The River Inn, Derry — claims 1684

The claim

A bar complex on the hill of Shipquay Street inside the walls, run by the Doherty family and extended into the old Palace cinema next door. There are rooms enough to choose from: the Cellar bar in the vaults, the Snug, a cafe bar at the front and Silver Street, named after what the pub says this street was called before the quay. Food through the day, local bands at night, and 1684 in the name over the door.

What the records show

The 1684 is the house's own: it is in the name of its website, and the page there says the premises met the three conditions for an inn's licence at the time — leave to sell punch, beds for travellers and stabling for horses — and calls itself the oldest sited bar in Derry. We traced no licence, deed or directory entry behind the year, and no earlier record of drink sold at these numbers on Shipquay Street. Visit Derry gives 1684 in its listing, which is a second publisher for the claim rather than a second line of evidence. The story that the cellars held Wolfe Tone in 1798, on his way from Donegal to Dublin, is told the same way and traced no further. Nor is the fabric dated: the Northern Ireland register of historic buildings holds ten entries within sixty metres of the door and nothing at 34-38. That absence was searched again on 18 September 2026 in the Historic Environment Division's own map data, whose historic buildings layer was last edited on 10 September 2026 and is refreshed monthly. The neighbours it does hold are dated: 31-33 Shipquay Street at grade B+, built between 1740 and 1759 and formerly a store; 28, the Gift Box, and 30, Beethoven House, both between 1840 and 1859; 35-37 between 1900 and 1919; the Bank of Ireland at 20 between 1860 and 1879; the former Northern Bank at 39 between 1840 and 1859; 2 Bank Place between 1800 and 1819; 14 Shipquay Street, once the library, between 1820 and 1839; and 21, 23 and 27 recorded with no date at all. Nine of the ten carry a construction range, which is the control on the absence: the field the River Inn would be dated in is one the register fills on this street, so the blank at 34-38 is the register's and not the reading's. The nearest dated public house is 22-26, put up between 1820 and 1839 and recorded as a house before it was a bar. The other registers put the pub in company rather than dating it. Within eighty metres the Sites and Monuments Record holds a single entry, the late-medieval tower house recorded as O'Doherty's Castle or the Magazine, and the industrial heritage record holds a tobacco manufactory at the corner of Shipquay and Magazine Streets. The pub also stands inside the Derry area of archaeological potential drawn by the Derry Area Plan 2011, a boundary the dataset carries with no reference number of its own; it makes no judgement about any building within it and gives this one no date. Nothing at all appears in the areas of significant archaeological interest layer within eighty metres, and the same query shape at the same radius did return the area of archaeological potential, so that absence is real too. What is firm is that the doors are open — the Food Standards Agency inspected the premises as a pub, bar and nightclub on 26 March 2026 — and that the Doherty family ran the bar into the old Palace cinema next door to make the rooms it has now.

What to look for inside

Claims an inn's licence of 1684 for punch, beds and stabling
Cellars said to have held Wolfe Tone in 1798
The old Palace cinema next door is now part of the bar

Visiting

The River Inn is in Derry, Northern Ireland, at 34-38 Shipquay Street, Derry BT48 6DW. 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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