handcrafted Irish Stout, Mayfield 5 Pilsner Lager, Kerry Lane Pale Ale, and Indian Summer Beer.
With the current generation of the Lynch family involved across other enterprises, the Cotton Ball is up for sale this month with agents David McCarthy and Amanda Isherwood, of Sherry FitzGerald Commercial, who guide the entire mix and businesses at €950,000, with the bar trading as usual, while the brewery is set to recommence in new ownership.
The extensive property, on circa half an acre, with parking for 30 cars, is split over two levels, with the bar’s main access from the Old Youghal Road, via a traditional façade, opening out to a network of different-sized and historically-themed sections that have seating for up to 500 in all, with off-street parking and brewery access from the Kerry Road to the rear of the property. It is just off the North Ring Road, in the heart of a long-established community, with further growth in train.
The Cotton Ball currently trades seven days a week, with entertainment several nights a week: In an earlier heyday, the Cotton Ball hosted the likes of Joe Dolan, Brendan Grace and Jim McCann, and had one of the most successful off-licenses in Munster, says agent David McCarthy.
The layout (inc after considerable renovation in 2019) allows for intimate and more open area for various age groups and activities, with snugs and raised platforms (views to the south are over the city to the inner harbour from this Mayfield eyrie) and traditional-themed decor consisting of a wide array of memorabilia, architectural salvage, historical items and local support displays.
There’s a very well positioned main mahogany bar, back bar, and a fully equipped commercial kitchen off the bar for events and functions. The basement includes well as keg rooms and cold stores.
The micro-brewery, which evolved from 2013, consists of a 12-barrel brew house, six 2000-litre conical cyclo-cylindrical conditioning tanks, as well as two 2000-litre bright beer tanks, refrigeration, filtration, kegging, beer dispense equipment, a manual canning machine, an automated bottling line, and a fleet of kegs all part of the sale, ready to brew.
The hinterland is home to well-established and mature housing developments, with a further 1,200 homes due to be delivered in the next three to five years, say the agents.
Other notable commercial occupiers nearby are Aldi in Mayfield Business Park, with Dunnes Stores and a Lidl to the north.
Sherry FitzGerald Commercial’s Mr McCarthy and Ms Isherwood say the €950,000 sale of the Cotton Ball “represents a rare opportunity to acquire and grow an established business with the potential to focus on expanding existing food sales.
“The fact that the modern brewery is fully fitted with specialist equipment will also make it appealing to a number of the brewing companies who are active in the market.”
The location in an established residential area, with good transport connectivity, also allows for redevelopment potential to accommodate additional or alternative uses, “such as residential or a retail premises, subject to planning.”
