Named after a real bay in Donegal, run by people from there, and it is one of the best-rated pubs in Camden
The Sheephaven Bay holds a 4.6 from thirteen hundred and nineteen people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and it is one of the best-rated pubs in Camden.
And it is named after a real place.
Sheephaven Bay
It is in County Donegal, on the north coast of Ireland, and it is genuinely beautiful.
Which puts this pub in an unusual category, because we have spent seven postcodes establishing that almost no pub name means what it says.
The Elephant and Castle is a cutler’s badge. St George was Turkish. Old Speckled Hen is a car. Theodore Bullfrog never existed. The margherita is not a queen.
And this one is named after the bay the family came from.
The Irish in Camden
Which is the actual history of this district and which the market has almost entirely paved over.
The navvies came first – the men who dug the canal and the railways, in enormous numbers, from the 1820s onwards.
And then they kept coming, right through the twentieth century, because the work was here and there was none at home.
The construction of post-war Britain – the motorways, the tower blocks, the power stations – was very substantially carried out by Irish labour, and a great deal of it was recruited, paid and organised out of pubs in this district.
Men stood outside on a Monday morning and were picked for the week.
What the pub was
Everything.
It was the labour exchange. It was the bank – the landlord cashed cheques, held money, and lent it. It was the post office, because a man could leave a letter there. It was the address you gave when you had none.
And it was where you found out that somebody had died at home, and where the collection was taken.
The Prat has now written this in seven postcodes and the finding does not change.
The pub was infrastructure. The friendly societies met in them. The unions were organised in them. The bands were formed in them. And every single time a community had no institutions, it built one in a room with a bar in it.
The music
Traditional, live, and it is a session rather than a performance – which is a genuine distinction and it matters.
A session is musicians playing to each other. You are welcome to listen. Nobody is playing at you, and nobody will stop if you talk.
Verdict
Excellent pub, superb number, cheap.
Go on a session night, and do not clap at the end of a tune unless everybody else does.
The session, properly
Because there are rules, and nobody will tell you them, and everybody will notice.
The musicians are not performing. They are playing to each other, and you are permitted to be in the room.
You may talk. Quietly. That is allowed and it is expected – a session is not a concert and treating it as one is its own kind of rudeness.
But do not talk loudly during a slow air, which is the one moment when the room does go quiet.
And do not request anything. Ever. The Prat has watched this go wrong and it is genuinely painful for everybody.
Megan Amram is a standup comedian based in Portland, OR. She is a native of North London.
