Kelly's Cellars, Belfast

Kelly's Cellars

Bank Street, Belfast

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

Kelly's Cellars claims 1720. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1720

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. Late Georgian: the Northern Ireland listed buildings record HB26/50/101 gives a construction date between 1780 and 1799 — we give it no single date because 18th century; 1720 is the pub’s claim.

Food

The claim

On Bank Street in Belfast city centre, Kelly's Cellars says it was built in 1720 and calls itself Belfast's oldest pub; the listed buildings register dates the fabric to between 1780 and 1799. An Ulster History Circle blue plaque records that the United Irishmen met here between 1791 and 1798, before their failed rebellion. It serves traditional Irish food and is proud of its Guinness.

What the records show

The claim is painted on the front of the pub: the fascia reads Teach Uí Cheallaigh — Kelly's Cellars, Estd. 1720, and a photograph of Bank Street shows it. The pub has no website we could find. Tourism NI repeats the 1720 build date without a cited record. An Ulster History Circle blue plaque marks meetings of the United Irishmen here in 1791-98, which supports 18th-century use. The register now supplies a date of its own. Northern Ireland's listed buildings dataset, searched across Belfast city centre on 17 September 2026, holds the house as HB26/50/101 at 30-32 Bank Street, grade B2, in public house use then and now, and dates its construction to between 1780 and 1799. That is sixty years after the year on the fascia, so the 1720 remains tradition and the walls a reader stands inside are later Georgian.

What to look for inside

Blue plaque for United Irishmen meetings, 1791-98
Claims to be Belfast's oldest pub

Visiting

Kelly's Cellars is in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at Bank Street, Belfast. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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